Leslie Hunter Ford was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. He was a Liberal Party of Australia

Liberal Party of Australia

The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...

 member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

New South Wales Legislative Assembly

The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The other chamber is the Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney...

 from 1959 to 1964, representing the electorate of Dubbo

Electoral district of Dubbo

Dubbo is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is represented by Troy Grant of the National Party of Australia....

.

Ford was born in Molong

Molong, New South Wales

Molong is a small town in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia, in Cabonne Shire.Molong is located on the Mitchell Highway about 300 kilometres west of Sydney and about 30 kilometres from the city of Orange. It is elevated at 529 metres above sea level. At the 2006 census, Molong...

, and educated at Orange Public School and Orange High School. He worked on his father's grazing property at Amaroo until his father's death, whereafter he took over the property. He subsequently became a successful businessman, owning a machinery franchise, a car dealership, a number of butcher shops, and a range of pastoral property in the Dubbo area. He was an alderman on the City of Dubbo

City of Dubbo

Dubbo is a Local Government Area in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia. The City is traversed by the Mitchell Highway, the Newell Highway, the Golden Highway and the Main Western railway line.The largest population centre is the city of Dubbo...

 council from 1947 to 1964, serving as mayor from 1950. He was awarded an OBE in 1956.

Ford entered politics at the 1959 state election

New South Wales state election, 1959

The 1959 New South Wales state election was held on 21 March 1959. It was conducted in single member constituencies with compulsory preferential voting and was held on boundaries created at a 1957 redistribution...

, winning the traditionally conservative Dubbo seat from the incumbent Labor member, Clarrie Robertson

Clarrie Robertson

Clarence Gordon Robertson was an Australian politician and a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly between 1942 and 1950 and again between 1953 and 1959. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party....

. He was easily re-elected at the 1962 election

New South Wales state election, 1962

The 1962 New South Wales state election was held on 3 March 1962. It was conducted in single member constituencies with compulsory preferential voting and was held on boundaries created at a 1961 redistribution...

, but died in office in 1964. He was succeeded at the resulting by-election by John Mason

John Mason (Australian politician)

John Marsden Mason is a former Australian politician, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for 16 years.-Early life:Mason was born in Rose Bay in Sydney in 1928, the son of Kay Mason and Stella Marsden...

, who later became state Liberal leader.