Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Benjamin Cutler KBE, ED (20 April 1918 – 23 September 2006) was an Australian politician, holding office for 28 years as an elected member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Orange. Cutler was Country Party leader for sixteen years and became Minister for Education and Deputy Premier for ten years under Premiers Robert Askin and Tom Lewis. Early life Charles Cutler was born in Forbes in 1918, the son of George Cutler and Elizabeth Booth Cutler. His cousin, Sir Arthur Roden Cutler, was a Victoria Cross recipient and a long-serving Governor of New South Wales. Charles' ministerial service including as Deputy Premier commenced the year before his cousin's appointment as governor, meaning that Charles was in the cabinet that recommended Roden as governor to the Queen and that later Charles was sworn in as a minister in by his governor cousin. At an early age, Charles moved to the nearby regional city of Orange with his family, where he was educated at Orange Rural School and Orange High School. After completing his schooling he gained employment from 1934 until 1939 as an office worker with the Producers Co-Operative Distributing Society Limited of Orange. Military service Cutler served in World War II, first as a member of the Citizens Military Force (CMF; now known as the Australian Army Reserve) from 1938 to 1940. He went on to serve with the 2nd Australian Imperial Force (2nd AIF) from 1940 until 1945 and also the 2/17th Battalion in Tobruk and Syria. He was wounded at El Alamein. Following the war, Charles Cutler was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the CMF from 1948 to 1960 at which time he transferred to the Reserve Forces. Cutler was awarded the Efficiency Decoration (ED) in 1959. Personal life Charles Cutler married Dorothy Pascoe on 4 March 1943 in the Holy Trinity Church at Orange; they had one daughter and three sons. Following World War II, Cutler returned to his employment at Producers Co-operative Distributing Society Limited in Orange from 1946 to 1947. During this time, he was also a sportswriter for the Bathurst Times newspaper. He also became the vice-president of the Orange Returned Serviceman's League Club and also president of the Orange Apex Club and district rugby union. Political career Charles Cutler joined the Country Party in 1944. He was elected as the Member for the Electoral district of Orange at the New