A long-term communist activist and an important figure on the left, Freney joined the Labor Party at 16, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) at 18, and then the Trotskyist movement, which led him to work in Algeria and South Africa. Returning to Australia in 1968, he set up Liberation, a centre where young people could gather and talk politics.
In 1970 he rejoined the CPA, believing that it had definitively broken with Stalinism. He participated in many social movements, including being one of the first members of Gay Liberation and being involved in the Vietnam Moratorium. He protested against the 1971 Springbok football tour and was involved in the anti-apartheid movement, and in campaigns for Aboriginal rights.
Freney worked as a journalist for the CPA paper, Tribune, for many years and was also involved in the Campaign for an Independent East Timor, including setting up an illegal radio link in 1976 between Darwin and Fretilin guerrillas which lasted more than 18 months. He recounted all of this and more in his autobiography, A Map of Days, published in 1991. Freney died of cancer in 1995.
