Papua and New Guinea would remain a colony under Australian rule until independence was formally and peacefully achieved in September 1975. Also shown here besides Gorton is Charles Barnes, and shown prominently speaking here is PNG pro-independence figure John Kaputin.
Hollingworth, who passed away today at the age of 91, served as the 23rd Governor-General of Australia from 2001 until his resignation in 2003. He was the first and only cleric to serve as G-G - and it was controversies in relation to his handling of child sex abuse allegations within the Anglican clergy during the 1990s that led to his forced resignation as G-G and his fall from public grace.
Taking place four days after Menzies passed away on 15 May, to this day it remains one of the largest state funerals in Australian history. Over 100,000 people lined up to pay their respects between the church on Collins Street, and the Springvale Crematorium 29 kilometres away. Shown prominently here besides Damn Pattie Menzies are, among others, the then-Prince Charles, Governor-General Sir Zelman Cowen, Malcolm Fraser, and Sir Billy Snedden.
A portrait of Joseph Lyons was voted on as this sub’s next icon! Now, onto the next round, for which the next icon will be adopted next Monday.
Provide your proposed icon in the comments (within the guidelines below) and upvote others you want to see adopted! The top-upvoted icon will be adopted and displayed for a fortnight before we make a new thread to choose again!
Guidelines for eligible icons:
* The icon must prominently picture a Prime Minister of Australia or symbol associated with the office (E.g. the Lodge, one of the busts from Ballarat’s Prime Ministers Avenue, etc). No fictional or otherwise joke PMs
* The icon must be of a different figure from the one immediately preceding it. So no icons relating to Joseph Lyons for this round.
* The icon should be high-quality (E.g. photograph or painting), no low-quality or low-resolution images. The focus should also be able to easily fit in a circle or square
* No NSFW, offensive, or otherwise outlandish imagery; it must be suitable for display on the Reddit homepage
* No icons relating to Anthony Albanese
* No memes, captions, or doctored images
Should an icon fail to meet any of these guidelines, the mod team will select the next eligible icon. We encourage as many of you as possible to put up nominations, and we look forward to seeing whose nomination will win!
Grayden passed away two days ago at the age of 105, and his passing in so many ways marks the end of an era - even when putting aside his exceptional wartime service, where he saw brutal action in Syria, in New Guinea on the Kokoda Trail, and in Borneo as a participant of the Battle of Balikpapan - among many other noteworthy battles and locations.
Grayden was not just the last living of the “49ers” who were first elected in the landslide that swept Robert Menzies back into office and placed the modern Liberal Party in government for the first time; but his exceptional longevity was such that Grayden was also the last living person who had served as a Liberal MP under the leadership of Menzies (the penultimate, Wylie Gibbs, who served as MP for Bowman from 1963 to 1969, passed away on 9 March at the age of 103).
Grayden was the last living person who served in, and was elected to, federal Parliament before 1961 (having won re-election in 1951, before losing his seat of Swan to Labor’s Harry Webb in 1954), and as such was the last living person who had served in Parliament with Billy Hughes, Ben Chifley, H.V. Evatt, Richard Casey, Sir Earle Page, and Arthur Fadden, among a great many other figures. Grayden would also almost certainly have been the last living eyewitness to the 1951 Jubilee Ball where Menzies tearfully announced the sudden death of Chifley and the premature end to festivities.
Putting aside his federal career, Grayden spent the majority of his career in WA state politics. Serving as MLA for Middle Swan from 1947 to 1949 under the leadership of Liberal Premier Sir Ross McLarty, Grayden would almost certainly have been the last living Australian who served in elected office on a state level in the 1940s. After losing his federal seat in 1954, Grayden re-entered state politics in 1956, being elected to the seat of South Perth as an independent, unendorsed Liberal - formally joining the partyroom following the 1959 state election which saw David Brand lead the state Coalition into office, defeating Albert Hawke (uncle of Bob) and Labor. Grayden would subsequently remain in state politics until 1993, and serve in various ministerial positions under Premier Sir Charles Court.
With Grayden’s death, Labor’s Doug McClelland (who turns 100 on 5 August) is now the earliest living elected parliamentarian, having been elected in the 1961 federal election - and is now the last living former federal parliamentarian who served in the military during the Second World War. McClelland is also now the only living person who served as a Labor parliamentarian under the leadership of Arthur Calwell, and is the last surviving minister who served under Gough Whitlam from 1972 until October 1975 (when Paul Keating joined the ministry). McClelland and the Country Party’s Ian Sinclair (elected in 1963) are the only living people now who served in Parliament alongside Menzies, and in Sinclair’s case he is the last man standing who served in the Coalition frontbench from Menzies to Malcolm Fraser’s 1975 caretaker minister, as well as being the last of the “Right Honourables”. Don Cameron, elected as MP for Griffith in the 1966 election and would remain in and out of Parliament until 1990, is now the only living individual who served in Parliament as a Liberal alongside Harold Holt.
Filmed between the 20th and the 24th of April 1973, and shown here besides Whitlam and his family at the end are UK Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and UK Prime Minister Edward Heath.
Morris, who passed away yesterday at the age of 93, was first elected to the Divison of Shortland in the 1972 “It’s Time” federal election, succeeding Charles Griffiths (who had the great misfortune of spending his entire 23-year political career on the Opposition benches, from 1949 to 1972).
After serving on the backbenches for the entirety of the Whitlam Government, Morris was elevated to the shadow ministry in 1976, serving as Transport spokesman under Whitlam and Bill Hayden before becoming Minister for Transport upon the election of Bob Hawke in 1983. He would mostly serve in that role, while additionally at various points also serve as Minister for Housing and Aged Care, Aviation, Communications Support, and Industrial Relations during the Hawke Government.
Morris was dropped from the ministry after the 1990 election, mostly due to the fact that he didn’t belong to any Labor faction, but remained in Parliament until his retirement in 1998 - with his brother Allan (who is still alive at the age of 85) also serving as a backbench MP for Newcastle from 1983 until 2001; and his son Matthew (who passed away in 2020) serving as the Labor MLA for Charlestown in the NSW Legislative Assembly from 2003 to 2011.
Gorton’s first ANZAC Day as Prime Minister saw him visit Ballarat, where he ended up leading the march through the main town, with the former crew of the HMAS Ballarat marching behind him - the HMAS Ballarat being the ship that rescued Gorton and dozens of other survivors 24 hours after the MV Derrymore was torpedoed and sank by the Japanese.
Video taken by myself, shortly after Gillard got up to speak.