Federal election

Upon election as federal member for Henty in the Australian House of Representatives in the Liberal landslide of 13 December 1975, Aldred assumed a very active role in Coalition and Parliamentary Committees. He chaired the Government Members' Small Business Committee, working closely with the Industry Minister, Phillip Lynch, on small business policy formulation.

As Chairman of the Government Members' Worker Participation Committee, Aldred produced the first definitive set of proposals for a Coalition worker participation policy, to then prime minister, Malcolm Fraser. Many of the proposals were incorporated in a worker participation policy later announced by the productivity minister, Ian Macphee.

Expenditure Committee

Aldred was an active member of the newly established Expenditure Committee of the House of Representatives and as Chairman of the Government Members' Trade Sub-Committee, worked closely with the Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister, Doug Anthony.

Manpower Development Executive

Defeated in October 1980, by the later House Speaker, Joan Child, Ken Aldred returned to the training profession. In early 1981 he took up the position of Manpower Development Executive with the Victorian Dairy Processing Industry Training Committee (VDPITC), operating under the auspices of the Australian Dairy Cooperation (ADC). In this capacity he spent over two years setting up training courses and training manuals for Victoria's dairy industry factories. He spent a considerable amount of time visiting factories in the state's three dairying regions, namely Gippsland, the Western District and the Northern Region.

Ken Aldred left VDPITC on re-election to the federal parliament in May 1983. He re-entered the House of Representatives through the by-election in Bruce, which followed the resignation of House Speaker, Sir Billy Snedden, after the Coalition defeat in the 1983 federal election.

House of Representatives

During his time as the MHR for Bruce, Aldred took a prominent role on defence and economic issues, as chair of the Opposition Defence Committee and the Opposition Treasury Committee.

In 1985, he was elected by the Liberal Party to represent Australia at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as the Opposition Parliamentary Adviser to the Australian Mission. At the UN, he became involved in committee work on the international drug trade and on Antarctica.

Shortly afterwards in 1986–87 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the then Leader of the Opposition, John Howard. Following an electoral re-distribution he was elected to represent Deakin in the 1990 federal election and remained there until the 1996 election, when he lost pre-selection to his successor, Phil Barresi.

Throughout his six years as member for Deakin, Aldred was a most active Liberal member on the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts, spearheading the inquiries into business migration and the Australian Taxation Office. The Charter of Taxpayers' Rights and other reforms to Tax Office administration were largely attributed to him.

As a result of these inquiries, abuses of the Business Migration Programme were eliminated and significant reforms were made to Tax Office administration, including the introduction of the Charter of Taxpayers' Rights.^[2][3]

At this time he was also Chairman of the Opposition Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Committee. During the 1980s, Aldred successfully advocated for the immigration to Australia of a large group of Jewish refuseniks from the Soviet Union, when they had been refused admission by the federal Labor government.

Controversy

In November 1989, Aldred and Senator Jim Short alleged that Labor MP Lewis Kent was "an agent of a foreign power" and had ties to the UDBA, the Yugoslav secret police. Their allegations were based on a statutory declaration from a member of Melbourne's Yugoslav community. Kent vigorously denied their claims, describing them as a smear campaign.^[4] The House of Representatives later voted on party lines to suspend Aldred for two days, following a report from the privileges committee.^[5]

Aldred was disendorsed by the Liberal Party for Deakin in 1995 for the 1996 federal election and subsequently used parliamentary privilege to make allegations of involvement in espionage and drug trafficking against a prominent Jewish lawyer and a senior foreign affairs official,^[6] using documents that were later found to be forged,^[7] which had been supplied to him by LaRouche movement front organisation the Citizens Electoral Council.^[8][9][10] He also alleged that the Department of Foreign Affairs had twenty child sexual abusers employed in senior positions, and named senior diplomat John Holloway, who was charged and later acquitted.^[11]