George Washington Thomas Lambert (1873-1930), George Houstoun Reid (detail), 1912-1913, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection. View full image

Leader of the Opposition, 10 May 1901 to 18 August 1904; 7 July 1905 to 16 November 1908
Free Trade Party, 1901 to 1906; Anti-Socialist Party 1906 to 1909

When Edmund Barton¹  accepted Lord Hopetoun’s²  invitation to form government, George Reid (1845-1918) – as de facto leader of the Free Traders – assumed the role of the Leader of the Opposition.³

Lacking any substantive budget, staff or party administration and facing Barton’s imposing ministry, he was at a ‘distinct disadvantage’ in the first election campaign, lamenting:
'The prestige attaching to such an able collection of Ministerial talent was enhanced by a general desire to give the first Ministry of Australia a fair trial. As a Ministry, it had no past and a flying start.' ⁴

With Barton returned and governing with Labor support, Reid, as acknowledged Opposition Leader ⁵, declared:

Under our present form of Parliamentary Government there must be an Opposition, and … [it] has a high and important duty to perform. It has the duty of watching vigilantly and criticising freely the doings of the Executive Government … Our object should be, when Bills framed on sound principles are introduced, to help the Government as far as we can to make them as perfect as they can be made, and to reserve our opposition for matters of a serious character. ⁶

While Parliament recognised the role of Opposition Leader, Reid enjoyed none of the supports of office (salary and staff) available to his latter-day counterparts. His Sydney legal practice supplemented his parliamentary allowance but severely limited his parliamentary attendance⁷, leading Chris Watson to observe:

I have always held the opinion that unless … we are prepared to make some reasonable recompense to men of high character and ability to take up positions of this sort, we cannot expect any large number of such persons to accept them … [A]re we justified in placing the whole future, so far as the business of the country is concerned, in the hands of one class – those who can afford to give their time practically for nothing to the service of the State.
… [T]he leader of the Opposition gets nothing while he is in Opposition beyond his allowance, and when he becomes leader of a Government some honorable members want to tie him down to a sum that will only about keep him. I think that is a mistaken view.⁸

Reid spent almost all of his federal parliamentary career as Leader of the Opposition. He retired from the Parliament in 1909 to become Australia’s first High Commissioner to the UK, where he lived for the remainder of his life, becoming a member of the UK House of Commons in 1916.

With frugality the prevailing sentiment of the early parliaments, it was not until the Parliamentary Allowances Act 1920 that specific allowances were paid to the Leader of the Opposition in the House (£400) and Senate (£200) in addition to the basic allowance received by all parliamentarians.⁹

George Washington Thomas Lambert
Portraitist and sculptor George Lambert (1873-1930) was born in Russia and migrated to Australia in 1887. He worked as a clerk before beginning to paint and attending art classes conducted by Julian Ashton at the Art Society of NSW. After winning a scholarship to study in Paris, he worked in London as an illustrator and taught at the London School of Art. Appointed an official war artist in 1917 with the honorary rank of lieutenant, Lambert completed various commissions on his travels through Egypt, Turkey and Palestine, recording events precious to the history of the nation. He returned to Australia in 1921 and dominated the art scene through the 1920s. His portrait of Mrs Murdoch won the Archibald Prize in 1927. Since his death, his work has been included in many landmark exhibitions about Australian art. In addition to most state and regional galleries, a large collection of his work is held at the Art Gallery of NSW.¹⁰

Although Lambert’s portrait of Reid was accepted by the CAAB’s London representative, the Board judged it ‘particularly unsatisfactory, and a caricature’.¹¹ The HMC Committee subsequently  purchased a more traditionally styled portrait of Reid by John Longstaff, though the Lambert portrait hung for a time in Queen’s Hall at the Melbourne Parliament building.¹² Reid’s own opinion of the portrait was ‘absolutely opposed to that of the Committee’, and he expressed his ‘entire satisfaction with it’.¹³ The Committee’s decision was criticised in the British press as a ‘grotesque manner in  which to treat an artist’.¹⁴

George Reid
by George Lambert
1913-1914
275.5 x 183.5 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection.

References
1. M Rutledge, 'Barton, Sir Edmund (Toby) (1849–1920)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, , published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 30 June 2022.
2. C Cunneen, 'Hopetoun, seventh Earl of (1860–1908)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 30 June 2022.
3. ‘Australia’s Prime Ministers: George Reid’, Museum of Australian Democracy; ‘Prime Ministers of Australia: George Reid’, National Museum of Australia; WG McMinn, ‘Reid, Sir George Houstoun (1845–1918)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1988; N Church, ‘Sir George Houstoun Reid (1845–1918): Premier, Prime Minister, High Commissioner, and Member of the UK House of  Commons’, FlagPost blog, Parliamentary Library, September 2018; D Heriot, ‘Australia’s first Parliament: His Majesty’s loyal Opposition’, FlagPost blog, Parliamentary Library, February 2019; W McMinn, George Reid, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1989; D Headon, George Houstoun Reid (1845–1918): Forgotten Founder, Parliamentary Library, 2020; G Reid, My Reminiscences, Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1917. See also ‘George Houstoun Reid’ in Historic Memorials Collection Portraits: Prime Ministers, Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia, Canberra, 2021. Websites accessed 12 May 2021.
4. Reid, op. cit., pp. 199–200.
5. See W Groom, ‘Governor-General’s Speech: Address in Reply’, House of Representatives, Debates, 21 May 1901, p. 77.
6. G Reid, ‘Governor-General’s Speech: Address in Reply’, House of Representatives, Debates, 21 May 1901, p. 105.
7. L Crisp, George Houstoun Reid: federation father, federal failure?, Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences, Canberra, 1979, p. 56.
8. J Watson, ‘Emoluments of Ministers’, House of Representatives, Debates, 20 June 1901, p. 1377–78; B Nairn, ‘Watson, John Christian (Chris) (1867–1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed 4 August 2021.
9. Parliamentary Allowances Act 1920.
10. Information in this biography has been taken from the following: M Terry, ‘Lambert, George Washington (1873–1930)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983; ‘George Washington Lambert 1873–1930’, Carrick Hill; ‘George W Lambert: Retrospective: heroes and icons’, National Gallery of Australia. Websites accessed 26 March 2021. ‘Lambert, George Washington’, 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. 591–93.
11. ‘Sir George Reid’, The Argus, 29 January 1915, p. 6, accessed 21 October 2021.
12. ‘Portrait Gallery’, The Telegraph, 5 January 1914, p. 5, accessed 21 Oct 2021.
13. G Reid to the Secretary, ‘Historic Memorials Committee’, 5 February 1915, NAA A2910, 412/5/3, Part 1, p. 16, accessed 21 October 2021.
14.‘A Sir George Reid “Caricature”’, The Register, 30 January 1915, p. 8, accessed 21 October 2021.