“I turned 80 last year. I felt it was time for me to step down. So I have had discussions with Dr Ross Clifford to be my successor, when he is available,” Nile tells Eternity. “When I retire, he will take my place in the legislative council.”

Depending on the exact timing of that baton change, Nile will have been in the NSW upper house longer than half the Australian population has been alive – he has been in parliament for 34 years.

The timing of the changeover is up to Clifford. “He is involved with a very large college development programme, so it probably won’t be for two or three years,” says Nile. Clifford is principal of Morling College, the Baptist seminary in NSW.

Nile’s statement to Eternity refutes a prediction by Sydney Morning Herald state political editor, Sean Nicholls, that “it is highly likely [Nile] will hand over his seat to his younger wife, Silvana Nero, sometime during the next four years.”

Fred was a Christian leader well before he entered parliament in 1981.

“When I was first converted I took as a slogan, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.’ (Proverbs 3:6 KJV) I have never really applied for a job, instead God has led me into many challenging roles.”

These included being national director of Christian Endeavour (a youth training movement with 50,000 members in Australia at its peak), and running the 1968 Billy Graham crusade which produced 20,000 decisions. Nile says that the decision of the Uniting Church to withdraw from CE at union, to set up its own youth ministries, badly affected the movement.

Nile then became an accidental MP. “The church where I was converted was very conservative and we were taught never to get involved in politics. That was the devil’s territory.”

But in 1974 during the Whitlam era, when Nile was critical of some of the government policies, he had a conversation with his wife Elaine. “I said we should do something about this, so I rang up John Howard’s electorate office and offered to help. They said ‘great’, and put us in charge of one of their polling booths. That was my baptism of fire. I was director of the Festival of Light and that was involved with the moral issues, and I had to go on deputations and meet with the state attorneys general, and with Lionel Murphy at the federal level. I found not much sympathy for Christian values from the major parties, Labor or Liberal. It was like banging my head against a brick wall.

“And that put into my mind – and I believe God put it there – maybe we need to have a sort of a Christian spearhead in the political area, to force the major parties to pay attention.”

Nile began asking people to stand for parliament and got no takers. Finally in 1981 an ad hoc committee suggested Nile stand. “No one was more surprised than me when I was elected.

“I had said that night to my wife – we had been campaigning – ‘that is the last time we’ll do that. We will pray for what God’s will is for the next stage in my life.’”

Nile won his seat with 225,000 votes, almost enough to get two people up. He was elected for a 12 year term. “Quite a few of my friends rang me and said, ‘You have been led astray by the devil. He’s led you out of the evangelistic work you have been doing so well.’”

When Nile stood, there were only a few political parties; the protest or micro parties had not arrived. “That’s divided the vote up into smaller and smaller packages. There have been other pro-life, pro-Christian parties started: the DLP, Family First – they did have discussion with me and I said that by starting you are going to divide the vote. Which is what happened.”

“Danny Nalliah – who started Rise Up Australia – he came and saw me and I strongly advised him not to start his party, but he went away and two weeks later he announced it. You can’t control people’s lives; they have to do what they think is God’s will for them.”

Nile believes one of his major contributions has been running inquiries. “To my surprise the upper house became finely balanced between Labor/Greens and Liberal/Nationals and it put me right in the centre and my wife got elected as well. The two of us had the balance of power in the NSW parliament. It put a lot of pressure on me: I had to negotiate with ministers over all the legislation.

“I saw that balance of power as a ‘balance of prayer and responsibility’. One of my deductions was that I had to respect the mandate of the elected government. I did not think I had a right to be obstructive. I had great success in achieving amendments but I never boasted about that. I never got up and said ‘I forced you to do that.’”

Nile got his own bills passed – a great achievement for a minor party representative.

“The one I am really proud of is putting up the bill to ban tobacco advertising. And after an intense battle to get all the political parties to vote for it, I followed that up with a bill to prohibit smoking in public places.

“My last bill was to ban tobacco smoking in cars. The government thought that was a bit too radical so they amended it to make it smoking in cars where there are children. I was happy to accept that as an amendment. In due course I am sure there will be a ban on smoking in cars.
”

Asked if the conservative policies of his party caused difficulties with younger Christians, Nile responded, “Yes, that is often raised at meetings and I run into these issues as I go along.”

Nile defended his record on refugees pointing to his advocacy of letting Vietnamese refugees come to Australia (when the left opposed it). “I am not against refugees, but I am concerned about Islamic refugees who may be coming with a motive to change Australia.”