The local government sector has mourned the passing of a former politician with special relevance to councils nationwide.

Former Labor minister Tom Uren died on Australia Day at the age of 93.

Mr Uren was elected to Parliament in 1958 as the member for Reid and he represented the Sydney electorate for 32 years.

With the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972 Mr Uren was given the urban and regional development portfolio.

It was during this term that the Whitlam Government established Financial Assistance Grants.

The grants represented the first general purpose assistance to local government from the Commonwealth, and were first distributed in 1974-75.

The grants were provided to promote equality among regions, and to ensure adequate services and the development of local and regional resources.

Under the Hawke Government, elected in 1983, Mr Uren was given the Territories and Local Government portfolio.

Mr Uren also had special link to the peak council body, the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).

In 1987 Tom Uren joined Prime Minister Bob Hawke at the official opening of the Australian Local Government Centre (now ALGA) offices in Deakin (pictured), while in 1997 he was a speaker at the National General Assembly and launched the 50th anniversary publication, A History of the Australian Local Government Association.

Mr Uren is remembered as a complex and charismatic politician, who will remain one of the great heroes of the Australian Labor movement.

Master of ceremonies at Mr Uren’s funeral, Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese, praised him as a “true believer ... a proud man of the left” who had been “on the right side of history in all of the major causes that he was associated with.”

He was, Albanese added, a “grassroots campaigner without peer in our movement”.