Scotch College

Scotch's Old Boy Prime Minister

Just over 100 years ago – on 18 August 1904 – an Old Scotch Collegian became prime minister of Australia.

George Reid had attended Scotch from 1854 to 1858, and had been welcome at Old Boy dinners while still only ‘that obscure and much abused person, the Leader of the Opposition’ (Collegian, 1904, page 95). Indeed, he was leader of the opposition for six of the first seven years of the Australian parliament.

As this country’s fourth prime minister, he held office for slightly less than a year – until 5 July 1905.

Reid’s career had been as a lawyer (he was a prosperous barrister and a brilliant cross-examiner) and as a politician in New South Wales, where his boisterous wit rebuffed hecklers and harried his opponents. When he first took office in 1882, he declined the Treasury portfolio and took Education, establishing the colony’s first high schools and the beginnings of a system of technical education.

Before federation he was premier of New South Wales, where he created a non-political civil service and introduced a land tax to break up large estates. Although ambiguous about federation (he was pilloried as ‘Yes-No Reid’), in the end he breathed new life into the federation movement, ensuring that our constitution was drawn up by a convention that was elected rather than appointed. ‘This made Federation both possible and genuine, founding it on the acknowledged need of the ordinary man, not on the compromises of politicians’, says his entry in the Australian Encyclopedia (vii, 402).

He lost office in NSW in 1899, and it is said that this deprived him of being our first prime minster, since that office went to the premier of the senior state.

‘In middle and later life Reid’s almost ludicrously obese figure, droopy moustache, eye-glass, wisp of sandy hair, and habit of dozing in public made him a cartoonist’s delight’, W. G. McMinn wrote in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (xi, 353).

When he eventually did become prime minister he stood for free trade, in contrast to the protectionist mood from Victoria. With a majority of only one, and no majority in the Senate, his government’s legislative record is slim, though it succeeded in passing the conciliation and arbitration bill.

In 1909 Sir George became the first Australian high commissioner to London. He bought the site of Australia House and arranged for its building. He rose through ever higher levels of knighthood (KCMG, GCMG and GCB) between 1909 and 1916.

In 1916, he was elected unopposed to the House of Commons, thereby becoming the only Australian to serve in all three legislatures – colonial, federal, and British.

In 1917, Reid’s wife, Dame Florence Reid, was among the first four women to become a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.

Far from taking pride in Sir George Reid, Scotch has forgotten him utterly. In May 1981 Great Scot assured its readers that ‘Scotch cannot yet lay claim to an Australian Prime Minister’.

We now take great pleasure in correcting this.

The alert reader, however, will have noticed that little has been said above about Sir George’s time as prime minister. In truth, it was brief and his significance is not in the first rank of Australian prime ministers. His achievement, rather, was as a champion of reform in New South Wales, as a Father of Federation, and as a parliamentarian of unique breadth.

DR JIM MITCHELL
Co-Archivist

Cartoons reproduced by permission of the National Library of Australia