I've just been mucking around on the National Archive's Australian Prime Ministers site - and from there I bring you the following trivial notes about each of them, selected on the highly scientific basis of what interested me most within 10 seconds:
Edmund Barton : nicknamed 'Toby Tosspot' by the Bulletin.
Alfred Deakin: only PM to reject title 'Right Honorable'.
Chris Watson: First Labor PM in the world, established the solidarity rule by which he was expelled from the Labor Party. Youngest ever PM at 37.
George Reid: only Australian to serve in all three legislatures – colonial, Commonwealth, and British; first former Australian PM to die.
Andrew Fisher: first Prime Minister to hold a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, in 1910.
Joseph Cook: initiated first double dissolution of Commonwealth parliament, dubbed ‘the most humourless’ of the prime ministers.
Billy Hughes: 51 years as an MHR – the longest serving Australian federal parliamentarian. This does not include his prior 7 years as a NSW MLA 1894-1901. Woah!
Stanley Bruce: we all know that along with John Howard, he is one of two Prime Ministers to lose their seats while in office - but did you know he was the only Prime Minister laid to rest in Canberra?
Jim Scullin: first Catholic Prime Minister, and (possibly not entirely unrelated to the first fact) the only red-headed PM.
Joseph Lyons: first PM to win three successive elections, and with Reid (NSW), one of two PMs to have been a State Premier (Tas). First to die in office.
Earl Page: one of the first Australians to own a car (in 1904), record for the shortest official stay in Britain – 1 day (1925).
Robert Menzies: one of three former Prime Ministers awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, First Class! The others are Edmund Barton and John McEwen.
Arthur Fadden: PM for 6 weeks, but longest serving acting PM (nearly 2 years) while Menzies was tarting around Britain between 1949 and 1958.
John Curtin: the only Prime Minister to have been in jail (as an anti-conscriptionist in 1916).
Francis Forde: shortest term in office at eight days. On 11 July this year, should he make it, Whitlam will beat Forde's record of 92 years as longest-lived former PM.
Ben Chifley: refused to wear ceremonial clothes and became a Privy Councillor in his own suit in 1945.
Harold Holt: was a federal parliamentarian for 32 years - the same duration as Robert Menzies.
John McEwen: record for longest service in parliament before becoming PM (33 years). Holt 2nd at 30 years. Naturally, Menzies is the origins of these complaints.
John Gorton: only PM sworn in while a Senator, for three weeks was PM without holding a seat in the House of Reps. Only PM to have a non-Australian wife (American).
William McMahon: despite being 2nd oldest to become PM at 63 (McEwen oldest at 67), fathered his youngest child while in office. 'Respek!', as Ali G would say.
Gough Whitlam: only Prime Minister to grow up in Canberra, though spent the earliest part of life in Melbourne. Will (hopefully) become the longest-lived Australian PM on July 11 this year. Go Gough! Its time!
Malcolm Fraser: in 1955 was then the youngest MP to ever enter parliament - 25 years old. Keating matched this in 1969. Came to office with greatest winning margin in federal history (1975), and lost office with (joint) largest ALP victory in 1983.
Bob Hawke: 1983 win roughly ties with Curtin's 1943 win for largest ALP winning margin ever.
Paul Keating: third longest serving federal treasurer, after Costello and Fadden. Consequently, 2nd longest serving treasurer to ever become an Australian PM. ;)
John Howard: only Liberal Party Prime Minister educated in government schools, campaigned for the Conservative Party in Britain’s 1964 election. Other rare distinctions include losing his seat while in office.
Kevin Rudd: info on site "under development". But here's one: he used to clean Laurie Oakes' house while a student at ANU. Ewww!
8 comments:
Joseph Curtin??
Yeah, I was going to ask the same.
Billy Hughes has another record. He was the only PM to be in four political parties. ALP, Nationalists, UAP and Liberal Party. When asked on ABC radio why he'd never joined the Country Party (now the Nationals) his response was "Brother, you've got to draw the line somewhere."
Atie Fadden has the distinction of being the only PM to decide whether he should join a political party, the ALP or the Country Party by the toss of a coin. It came up tails, I think, so he joined the National Party.
What do you do to be dubbed the 'most humourless' PM, I wonder? :)
Oops! Thanks for spotting that glitch - Joseph was Curtin's middle name.
I like the story about Hughes and the Country party - heh. I guess he would also have been in the NSW Labor party - a different party in the 1890s. How about that - 58 years in parliament.
I cant say, MB - though I note that Joseph Cook was a committed Primitive Methodist. My sense is that was not exactly a recipe for letting one's hair down!
Love Menzies' Order of the Rising Sun!
hehe. I told you it was the stuff that intrerested me most!
My personal favourite was how I tweaked Keating's interesting fact into an anti-Costello jibe,as a matter of principle!
Well, yes, jokey hijinks probably weren't at the fore among Primitive Methodists. They had a small clutch of female lay preachers in nineteenth-century South Australia, though!
Is that right, MB? How interesting. There's some great old Ranters halls still intact (usually antique stores etc) in the gold rush country of Victoria - especially around Castlemaine. Pretty sure they were a Methodist sect.... dont know if they were also "Primitives"? Maybe they were splitters... and maybe William Lane had Ranter connections?
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