Norman St Clair Carter (1875-1963), Walter Kingsmill (detail), 1941, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection. View full image

President, 14 August 1929 to 30 August 1932
Nationalist Party

Born in Glenelg, SA, Walter Kingsmill (1864-1935) attended St Peter’s College and the University of Adelaide, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. Before entering politics he worked as a prospector in SA, and a mine manager and registrar in WA.¹

Elected to the WA Legislative Assembly (1897-1903), Kingsmill served as Opposition Whip (1899) and held several ministerial positions, becoming acting Premier following the death of Premier George Leake in 1902. Resigning from the Assembly, he was elected to the Legislative Council (1903-06), where he became Leader of the Government (1903-04). Following an unsuccessful bid for election to the Senate in 1910, Kingsmill was re-elected to the Legislative Council (1910-22). In the Council, he served as Chair of Committees (1906-19) and then President (1919-22) and on 32 select committees.²

In 1922, Kingsmill stood successfully for the Senate as a member of the Nationalist Party. In both state and federal parliaments, he advocated for improvements in infrastructure and took an interest in trade and the environment.³ He had developed the latter interest as acting director of the Perth Zoological Gardens (1916-17) and President of its board (1916-22).⁴

Elected President of the Senate in 1929, Kingsmill was strict in maintaining standing orders and keen to ensure decorum in the chamber. He discouraged the reading of parliamentary speeches and prohibited the use of certain phrases and terms in debate, such as ‘dirty lies’, ‘humbug’ and ‘rot’.⁵ He also ruled that senators may not display items on their desks which are objectionable to other senators.⁶ During his time as President the only two formal conferences between the Houses in the history of the Parliament were held, in 1930 and 1931, to resolve disagreements over two separate Bills, presenting novel procedural matters for the Presiding Officers and Clerks to navigate.⁷

In 1932, Kingsmill narrowly lost his party’s support for the presidency. He then failed to gain preselection for the 1934 election.⁸ An ardent federalist, he opposed the growing secession movement in WA, a factor which may have contributed to the party’s decision to drop him from the Senate ticket.⁹

Knighted in 1933, Kingsmill died in Sydney in 1935 before the expiry of his Senate term. He was survived by his wife Mary.¹⁰ Remembering Kingsmill as ‘one of nature’s gentlemen’, Senator George Pearce said that as President, Kingsmill ‘set an extremely high standard as to the manner in which the duties of that high office should be performed’.¹¹

Norman St Clair Carter
Celebrated portrait, mural and stained-glass artist, Norman St Clair Carter (1875-1963) was born in Kew, Melbourne. Apprenticed to a stained-glass maker (1890–94), Carter also attended evening art classes with artists Frederick McCubbin, Bernard Hall and E Phillips Fox at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. In 1903, he moved to Sydney where he worked as an instructor for the Royal Art Society of NSW and as a freelance commercial artist, contributing to the Bulletin and the Sydney Mail. Carter later lectured at Sydney Technical College and taught drawing at the architecture department of the University of Sydney until the late 1940s. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Carter never travelled overseas. However, his portrait of Florence Rodway won a bronze medal at the 1913 Salon de la Société Artistes Français (Paris), and was later hung at the Royal Academy of Arts (London). A fashionable portraitist, he received many commissions and participated several times in the annual Archibald Prize. His work is represented in state and regional galleries across Australia.¹²

Walter Kingsmilll
by Norman St Clair Carter
1941
Oil on canvas
90 x 75 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection

References
1. Unless otherwise noted, information is sourced from HCJ Phillips, ‘Kingsmill, Sir Walter (1864–1935)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate Online Edition, Department of the Senate, Parliament of Australia, published first in hardcopy 2004; GC Bolton, ‘Kingsmill, Sir Walter (1864–1935)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983; Parliamentary Library, ‘Kingsmill, the Hon. Sir Walter, Kt’, Parliamentary Handbook Online. Websites accessed 7 June 2021.
2. Ibid.
3. Phillips, op. cit.; E Johnston, ‘Death of Senator the Hon. Sir Walter Kingsmill’, Senate, Debates, 27 March 1935, p. 312.
4. Ibid.
5. See, for example, W Kingsmill, ‘Northern Territory (Administration) Bill’, Senate, Debates, 11 December 1930, p. 1315; W Kingsmill, ‘Labour and returned soldiers’, Senate, Debates, 2 May 1930, p. 1394.
6. Phillips, op. cit.; W Kingsmill, ‘Desks of honorable senators’, Senate, Debates, 24 May 1932, p. 1231.
7. The Bills were the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Bill 1930 and the Northern Territory (Administration) Bill 1931. See R Laing, ed, Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, 14th edn, Department of the Senate, Canberra, 2016, pp. 713–14, accessed 22 August 2021.
8. ‘Sir Walter Kingsmill: Eliminated from Senate candidature’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 July 1934, p. 12, accessed 7 June 2021; Phillips, op. cit.
9. Ibid.; Bolton, op. cit.
10. Phillips, op. cit.
11. G Pearce, ‘Death of Senator the Hon. Sir Walter Kingsmill’, Senate, Debates, 27 March 1935, p. 311.
12. F Lindsay, ‘Carter, Norman St Clair (1875–1963)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1979; K Robertson, ‘Norman St Clair Carter b. 30 June 1875’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2011. Websites accessed 16 March 2021.