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Speaker, 17 February 1976 to 10 November 1977; 21 February 1978 to 19 September 1980; 25 November 1980 to 4 February 1983
Liberal Party of Australia
Determined to improve the functionality of Parliament,1 Billy Snedden (1926-1987) vowed ‘to protect the dignity, the decorum and the authority of the House’ upon his nomination as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives.2
Born in Perth, WA, Snedden was the youngest of six surviving children. Deserted by his father at a young age, he left school early to work as a law clerk and studied at night for his Junior and Leaving certificates. After a short stint in the RAAF in 1945, Snedden began studying law that year under the post-war rehabilitation scheme while he worked for the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s Office. He also operated a morning newspaper delivery run and delivered groceries in the afternoons.
Snedden unsuccessfully stood in a by-election for the state seat of Boulder in 1948 and in two federal elections, for the seats of Fremantle (1949) and Perth (1951). He completed his degree in 1950 and married Joy Forsyth that same year. They had four children. After working for the Department of Immigration, in 1955 Snedden moved to Victoria, where he practised law. He won the seat of Bruce in the federal election later that year and continued to practise law while serving as a member.
Snedden held several high-profile ministries and was Leader of the Opposition from 1972 to 1975. He boasted he was known as ‘Gagging Billy’ for moving 28 closure motions in a single day while Leader of the House,3 and he took the skills he honed in this role to his Speakership in 1976. As Speaker, Snedden implemented numerous reforms. During his service, he introduced the practice of the Speaker’s procession and abstaining from general party meetings. His encouragement led to the publication of the first edition of House of Representatives Practice and he helped create a separate appropriation act for parliamentary departments. He was knighted in 1977.
During his career, Snedden was instrumental in the funding and design of the new Parliament House and in his retirement referred to the construction as ‘his product’.4 Sadly, he never saw the completed building, dying suddenly of heart disease in 1987. The ‘Parliament’s champion’5 was widely acknowledged as having done much to enhance the profile of the office and to improve procedural efficiency.
June Yvonne Mendoza AO OBE
Australian portraitist and member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, June Mendoza (b.1927) was born into a family of musicians in Melbourne. She toured with her mother, a pianist, from an early age performing small non-speaking parts and in crowd scenes for various musical productions. Inspired by her experiences on stage, she began to sketch the world around her, further honing her skills with life-drawing classes throughout her teenage years. With academic portraiture her chosen genre, Mendoza forged a path as one of Australia’s pre-eminent portraitists, undertaking commissions of many notable figures across diverse fields including portraits of Her Majesty The Queen, other Royal Family members, foreign dignitaries, and personalities across the arts, music and business world. As well as portraits of leading Australian political figures, including that of Prime Minister John Gorton, Mendoza was commissioned by the Historic Memorials Committee to capture a group portrait of the House of Representatives to commemorate their first sitting in the new Parliament House in 1988.6
Billy Mackie Snedden
by June Yvonne Mendoza
1984
Oil on canvas
100.4 x 75.5 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from the following unless otherwise sourced: K Walsh and B Schedvin, ‘Snedden, Sir Billy Mackie (1926–1987)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021; ‘Sir Billy had few enemies, though not a lot of natural allies’, The Canberra Times, 28 June 1987, p. 2; BM Snedden and MB Schedvin, eds, Billy Snedden: An Unlikely Liberal, South Melbourne, Macmillan, 1990. Websites accessed 30 August 2021.
2. BM Snedden, ‘Mr. Speaker: Election’, House of Representatives, Debates, 17 February 1976, p. 10.
3. B Schedvin, ‘Billy Snedden interviewed by Bernadette Schedvin in the Parliament’s Oral History Project’, 1983–87, National Library of Australia, accessed 28 July 2021.
4. Snedden and Schedvin, op. cit., p. 228.
5. 63 Ibid., p. 252.
6. ‘June Mendoza: b. 1924’, National Portrait Gallery; ‘June Mendoza: Portrait Artist’. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.