Researching Frank Wise

Wise was a farmer for several years in Queensland before working in the Department of Agriculture in that state. He later moved to Western Australia as a technical adviser in the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and in 1928 was commissioned to report and advise on tropical agriculture in the Northern Territory and the North West of Western Australia.

In the 1933 state election which saw future Premiers Albert Hawke and John Tonkin also win seats, Wise successfully contested the seat of Gascoyne (now merged into Murchison-Eyre) in the state's lower house for the Labor Party. In 1936 he moved to the front bench as Minister for Agriculture and the North-West.

For reasons of ill health, John Willcock resigned his premiership on 31 July 1945 and Wise was elected into the position. Wise held the position for only two years until the 1947 election when his party lost to the Liberals headed by Sir Ross McLarty.

He was Leader of the Opposition for the next four years before taking up the position of Administrator of the Northern Territory and President of the Northern Territory Legislative Council (now replaced with the unicameral Northern Territory Legislative Assembly).

In 1942, botanist Charles Gardner named the Australian shrub Acacia wiseana in his honour.

In the 1979 Australia Day honours list, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his services to politics.

As a civil servant at the National Insurance Commission, War Office and Ministry of Food and Board of Trade he was instrumental in introducing state control for the requisitioning of raw materials at the War Office and of prices and the meat trade at the Ministry of Food. Following the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, he was a Delegate to the Supreme Economic Council and led the negotiations for the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement 1920–21. He was an adviser to David Lloyd George at the Genoa Conference (1922). He controversially resigned from the UK Civil Service to become the Director of the Soviet Union's Trade Office Centrosoyuz in 1923.

Wise was elected as an Independent Labour Party Member of Parliament for Leicester East at the May 1929 general election, but lost his seat at the subsequent general election in October 1931. He was a prominent member of the ILP but resigned when it disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 1932, becoming the first chairman of the Socialist League. He had a close relationship with Jennie Lee, which ended in 1933 with his sudden death at Wallington Hall, the home of Sir Charles Trevelyan.