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Speaker, 27 February 1973 to 11 April 1974; 9 July 1974 to 27 February 1975
Australian Labor Party

James (Jim) Cope (1907-1999) was the 15th Speaker of the House of Representatives. The events which led to his abrupt resignation as Speaker, and his role in chairing the historic joint sitting of the Parliament in 1974, ensure that he occupies a significant place in Australia’s parliamentary history.¹

Born in Surry Hills, Sydney, Cope was the youngest of five sons. He left school at 14 when his family encountered financial difficulties, gaining employment as a messenger boy and then as a machinist at the Randwick tramway workshops. Like many, Cope endured significant hardship during the Great Depression, relying on government benefits and food coupons during a period of prolonged unemployment. His experience fundamentally shaped his political outlook.

In 1930, Cope joined the ALP, later becoming secretary of the Redfern Branch. He married Myrtle Hurst in 1932; they had one daughter. During World War II, he became a glassworker and served as federal treasurer of the Australian Glassworkers’ Union from 1952.

Cope entered Parliament in 1955, winning a by-election for the seat of Cook, which was abolished shortly thereafter. He then successfully contested the seat of Watson at the 1955 general election.

In Parliament, Cope earnt a reputation for his witty interjections which lowered the temperature during heated debates and endeared him to members on both sides of the House. From 1967 to 1972 he served as Deputy Chairman of Committees. When the seat of Watson was abolished in 1969, Cope transferred to the seat of Sydney.

Following Labor’s win in 1972, the House unanimously elected Cope as Speaker. In the Chair, he continued to employ humour to defuse tension. On moving a want of confidence motion in his Speakership, Opposition Leader Billy Snedden told the House that he could no longer have confidence in ‘a Speaker who seeks to be some sort of comedian’.²

After the double dissolution of the Parliament in 1974, Cope presided over the first and only joint sitting since Federation. This was also the first instance of the Parliament being televised live to a national audience.

On 27 February 1975, exactly two years into his Speakership, Cope resigned from the role in dramatic circumstances when the Government refused to support his actions in ‘naming’ Clyde Cameron, a senior minister in the Whitlam Government, for his conduct. Following the naming, an Opposition member moved for Cameron to be suspended from the House, a procedural action that would ordinarily be taken by a Government member. The Government used its numbers to defeat the motion. Cope announced his resignation immediately and asked the Deputy Speaker to take the Chair.

He did not recontest the December 1975 election. In retirement, he remained active in the Labor Party. He died in Sydney in 1999.

Judy Cassab AB CBE
Renowned portrait and landscape artist Judy Cassab (1920-2015) was born in Vienna to Jewish Hungarian parents. She started painting at a young age; however, her formal studies were cut short by the German Occupation. Immediately after the war, she resumed studying painting at the Budapest Academy until 1949. In 1951, after the trauma of losing her close family in the Holocaust, Cassab herself evaded persecution, migrating to Australia with her husband and their two sons. They settled in Sydney where she established herself as a portraitist. She painted many significant figures, including royalty and on the Archibald Prize for her portraits of Stanislaus Rapotec (1960) and Margo Lewers (1967), becoming the first woman to be awarded the prize twice. She held many solo exhibitions both in Australia and internationally. Cassab was made a CBE in 1969, and an AO in 1988. From 1980, she was a trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW and in 2011 was awarded Hungary’s Gold Cross of Merit. Her work is represented in all major national and state galleries across Australia as well as in public collections in Europe.³

James Francis Cope
by Judy Cassab
1973
Oil on board
113.5 x 85.2 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collections

References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from the following unless otherwise sourced: J Black, ‘Cope, James Francis (Jim) (1907–1999)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021, accessed 30 August 2021.
2. B Snedden, ‘Want of confidence motion’, House of Representatives, Debates, 8 April 1974, p. 1118.
3. ‘Artist profile: Judy Cassab’, Art Gallery of NSW; ‘Judy Cassab AO CBE’, National Portrait Gallery; ‘Award-Winning Artist and Holocaust Survivor Judy Cassab Dead at 95’, Artnet News; B Niall, Judy Cassab: An Australian Story, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2007; ‘Cassab, Judy’, A McCulloch, S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, eds, The New McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Aus Art Editions in association with The Miegunyah Press, 2006, p. 314. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.