Home Affairs

Being Minister for Home Affairs in the early years of federation meant doing everything that was based in the interior; the opposite of External Affairs if you like. The people who held this position were high in the ministry but stayed for only a year: Sir William Lyne, the anti-federationist NSW premier; Sir John Forrest the premier of one side of the country.

Lee Batchelor, Dugald Thomson, Littleton Groom, Thomas Ewing, John Keating, Hugh Mahon and George Fuller were crushed under the weight of their portfolio and quickly slammed the door behind them. They were expected to administer the Territories: ACT and Northern Territory in their spare time while handling transport and immigration, agriculture and industry, and so on.

Who could stay a goodly term in Home Affairs if not the well moniker-ed King O'Malley who didst endure three years of doing a bit of everything. Or telling other people to.
And returned to see out the first incarnation of Minister for Home Affairs. Joseph Cook and William Archibald  returning to the single year pattern in between.

This was not the last of Home Affairs as portfolio, but, when Fred Bamford of the National Labor Party (in this, different to an earlier - and later - Australian Labor Party) took the keys, it was to Home and Territories, and would remain so from 1916 to 1929 when it slid on its slippers and resumed its former mantle. Still there were eight Ministers for Home and Territories during those thirteen years:
Bamford
Paddy Glynn
Alexander Poynton
George Pearce
William Glasgow
Charles Marr
Neville Howse
Aubrey Abbott

Arthur Blakely made it to Home Affairs 1929-32, during the Great Depression. The department was still known by this name when Archdale Parkhill took over but he became Minister for the Interior, and the name Home Affairs would not appear again for another forty five years.

the Interior

Archdale Parkhill

John Perkins

Eric Harrison

Thomas Paterson

John McEwen

Harry Foll

Joe Collings

Herbert Johnson 

Philip McBride

Wilfrid Kent Hughes

Allen Fairhall
Gordon Freeth
John Gorton
Doug Anthony
Peter Nixon
Ralph Hunt
Lance Barnard

Home Affairs (and the Environment)

Robert Ellicott revived the Home Affairs title in 1977. In 1981, the Environment was appended. There were another three coalition Ministers and one Labor minister who bore this title, before it was again returned to Home Affairs. The four after Ellicott were Michael MacKellar, Ian Wilson, Tom McVeigh and Barry Cohen.

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Robert Ray
Bob Debus
Brendan O'Connor
Jason Clare

Playing favourites

It is now a decade since I started down the path of whimsy; creating the revolving hyperlink or rotating hyperlink, whichever you fancy.
I still wanted to hook a theme on this and decided on 'favourite'. What I liked about it at the time is that it gave me enormous scope and would stay positive in the main.

Throughout the ten years I have devoted to this madcap pursuit, I have veered between the physical property and its attributes. But rarely beyond that. The very stars in the cosmos are linked to us and we are part of the whole existence, so it's not like this was a terrible restriction.

I don't want to delve too much in the concentrated candour that involves an exercise of this kind so I'll share the cream of the link crop.

I found rooves and rooftops yield different results.
 I noticed how some took off in odd directions and how others pierced the depths. There was the blatantly commercial and the cold and clinical. And the best kind of sites that highlighted the essence of the idle topic.

After covering the environment both natural and built and all manner of creature therein, I have only just come lately to the arts. It took some constraint, being of that tradition, but I wanted to deal with the real, and avoid too much editorial intervention where my own proclivities were concerned.

There were two items that caused commentators to state aloud that it was pointless to have favourites: dams and vestibules.
There were many things too mundane to even be worth including. This happened, strangely and fortuitously, the first time in Europe, where access to one's blog is impeded. I did 'light' of all things; full of meaning both literal and lyrical and yet nothing. So, while on the subject, I flicked to bulbs (we were in Holland after all) and still no good. So this was the only time the actual change wasn't made. I figured that having gone through the exercise was enough.

The most dramatic favourite was the cupboard under the stairs.

Treasurer independence

Many prime ministers have succumbed to the desire to hold the country's purse strings, but it's instructive to see how many state leaders took to the task and how quickly WA's premiere premier would hold the post a number of times and end up, as we see on his link, be reported reigning in the states.

Where you might find the Attorney General's Department lousy with lawyers, so the Treasury is bursting with accountants. Many of whom aspire to be head bean counter.

Economists tell us the expected effect of a Budget, financiers grumble in private consortia.
Households and businesses feel the real effect.

But is it the Treasurer or the government who dictate the state of the economy? At best they buffer certain sectors from the worst impact and make it more difficult for some practices to take place that are harmful to the hip pocket nerve.

It's a different job to that of some of the massive drivers of our economy: your Adelaide Steamship Company, BHP, Coles Myer, or Lend Lease.
The Treasurer is not meant to lock horns with entrepreneurs or prevent invention.

Given the two party system, it's not always one side or the other that makes financial decisions on the voter's behalf in a consistent fashion. The Hawkeating years are marked by such measures as floating the dollar and selling off the Commonwealth Bank. Though Bob only gave himself the job for a day, and Gough a couple of weeks, which rather defines the tumultuous tenure.

Buried treasurers (and the living ledger)

Sir George Turner
Chris Watson
Sir John Forrest
Sir William Lyne
Andrew Fisher
William Higgs
Alexander Poynton
William Watt
Sir Joseph Cook
Stanley Bruce
Dr Earle Page
Ted Theodore
James Scullin
Joseph Lyons
Richard Casey
Robert Menzies
Percy Spender
Arthur Fadden
Ben Chifley
Harold Holt
William McMahon
Leslie Bury
Billy Snedden
Gough Whitlam
Frank Crean
Dr Jim Cairns
Bill Hayden
Phillip Lynch
John Howard
Paul Keating
Bob Hawke
John Kerin
Ralph Willis
John Dawkins
Peter Costello
Wayne Swan

general

There is some diversity in our legal politicos, with the solid Johns and the, intriguing in our Brit-inheritance way rather than exotic, Littleton and Garfield.

The political impetus has encompassed the direct influence of the founder of the Liberal Party and the 'Crash through or crash' leader with his passionate supporters and passionate detractors.

We finally got a female law dog at the end of 2011 and she lasted in the job for just over a year.

There was going to be quips about an early minister not needing to worry about cyber crime, and way of affixing the copyright symbol to someone else's entry. In the end, the only one I regretted not being able to provide for was Henry Higgins. "Justice you weight Henry Higgins" "Just, you wait, Henry Higgins"

I'm assuming most legal eagles would be familiar with the Pygmalion (or, since it's a musical number I'm quoting, My Fair Lady) reference.

Attorneys General

According to the Parliamentary Education Office 'A parliament is an assembly of elected representatives of a people or a nation, which forms the supreme legislative (law-making) authority for that people or nation.'
This explains why the chief lawmaker, the Attorney General, is such a senior figure. Here is a list of all the Attorneys General for the Commonwealth of Australia:


Alfred Deakin
James Drake
Henry Higgins
Josiah Symon
Isaac Isaacs
Littleton Groom
William Morris (Billy) Hughes
Patrick McMahon (Paddy) Glynn
John Latham
Francis (Frank) Brennan
Robert Menzies
Herbert Evatt
John Beasley
John Spicer
Michael Neil O'Sullivan
Garfield Barwick
William McMahon
Billy Snedden
Gordon Freeth
Nigel Bowen
Ivor Greenwood
Gough Whitlam
Lionel Murphy
Kep Enderby
Bob Ellicott
Peter Durack
Gareth Evans
Lionel Bowen
Michael Duffy
Duncan Kerr
Michael Lavarch
Daryl Williams
Philip Ruddock
Robert McClelland
Nicola Roxon
Mark Dreyfus

Don know 2, much

I don't know that I believe you are stamped with your name so indelibly that it determines your career or decides how your love life will proceed. The Dons I know are a mixed bunch. But so are the Charleys and the Cindys; the Brians. Regardless of what you think of your name, it's likely that those you are forced to share it with are going to be of every kind. I haven't met any bad Grants but it could just be a matter of time.

Don know

Here's a question; a serious one: do you think it's sensible to feel you should apologise to some people for not knowing of their existence?

This can only apply to someone of fame or notoreity, I realise. If not a captain of industry then a high class buffoon.

In my case, as I was writing that past post about External and Foreign Affairs ministers, I was struck that I had been around in the Whitlam era; just going into high school, granted, and I didn't make the connection between the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time and his sons who went into Current Affairs.

The truth is, I wasn't an activist in high school. I had enough on my plate (or, if not, we could go up for seconds) and I hadn't fully matured from my parents' conservative outlook.
It was, ironically, the kid who gave me my black tooth who made me see the virtue in a party for the working man. His dad was a shearer.

The Dons I was aware of in politics were Don Dunstan, the flamboyant South Australian premier, and Don Lane the party-switching Fitzgerald Inquiry subject of the dying days of Bjelke-Petersen mach II and III. He might have even been the local member when we were living in New Farm.
(not to be confused with the lanky yank, Mort Isaacson)

Well, that shows that no one (in Australia, at least) is reading. What about Don Chipp?