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Speaker, 30 April 1996 to 3 March 1998
Liberal Party of Australia
Robert (Bob) Halverson (1937-2016), 22nd Speaker of the House of Representatives, came to the role after his party had been in opposition for a long period. He was noted for his attempts to make the Speakership a more independent office.1
Halverson was born in Springvale, Victoria, the eldest child of an electrician and his wife. At Footscray Technical College he became a cadet in the RAAF Air Training Corps. When he left school to begin an apprenticeship as an industrial chemist, he remained active in the Air Training Corps and in 1956 he joined the RAAF. The following year he was selected to attend the Army’s Officer Cadet School at Portsea, Victoria. In 1958 he married Margaret (Maggie) Charlton, with whom he had four children.
In 1978 Halverson was awarded an OBE for his work on exchange with the RAF. He retired from the Air Force as a Group Captain in 1981 and began working as a stockbroker and financial planner. He joined the Liberal Party and was a delegate to its State Council in 1983–84. At the December 1984 federal election he narrowly won the seat of Casey, in Melbourne’s expanding eastern suburbs, from the Labor Party.
As a back bencher, Halverson undertook extensive committee work, including with the Public Works Committee and the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, where he drew on his overseas experience with the RAAF and RAF. In April 1990 he became Opposition Whip and in 1994 was appointed Chief Opposition Whip.
After the Coalition victory at the 1996 election, Halverson successfully contested the Liberal Party ballot for Speaker. He promised that he would be an independent Speaker and undertook not to attend party meetings. He was elected Speaker unopposed in the House.
Halverson followed Liberal Party precedent by wearing the traditional gown but was the first non-Labor Speaker not to wear a wig. In line with his commitment to a more independent Speakership he allowed supplementary questions in Question Time and intervened when ministers’ replies to questions became unnecessarily long or digressive. However, the Government became increasingly unhappy with his approach. In March 1998 he announced his resignation as Speaker.
Halverson returned to the back bench and in August 1998 the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, announced his appointment as ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See. In 2003 he returned to Australia and bought a small beef cattle farm in southern NSW. He died in 2016, survived by his wife, daughter and three sons.
Robert Lyall Hannaford AM
South Australian-born painter, sculptor and conservationist Robert Hannaford (b.1944) grew up on his family farm before moving to Adelaide in his teens to complete his education. He worked as a political cartoonist for The Advertiser from 1964 to 1967. Though largely self-taught, Hannaford’s passion for painting was encouraged by Australian artists and mentors, Sir Hans Heysen and Ivor Hele. In 1967 and 1968, Hannaford attended the Ballarat Technical Art School, under the control of the School of Mines, and from 1969 to 1973 was the winner of the AME Bale Travelling Scholarship and Art Prize. Hannaford has been at the forefront of contemporary Australian portraiture, winning the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 1990, the Viewer Prize in 1991 and 1998, and was a frequent finalist in the Archibald Prize. He also painted the Prime Minister Paul Keating for the HMC. In 2001, he was commissioned to paint the centenary sitting of the Australian Parliament. Hannaford was made an AM in 2014 for his service to the arts.2
Robert George Halverson
by Robert Lyall Hannaford
1998
Oil on canvas
120.8 x 97.7 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from J Brett, ‘Halverson, Robert George (Bob) (1937–2016)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021, accessed 30 August 2021.
2. ‘Robert Hannaford’, High Court of Australia; ‘Robert Hannaford: artist statement’; ‘Robert Hannaford: b. 1904’, National Portrait Gallery, 2018; ‘Hannaford, Robert’, 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. 496. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.