Alexander Colquhoun (1862-1941), Richard Chaffey Baker (detail), 1914, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection. View full image
President 9 May 1901 to 31 December 1906
Free Trade Party
One of the founding fathers of Federation and the first President of the Australian Senate, Richard Chaffey Baker (1841-1911) considered the Senate ‘the pivot on which the whole Federal Constitution revolves’.1 The eldest of 12, Baker was born in Adelaide and educated at Eton and Trinity College in Cambridge, UK. His father, John Baker,2 was a member of the Legislative Council and was briefly the second Premier of SA.3
Admitted as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in London in 1864, Baker returned to SA soon after and established a legal practice. The following year he married Katherine Colley, with whom he had three children. In 1868 he followed his father into politics, firstly as a member of the SA House of Assembly (1868-71) and then in the Legislative Council (1877-1901), where he was elected President in 1893. He was knighted two years later.
An ardent federalist who wrote several pamphlets on the subject, Baker was a delegate to the federal conventions of the 1890s tasked with drafting the Australian Constitution. Keen for the Senate to serve as ‘the sheet anchor’ of the smaller states, Baker advocated for a powerful Senate with equal law-making power to the House of Representatives.4
Joining the Free Trade Party, Baker became a senator for SA at the first federal election in 1901 and was elected President of the Senate when federal Parliament first sat. Baker played a key role in developing the Senate’s standing orders, determining they should not merely mimic those of the UK House of Commons but instead promote the Senate’s procedural independence. After using the standing orders of the SA House of Assembly in the interim, in 1903 the Senate adopted new standing orders drafted by the Standing Orders Committee under Baker’s leadership.5
Believing that the Senate should develop rules and practices ‘suited to our own conditions’6 Baker devised a way to build a body of precedent in the Senate. In situations not covered by existing standing orders, the President would make rulings on the best procedure to adopt. In doing so, Baker established a procedural framework for the Senate which allowed for flexibility and maintained the Senate’s independence. This practice continues today.7
In addition to his political and legal careers, Baker was a successful pastoralist, holding directorships in several agricultural and mining companies. He exited politics for health reasons at the end of his term in 1906 and retired to his property, ‘Morialta’, where he remained until his death in 1911.
Alexander Colquhoun
Artist and critic Alexander Colquhoun (1862-1941) was born in Glasgow and migrated with his family to Australia in 1876. Soon after, Colquhoun enrolled in painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School befriending artist John Longstaff, with whom he forged a lifelong friendship. By 1887 Colquhoun had qualified as a teacher of drawing and was exhibiting at the Australian Artists’ Association and at the Victorian Artists’ Society. Known for his evocative landscapes and interiors in impressionist technique, Colquhoun’s portraits are similarly characterised by their use of natural light. A passionate educator, Colquhoun taught art privately and at the Working Men’s College and held a long-term position at Toorak College until 1930. He exhibited at various galleries and societies including the Victorian Artists’ Society, where he was secretary from 1904 to 1914. He was a foundation member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society in 1918 and the Australian Academy of Art in 1937. Colquhoun also wrote and illustrated for publications such as Art in Australia and was art critic for the Melbourne Herald from 1914 to 1922 and The Age from 1926 until his death in 1941.8
Richard Chaffey Baker
by Alexander Colquhoun
1914
Oil on canvas
227.7 x 135.5 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. R Baker, ‘Commonwealth of Australia Bill’, 17 March 1898, in Australasian Federal Convention, ‘Official record of the debates of the Australasian Federal Convention, third session, Melbourne, 20th January to 17th March, 1898’, RS Brain, Government Printer, Melbourne 1898, vol. 2, p. 2483, accessed 22 August 2021.
2. ‘Baker, John (1813–1872)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed 2 August 2021.
3. Unless otherwise noted, information sourced from M Kerley, ‘Baker, Sir Richard Chaffey (1841–1911)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate Online Edition, Department of the Senate, Parliament of Australia, published first in hardcopy 2000; Parliamentary Library, ‘Baker, the Hon. Sir Richard Chaffey, KCMG, KC’, Parliamentary Handbook Online. Websites accessed 31 July 2021.
4. M McKenna, ‘Sir Richard Chaffey Baker–the Senate’s First Republican’, Papers on Parliament no: 30, November 1997, pp. 56–57, accessed 28 July 2021.
5. Department of the Senate, ‘Standing Orders Committee’, Navigate Senate Committees, accessed 28 July 2021.
6. RC Baker, ‘Remarks and Suggestions on the Standing Orders’, Tabled Paper 207, 9 March 1904, p. 1.
7. R Laing, ‘Richard Chaffey Baker and the Shaping of the Senate’, Papers on Parliament 70, December 2019, pp. 16, 19. See also R Laing, ed, ‘Annotated Standing Orders of the Australian Senate’, Department of the Senate, Canberra, 2009, pp. 4–8. Websites accessed 22 August 2021.
8. J Phipps, ‘Colquhoun, Alexander (1862–1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed 16 April 2021.