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Speaker, 29 August 1956 to 14 October 1958; 17 February 1959 to 2 November 1961;
20 February 1962 to 1 November 1963; 25 February 1964 to 31 October 1966
Liberal Party of Australia, 1949 to 1951
Liberal and Country League, 1951 to 1954
Liberal Party of Australia, 1954 to 1966
John (Jack) McLeay (1893-1982), the 13th and longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, was a well-liked and greatly respected Speaker, known for his easy manner, decency and fairness.1
He was born in Port Clinton, SA, the second of six children of Australian-born farmers. He left school at 14 and took his first job as a grocer’s boy, subsequently becoming a commercial traveller.
In 1915 McLeay enlisted in the AIF and served in medical units. He was awarded the MM for his initiative in clearing casualties while under heavy fire near Villers-Bretonneux, France. After discharge he joined his brother George in McLeay Bros, an accountancy and general agents firm in Adelaide, which later became a prominent furnishing business. In 1921 he married Eileen Elden, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
In 1922 McLeay unsuccessfully contested the federal seat of Adelaide. In 1925 he was elected to the Unley City Council and was mayor from 1935 to 1937. He won the state seat of Unley in 1938 as an Independent but was defeated in 1941. From 1940 to 1950 he was an alderman and then Lord Mayor of Adelaide.
In 1949 McLeay won the federal seat of Boothby and held the seat for nearly 17 years. His brother George became a senator, serving as a minister in the Lyons, Page, Fadden and Menzies governments. In 1955 John McLeay was Chair of the Privileges Committee during the Fitzpatrick–Browne case, which led to the imprisonment of Bankstown Observer proprietor Raymond Fitzpatrick, and journalist Frank Browne.
On 9 August 1956, Speaker Archie Cameron died and McLeay was subsequently chosen by the government parties for the vacant Speakership. The Opposition proposed an alternative candidate but did not challenge McLeay’s nomination on the three succeeding occasions that he was elected Speaker.
McLeay quickly established himself as an effective and popular Speaker. He cultivated friendly personal relations and drew on his sense of sportsmanship in giving all members a ‘fair go’. He interpreted the standing orders pragmatically and his success was ultimately based on what Prime Minister Menzies described as his ‘uniform good temper’2 and Opposition Leader Evatt as his ‘spirit of fairness and tolerance’.3
McLeay was knighted in 1962 for service to Parliament and country. He retired from Parliament in 1966, after 10 years and two months as Speaker. He resumed his involvement in running McLeay Bros and in community organisations in Adelaide. He died in 1982, survived by his two sons and his daughter. His elder son, John, succeeded him as Member for Boothby, becoming a minister in the Fraser Government.
Jack Carington Smith
Artist and teacher Jack Carington Smith (1908-1972) was born in Launceston, Tasmania. At age 15, his watercolour works were accepted by the Launceston Art Society, buoying his dream to become an artist. He moved to Sydney, attending night classes at the East Sydney Technical College while working as a commercial artist. By the 1930s, Carington Smith had achieved professional recognition, winning the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1936 which enabled him to study at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Influenced by the work of his British contemporaries, he returned to Sydney in 1939 and held his first solo exhibition. The following year, Carington Smith accepted a teaching position at the Hobart Technical College (now the School of Art, University of Tasmania) where he worked until his retirement in 1970. He won many awards with his portraits, including the Archibald Prize in 1963 for his portrait of James McAuley, the Lloyd Jones Memorial Prize for portraiture in 1969, and the Sir Warwick Fairfax Prize in 1971. He was also a prolific painter of landscape and still-life. His work is represented in most state galleries across Australia.4
John McLeay
by Jack Carington Smith
1957
Oil on canvas
95 x 75 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collections
References
1.Information in this biography has been taken from the following: LM Barlin, ‘McLeay, Sir John (Jack) (1893–1982)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021, accessed 30 August 2021; G Souter, Acts of Parliament: A Narrative History of the Senate and House of Representatives Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988.
2. R Menzies, ‘Mr. Speaker’, House of Representatives, Debates, 12 November 1964, p. 2865.
3. HV Evatt, ‘Mr. Speaker: Election’, House of Representatives, Debates, 17 February 1959, p. 8.
4. L Broughton, ‘Carington Smith, Jack (1908–1972)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1993, accessed 15 April 2021; ‘Carington Smith, Jack’, 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. 310.