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Speaker, 27 February 1975 to 11 November 1975
Australian Labor Party
Train driver, trade unionist, amateur boxing champion and 16th Speaker of the House of Representatives, Gordon Scholes (1931-2018) presided over what was possibly the most tumultuous sitting of the House, on 11 November 1975.1
Scholes was born in West Melbourne; his father was a railway worker and his mother was a psychiatric nurse. He began his working life aged 15 at the Daylesford Woollen Mills, attending night school at the Ballarat School of Mines. He joined the railways, eventually becoming an engine driver. In 1957 he married Della Robinson and they had two daughters.
In 1962, having joined the ALP some years earlier, Scholes was elected president of the Geelong branch, then a Geelong City councillor and president of Geelong Trades Hall. In 1966 he contested the seat of Corio but was unsuccessful. However, he won the July 1967 by-election with a significant swing and held the seat for almost 26 years.
In 1970 Scholes became Deputy Chairman of Committees and when Labor won the 1972 election he was elected Chairman of Committees. In February 1975 James Cope resigned the Speakership and Scholes was elected in his place. His authority was tested as the Opposition increasingly attempted to disrupt the Government.
In October-November 1975, Opposition senators refused to vote on the Government’s budget bills, demanding that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam call an election. On 11 November 1975 the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Prime Minister and his ministry, commissioning Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser to form a caretaker government pending an election.
Scholes presided over a rowdy sitting during which the new Prime Minister was defeated on several motions, including a no-confidence motion which also requested the Speaker to advise the Governor-General to recommission Whitlam to form a government. Scholes attempted to present the resolution of the House to the Governor-General but he was kept waiting until after the Governor-General had dissolved both Houses for an election.
The ALP was defeated in a landslide and Scholes only narrowly survived in Corio. In Opposition he held various shadow portfolios. With the election of the Hawke Government in 1983 he was appointed Minister for Defence and in 1984 he became Minister for Territories. He held this portfolio until July 1987, and was instrumental in securing self- government for the ACT and managing work on the new Parliament House.
In 1993 Scholes retired and was appointed an AO. He died in Geelong in 2018, survived by his wife and daughters. He was recalled as a Speaker who ‘held true to his duty’ and was ‘not diminished … nor embittered’ by the events of 1975.2
Brian James Dunlop
Realist painter Brian Dunlop (1938-2009) was born in Sydney to English immigrants and studied at the East Sydney Technical College. In 1958, while still studying, he won the Robert Le Gay Brereton Memorial Prize for drawing. During the early 1960s, Dunlop travelled to Europe and was inspired by the humanist values of the Renaissance artists. He returned to Sydney where he taught part-time at the National Art School whilst exhibiting in the major cities. Throughout the 1970s, he continued to regularly exhibit, winning Canberra’s Civic Permanent Art Award in 1976 and 1977, and the Sulman Prize in 1981. Following an artist residency at the University of Melbourne, Dunlop relocated to Tuscany where he studied the Renaissance artists and travelled to Rome, Greece, Morocco, Mallorca, and India. Throughout his career he painted over 90 portraits of various public figures, including a commissioned portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 1984. In his latter years, Dunlop lived and worked between Melbourne and Port Fairy on the south-west Victorian coast, the landscape being his principal inspiration. His works are held in private collections and numerous state and national collections.
3
Gordon Glen Denton Scholes
by Brian James Dunlop
1978
Oil on canvas
113.5 x 83 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from the following unless otherwise sourced: J Hocking, ‘Scholes, Gordon Glen (1931–2018)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021; G Souter, Acts of Parliament: A Narrative History of the Senate and House of Representatives Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne, 1988; G Sturgess, ‘Gordon Scholes interviewed by Garry Sturgess in the Old Parliament House political and parliamentary oral history project’, National Library of Australia, August 2010. Websites accessed 30 August 2021.
2. S Morrison, B Shorten, ‘Condolence Motion: Hon Gordon Scholes AO’, House of Representatives, Debates, 12 February 2019, pp. 35–36.
3. J Mendelssohn, ‘Brian Dunlop: b. 14 October 1940’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2015; ‘Brian Dunlop’, Australian Galleries; ‘Brian Dunlop 1938–2009’, National Portrait Gallery, 2018. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.