Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an unscrupulous individual, usu. a businessman.

1924		Sport (Adelaide) 7 Nov. 7/2: The legalised profiters do more holding up than the underworlders. Both classes of profiteers are real Ned Kellys and it is hard to say which are the most desperate.
1937		Nambucca & Bellinger News (NSW) 27 Aug. 4/1: I took a flat for a week, as the hotels sock the tourists too heavily with their charges. They are real Ned Kellys.
1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 41: Kelly, Ned, any person of buccaneering business habits.
1963		‘Nino Culotta’ Gone Fishin’ 25: ‘’Course if there’s no risk, I’ll have a lash. Who wouldn’t?’ ‘Real old Ned Kelly, isn’t he?’.
1970		Galton & Simpson ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ Steptoe and Son [TV script] I don’t seem to have any pommie money on me. I wonder if you’d mind paying Ned Kelly here for me.
1972		A. Chipper Aussie Swearers Guide 67: Ned Kelly. [...] Anybody who separates an Aussie from his Oscar (Oscar Ash: cash).
1981		J. Henderson Exiles of Asbestos Cottage 39: Ker-rist, mate, we thought we were bad enough! What you need is a crop of bloody Ned Kellys.

2. in attrib. use of sense 1.

1936		Mirror (Perth) 8 Aug. 4/3: When he saw the connie collect twopence from each of the girls he [...] humorously asked him if he didn’t think it was a real Ned Kelly act taking fourpence from the two lasses.
1937		Grenfell Record (NSW) 31 May 1/8: Ned Kelly Not In It! [...] Director Oram said while the Government had such Acts it had no right prosecuting s.p. merchants, because their own acts are real Ned Kelly affairs.

3. a ‘blood-and-thunder’ romance.

[1918		Echuca & Moama Advertiser (Vic.) 24 Sept. 3/2: According to all rules of warfare, their operation was most perilous. A Victorian colonel put it another way: — ‘It was a real Ned Kelly stunt’].
1943		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. (2nd edn).

4. a poker machine.

[1936		Maryborough Chron. (Qld) 31 Jan. 6/5: Fruit Machines: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘Ned Kelly,’ Starlight and the Taxation Department all wrapped up in one].
[1941		Sun (Sydney) : ‘Worse Than Ned Kelly’- S.M. On Poker Machines. ‘Ned Kelly wasn’t in it, compared with these poker machines,’ said Mr. Hardwick, S.M., in North Sydney Court to-day. ‘Players haven’t one chance in a hundred of winning’].
1943		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. (2nd edn).
1946		Townsville Dly Bulletin (Qld) 3 May 4/4: T went to my club, well fortified against temptation to duel with the one-armed gangster [...] Within three minutes I had learned that mathematical probabilities play no favourites. I could almost swear I heard the ‘Ned Kelly’ chortle and say: ‘Never give a sucker a chance’.