Billy Hughes
William Morris Hughes, was an Australian politician who served as the seventh Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country during World War I, but his influence on national politics spanned several decades. Hughes was a member of federal parliament from Federation in 1901 until his death, the only person to have served for more than 50 years, he represented six political parties during his career, leading five, outlasting four, being expelled from three. Hughes was born in London to Welsh parents, he emigrated to Australia at the age of 22, became involved in the fledgling labour movement. He was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1894, as a member of the New South Wales Labor Party, transferred to the new federal parliament in 1901. Hughes combined his early political career with part-time legal studies, was called to the bar in 1903, he first entered cabinet in 1904, in the short-lived Watson Government, was Attorney-General in each of Andrew Fisher's governments.
He was elected deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party in 1914. Hughes became prime minister in October 1915; the war was the dominant issue of the time, his support for sending conscripted troops overseas caused a split within Labor ranks. Hughes and his supporters were expelled from the party in November 1916, but he was able to remain in power at the head of the new National Labor Party, which after a few months merged with the Liberals to form the Nationalist Party, his government was re-elected with large majorities at the 1919 elections. Hughes established the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO during the war, created a number of new state-owned enterprises to aid the post-war economy, he made a significant impression on other world leaders at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he secured Australian control of the former German New Guinea. At the 1922 election, the Nationalists lost their majority in parliament and were forced to form a coalition with the Country Party.
Hughes' resignation was the price for Country Party support, he was succeeded as prime minister by Stanley Bruce. He became one of Bruce's leading critics over time, in 1928, following a dispute over industrial relations, he and his supporters crossed the floor on a confidence motion and brought down the government. After a period as an independent, Hughes formed his own organisation, the Australian Party, which in 1931 merged into the new United Australia Party, he returned to cabinet in 1934, became known for his prescient warnings against Japanese imperialism. As late as 1939, he missed out on a second stint as prime minister by only a handful of votes, losing a UAP leadership ballot to Robert Menzies. Hughes is acknowledged as one of the most influential Australian politicians of the 20th century, he was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime, his legacy continues to be debated by historians. His strong views and abrasive manner meant he made political enemies from within his own parties.
Hughes' opponents accused him of engaging in authoritarianism and populism, as well as inflaming sectarianism. His former colleagues in the Labor Party considered him a traitor, while conservatives were suspicious of what they viewed as his socialist economic policies. However, he was popular among the general public ex-servicemen, who affectionately nicknamed him "the little digger". Hughes was born on 25 September 1862 at 7 Moreton Place, London, the son of William Hughes and the former Jane Morris, his parents were both Welsh. His father, who worked as a carpenter and joiner at the Palace of Westminster, was from North Wales and was a fluent Welsh speaker, his mother, a domestic servant, was from the small village of Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain, spoke only English. Hughes was an only child. Hughes' mother died in May 1869, his father subsequently sent him to be raised by relatives in Wales. During the school term, he lived with his father's sister, Mary Hughes, who kept a boardinghouse in Llandudno named "Bryn Rosa".
He earned pocket money by doing chores for his aunt's tenants and singing in the choir at the local church. Hughes began his formal schooling in Llandudno, he spent his holidays with his mother's family in Llansantffraid. There, he divided his time between "Winllan", the farm of his widowed aunt, "Plas Bedw", the neighbouring farm of his grandparents. Hughes regarded his early years in Wales as the happiest time of his life, he was immensely proud of his Welsh identity, would become active in the Welsh Australian community speaking at Saint David's Day celebrations. Hughes called Welsh the "language of heaven". Like many of his contemporaries, he had no formal schooling in Welsh, had particular difficulties with spelling. Nonetheless, he received and replied to correspondence from Welsh-speakers throughout his political career, as prime minister famously traded insults in Welsh with David Lloyd George. At the age of eleven, Hughes was enrolled in St Stephen's School, one of the many church schools established by the philanthropist Lady Burdett-Coutts.
He won prizes in French, receiving the latter from Lord Harrowby. After finishing his elementary schooling, he was apprenticed as a "pupil-teacher" for five years, instructing younger students for fiv
William Wilks (Australian politician)
William Henry Wilks was an Australian politician. Wilks was born in Sydney to English sea captain Joseph Henry Wilks and née Harris, he was educated at Balmain Public School and, before establishing a wood and coal yard at Balmain, became associated with Billy Hughes. He was elected to the council of the Free Trade Association of New South Wales in 1887, having been president of the New South Wales Literary and Debating Societies' Union previously. Wilks, a Freemason, was the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1888, he became involved in politics, being associated with the Loyal Orange Institution of New South Wales, supported the entry of Labor into the New South Wales Parliament in 1891 due to his "strong democratic views". He himself was a member of the Free Trade Party, became associated with its more radical section, led by George Reid, he married Florence Matilda Vincent in Sydney on 19 July 1894. Wilks was a strong supporter of Premier Reid while in the New South Wales Parliament, attempted unsuccessfully to defuse an 1899 censure motion against Reid with an amendment separating the issue of John Neild's payment from the main motion.
He believed that the motion was motivated by an attempt to ensure that Reid did not become the first Prime Minister of Australia. Wilks transferred to federal politics in the inaugural federal election in 1901, was elected to the seat of Dalley, he was whip in the 1904–1905 Reid government, was useful to his leader in the controversies surrounding Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran. He was defeated by Labor in 1910, became a land valuer in Melbourne until he retired in 1928. Following his wife Florence's death in 1926, he had married Edna Eunice Hinchcliffe in Melbourne on 6 August 1927, he died on 5 February 1940 at Camberwell, was survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters of his first marriage. He was buried at Box Hill. McMinn, W. G.. "Wilks, William Henry". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: Australian National University. Retrieved 2008-03-20
Sedition
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent towards, or resistance against established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who promotes the interest of sedition. Sedition is considered a subversive act, the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history; this overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution. The term sedition in its modern meaning first appeared in the Elizabethan Era as the "notion of inciting by words or writings disaffection towards the state or constituted authority".
"Sedition complements treason and martial law: while treason controls the privileged, ecclesiastical opponents and Jesuits, as well as certain commoners. Australia's sedition laws were amended in anti-terrorism legislation passed on 6 December 2005, updating definitions and increasing penalties. In late 2006, the Commonwealth Government, under the Prime-Ministership of John Howard proposed plans to amend Australia's Crimes Act 1914, introducing laws that mean artists and writers may be jailed for up to seven years if their work was considered seditious or inspired sedition either deliberately or accidentally. Opponents of these laws have suggested. In 2006, the Australian attorney-general Philip Ruddock had rejected calls by two reports — from a Senate committee and the Australian Law Reform Commission — to limit the sedition provisions in the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 by requiring proof of intention to cause disaffection or violence, he had brushed aside recommendations to curtail new clauses outlawing “urging conduct” that “assists” an “organisation or country engaged in armed hostilities” against the Australian military.
The new laws, inserted into the legislation December 2005, allow for the criminalization of basic expressions of political opposition, including supporting resistance to Australian military interventions, such as those in Afghanistan and the Asia-Pacific region. These laws were amended in Australia on 19 September 2011; the ‘sedition’ clauses were repealed and replaced with ‘urging violence’. In Canada, which includes speaking seditious words, publishing a seditious libel, being party to a seditious conspiracy, is an indictable offense, for which the maximum punishment is of fourteen years' imprisonment. During World War II former Mayor of Montreal Camillien Houde campaigned against conscription in Canada. On 2 August 1940, Houde publicly urged the men of Quebec to ignore the National Registration Act. Three days he was placed under arrest by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on charges of sedition. After being found guilty, he was confined in internment camps in Petawawa and Gagetown, New Brunswick, until 1944.
Upon his release on 18 August 1944, he was greeted by a cheering crowd of 50,000 Montrealers and won back his position as the Mayor of Montreal in the election in 1944. A Sedition Ordinance had existed in the territory since 1970, subsequently consolidated into the Crime Ordinance in 1972. According to the Crime Ordinance, a seditious intention is an intention to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the person of government, to excite inhabitants of Hong Kong to attempt to procure the alteration, otherwise than by lawful means, of any other matter in Hong Kong as by law established, to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the administration of justice in Hong Kong, to raise discontent or disaffection amongst inhabitants of Hong Kong, to promote feelings of ill-will and enmity between different classes of the population of Hong Kong, to incite persons to violence, or to counsel disobedience to law or to any lawful order. Article 23 of the Basic Law requires the special administrative region to enact laws prohibiting any act of treason, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China.
The National Security Bill was tabled in early 2003 to replace the existing laws regarding treason and sedition, to introduce new laws to prohibit secessionist and subversive acts and theft of state secrets, to prohibit political organisations from establishing overseas ties. The bill was shelved following massive opposition from the public. In 2010, writer Arundhati Roy was sought to be charged with sedition for her comments on Kashmir and Maoists. Two individuals have been charged with sedition since 2007. Binayak Sen, an Indian paediatrician, public health specialist, activist was found guilty of sedition, he is national Vice-President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties. On 24 December 2010, the Additional Sessions and District Court Judge B. P Varma Raipur found Binayak Sen, Naxal ideologue Narayan Sanyal and Kolkata businessman Piyush Guha, guilty of sedition for helping the Maoists in their fight against the state, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, but he got bail in Supreme Court on 16 April 2011.
On 10 September 2012, Aseem Trivedi, a political cartoonist, was sent to judicial custody till 24 September 2012 on charges of sedition over a series of cartoons against corruption. Trivedi was accuse
New South Wales Legislative Council
The New South Wales Legislative Council referred to as the upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in Sydney, it is normal for legislation to be first deliberated on and passed by the Legislative Assembly before being considered by the Legislative Council, which acts in the main as a house of review. The Legislative Council has 42 members, elected by proportional representation in which the whole state is a single electorate. Members serve eight-year terms, which are staggered, with half the Council being elected every four years coinciding with elections to the Legislative Assembly; the parliament of New South Wales is Australia's oldest legislature. It had its beginnings when New South Wales was a British colony under the control of the Governor and was first established in 1823 by the New South Wales Act. A small, 5-member appointed Legislative Council began meeting on 24 August 1824 to advise the Governor on legislative matters.
It grew to seven members in 1825, between ten and fifteen in 1829. Under the Constitution Act 1843, the Legislative Council was expanded to 36 members, of which 12 were appointed by the Governor in the name of the Crown, the remainder elected from among eligible landholders. In 1851 the Council was enlarged to 54 members with 36 of its members elected by adult males who met certain property requirements and 18 appointed members. In 1856, under a new Constitution, the Parliament became bicameral with a elected Legislative Assembly and a appointed Legislative Council with a Government taking over most of the legislative powers of the Governor; the right to vote was extended to all adult males in 1858. On 22 May 1856, the newly constituted New South Wales Parliament sat for the first time. With the new 54-member Legislative Assembly taking over the council chamber, a second meeting chamber for the 21-member upper house had to be added to the Parliament building in Macquarie Street. In 1901, New South Wales became a sovereign state of the Commonwealth of Australia and many government functions were transferred to the new Commonwealth government.
In 1902, women gained the right to vote and the current Constitution of New South Wales was adopted, in 1918, reforms permitted women to be members of parliament. In 1925, 1926 and 1929, Premier Jack Lang made attempts to abolish the Legislative Council, following the example of the Queensland Legislative Council in 1922, but all were unsuccessful; the debate did, result in another round of reforms, in 1933, the law was changed so that a quarter of the Legislative Council was elected every three years by members of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council, rather than being appointed by the Governor. In 1962 Indigenous Australians gained the right to vote in all state elections. In 1978, the Council became a directly elected body in a program of electoral reform introduced by the Wran Labor government; the number of members was reduced to 45, although transitional arrangements meant that there were 43 members from 1978 to 1981, 44 from 1981 to 1984. Further reform in 1991 by the Greiner Liberal-National government saw the size of the Legislative Council cut to 42 members, with half being elected every 4 years.
In 1991, the Legislative Assembly reduced from 109 to 99 Members and to 93 members in 1999. As with the federal parliament and other Australian states and territories, voting in the election to select members for the Council is compulsory for all New South Wales citizens over the age of 18; as the result of a 1995 referendum, every four years half the seats in the Council come up for election on the fourth Saturday in March, barring exceptional circumstances. The Queen of Australia has a throne in the Legislative Council, Queen Elizabeth II has opened the New South Wales Parliament on two occasions, on 4 February 1954, as part of her first visit to Australia, the first occasion in which the monarch of Australia had opened a session of any Australian parliament; the other occasion was on 20 February 1992, during her visit to Sydney to celebrate the sesquicentenary of the incorporation of the City of Sydney, on which occasion she stated: From 1846 to 1856 the title of the presiding officer was Speaker of the Legislative Council, after that date it has been President of the Legislative Council.
The Legislative Council chamber is a prefabricated cast-iron building, intended as an "iron store and dwelling with ornamental front", manufactured in Scotland and shipped to Victoria. In 1856, when plans for a new chamber for the Legislative Council were not ready in time, this building was purchased and shipped to Sydney, where it was erected as an extension to Parliament House; the Legislative Council chamber is furnished in red, which follows the British tradition for the upper house. Proportional representation, with the whole state as a single electorate, means that the quota for election is small; this guarantees the representation of minor parties in the Legislative Council, including micro-parties that might attract less than 2% of the primary vote but are elected through preferences. In the 1999 elections, a record number of parties contested seats in the Council, resulting in an unwieldy ballot paper, a complex exchange of preferences between the numerous parties running candidates.
As a result, party registration requirements have since been made more restrictive, the replacement of party preference arrangements with optional preferential voting. This re
Norman Ewing
Norman Kirkwood Ewing, Australian politician, was a member of three parliaments: the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, the Australian Senate, the Tasmanian House of Assembly. He became a Judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, was Administrator of Tasmania from November 1923 to June 1924. Norman Ewing was born in Wollongong, New South Wales on 26 December 1870; the son of Anglican clergyman Thomas Campbell Ewing and Elizabeth née Thomson, one of his uncles was John Thomson, who would himself become a Member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. His brothers were John Ewing and Sir Thomas Ewing, who were members of parliament. Ewing was educated at Illawarra College in Wollongong Oakwoods at Mittagong, night school in Sydney. Articled to M. A. H. Fitzhardinge, he became a solicitor in 1894, practising at Murwillumbah. In 1895, he contested the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Tweed for the Protectionist Party, but was unsuccessful; that year, Ewing moved to Perth, Western Australia.
He was admitted to the bar the following year, in 1897 established the firm of Ewing and Downing. That year he published The Practice of the Local Courts of Western Australia. On 4 May 1897, Norman Ewing was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly seat of Swan. A few months he married Maude Louisa Stone, daughter of Sir Edward Stone, they would have two daughters. Ewing held the seat of Swan until March 1901, when he resigned it to take up a short-term seat in the first Australian Senate, which he had won on a Free Trade ticket, his term was due to continue until 31 December 1903. In 1902, while still a Senator, Ewing stood unsuccessfully for the position of Mayor of Perth, he resigned as Senator eight months early on 17 April 1903, becoming the first member of either house of the Australian Parliament to resign his seat. In 1905, Ewing moved to Hobart, where he established the firm of Ewing and Seager. In the federal election of 12 December 1906, he contested a Tasmanian seat in the Senate as an Anti-Socialist, but was defeated by a small margin.
He turned to Tasmanian state politics, winning the Tasmanian House of Assembly seat of Franklin in April 1909. He would hold the seat for over six years, for the last year of which he was Leader of the Opposition. Ewing was made a King's Counsel in 1914, in September the following year resigned his seat in parliament to accept an appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania; as Judge of the Supreme Court, he was involved in the 1915 Tasmanian Royal Commission into the public debt sinking fund. He was appointed a Deputy Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory and chair of the 1919–20 Royal Commission into the administration of the Northern Territory, known as the Darwin Rebellion, he conducted the 1920 Royal Commission in New South Wales into the imprisonment of twelve Industrial Workers of the World members. From November 1923 to June 1924, Ewing was appointed Administrator of Tasmania, while awaiting the arrival of the new governor Captain Sir James O'Grady. In 1924 he had a stroke, thereafter worked only intermittently.
He died at Launceston on 19 July 1928, was buried at Carr Villa cemetery. Black, David. Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia, Volume One, 1870–1930. Parliament House: Parliament of Western Australia. ISBN 0730738140. Kimberly, W. B.. History of West Australia. A Narrative of her Past. Together With Biographies of Her Leading Men. Melbourne: F. W. Niven
Jack Lang (Australian politician)
John Thomas Lang referred to as J. T. Lang during his career and familiarly known as "Jack" and nicknamed "The Big Fella", was an Australian politician who twice served as the 23rd Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1932, he was dismissed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, at the climax of the 1932 constitutional crisis and resoundingly lost the resulting election and subsequent elections as Leader of the Opposition. He formed Lang Labor and was a member of the Australian House of Representatives. John Thomas Lang was born on 21 December 1876 on George Street, close to the present site of The Metro Theatre, he was the third son of James Henry Lang, a watchmaker born in Edinburgh and Mary Whelan, a milliner born in Galway, Ireland. His mother and father had arrived in Australia in 1848 and 1860 and married in Melbourne, Victoria, on 11 June 1866, moving to Sydney five years later. Although Lang's father had been born Presbyterian, he became a Catholic like his wife, the family "fitted into the normal low social stratum of the great majority of Sydney's Catholics".
The family lived in the inner-city slums for the majority of Lang's early childhood, including for a period on Wexford Street in Surry Hills, where he attended a local school, St Francis Marist Brothers' on Castlereagh Street. His father suffered from rheumatic fever for most of Lang's childhood, he supplemented his family's income by selling newspapers in the city on mornings and afternoons. In the mid-1880s, due to his parents' poverty, he was sent to live with his mother's sister on a small rural property near Bairnsdale, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, attending for about four years the local Catholic school. Lang returned to New South Wales in the early 1890s to seek employment, aged 14, his first jobs were in the rural areas to the south-west of Sydney: on a poultry farm at Smithfield, as the driver of a horse-drawn omnibus in and around Merrylands and Guildford. Aged 16, he returned to the inner city, working first in a bookstore, as an office boy for an accountant. Nairn writes that Lang's experience in the Sydney slums brought "an intimate knowledge of the protean denizens who found shelter there", inculcating in Lang some "real sympathy for them, but above all a determination to avoid their kind of existence, reinforced by a revulsion against the hardships of his own life in a large poverty-stricken family."
During the banking crash of the 1890s which devastated Australia, Lang became interested in politics, frequenting radical bookshops and helping with newspapers and publications of the infant Labor Party, which contested its first election in New South Wales in 1891. At the age of 19 he married Hilda Amelia Bredt, the 17-year-old daughter of prominent feminist and socialist Bertha Bredt, the step-daughter of W. H. McNamara, who owned a bookshop in Castlereagh Street. Hilda's sister named Bertha, was married to the author and poet Henry Lawson. Lang became a junior office assistant for an accounting practice, where his shrewdness and intelligence saw his career advance. Around 1900 he became the manager of a real estate firm in the semi-rural suburb of Auburn, he was so successful that he soon set up his own real estate business in an area much in demand by working-class families looking to escape the squalor and overcrowding of the inner-city slums. As a resident in the unincorporated area around Silverwater and Newington, Lang became Secretary of the Newington Progress Association and led local efforts for the area to join the Municipality of Auburn.
On 20 June 1906, this was proclaimed, with the area included as the "Newington Ward", returning three aldermen. Lang was elected to first position in the new ward in April 1907, served two terms as Mayor of Auburn in 1909–1911, he was elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1913 for the district of Granville, serving as a backbencher in the Labor Party government led by William Holman. When Prime Minister Billy Hughes twice tried to introduce conscription to the country in WWI, Lang sided with the anti-conscriptionist wing of the ALP; the mass defection from the ALP of parliamentarians and supporters who supported the military measure opened up opportunities and Lang positioned himself for advancement. His financial skills led him to become Treasurer in Premier John Storey's Labor Government from 1920 to 1922. Due to the post-World War I financial recession, the state's accounts were in deficit. From 1920 to 1927, he was a member for the multi-member seat of Parramatta.
After the Labor Party lost government in 1922, Lang was elected as Opposition Leader in 1923 by his fellow Labor Party MPs. He became Premier. During his first term as Premier, Lang carried out many social programmes, including state pensions for widowed mothers with dependent children under fourteen, a universal and mandatory system of workers' compensation for death and injury incurred on the job, funded by premiums levied on employers, the abolition of student fees in state-run high schools and improvements to various welfare schemes such as child endowment. Various laws were introduced providing for improvements in the accommodation of rural workers, changes in the industrial arbitration system, a 44-hour workweek. Extensions were made to the applicability of the Fair Rents Act whilst compulsory marketing along the lines of what existed in Queensland was introduced. Adult franchise for local government elec
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