Keith Waller was born in Melbourne in 1914. He was educated at
Scotch College and
Ormond College at the
University of Melbourne. His career proved to be long and successful, establishing himself as a successful diplomat across a number of postings, including to Moscow, Washington and Bangkok. Waller was
Australian Consul-General in Manila from 1948 to 1950. During this time he dealt with the fall-out of the
Lorenzo Gamboa case, which saw a Filipino man separated from his wife and children due to the
White Australia policy. He received death threats, but later downplayed its significance and dismissed it as a "trivial case". He was appointed
Secretary of the Department of External Affairs (later
Department of Foreign Affairs in 1970), retiring from the public service in 1974 on his 60th birthday. Soon after his retirement, Waller prepared a brief assessing the Australian Government security and intelligence apparatus as it existed in the mid-1970s. Waller died in Canberra on 14 November 1992 aged 78. ==Awards==