View full image
Speaker, 22 February 1950 to 19 March 1951; 12 June 1951 to 21 April 1954;
4 August 1954 to 4 November 1955;15 February 1956 to 9 August 1956
Australian Country Party, 1934 to 1940
United Australia Party, 1940 to 1944
Liberal Party of Australia, 1944 to 1951
Liberal Country League, 1951 to 1954
Liberal Party of Australia, 1954 to 1956
Archie Cameron (1895-1956), 12th Speaker of the House of Representatives, was a quick-tempered and eccentric character who attracted controversy through his combative approach to the Speakership.1
Cameron was born in Happy Valley, SA, the son of Scottish immigrants. He left school at the age of 12 and worked on his father’s farm. In 1916 he enlisted in the AIF and later fought on the Western Front. In 1919 he took up land at Noora, near Loxton, as a soldier settler and in 1925 married Margaret Walsh, an office worker, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
Cameron served on the Loxton District Council and in 1927 won the seat of Wooroora in the SA House of Assembly for the Country Party. He served as party leader from 1928 to 1932. In 1934 he resigned from the Assembly and won the federal seat of Barker, which he held until his death.
In 1937 Cameron was appointed an assistant minister in Joseph Lyons’s Government, and in 1938 became the first minister to be named and suspended from Parliament. Later that year he was appointed Postmaster-General. Cameron was a diligent and capable minister, although he could be difficult to work with.
In April 1939 Cameron returned to the back bench, as Menzies’s first ministry consisted only of UAP members. Following Page’s retirement as Country Party leader, Cameron was unexpectedly elected as his successor. When the coalition was restored in March 1940 he became Minister for Commerce and Minister for the Navy but in October of that year he lost the leadership. He immediately left the party and the ministry and sat with the UAP (from 1944 the Liberal Party).
With the election of the Liberal–Country Party Coalition in 1949, Cameron was elected Speaker in the new parliament. However, he was generally regarded as temperamentally unsuited to the position. He presided with an autocratic and combative style that saw him at odds with members on both sides. There were five successful motions of dissent against his rulings, none of which prompted his resignation. Cameron sought to maintain the independence of the Speaker and vigorously asserted his authority over the management of Parliament House.
In 1955 Cameron presided over the proceedings by the House against the newspaper proprietor Raymond Fitzpatrick and journalist Frank Browne over a serious breach of parliamentary privilege, which led to their imprisonment.
In 1955 Cameron suffered influenza attacks that affected his lungs and heart, already weakened by gas in World War I. He died of a heart attack in 1956, while still in office. His wife and son survived him.
Sir Ivor Henry Thomas Hele CBE
South Australian artist Ivor Hele (1912-1993) was known for his exceptional draughtsmanship and talent for portraiture and figure compositions. He studied art in Adelaide and later in Europe and began exhibiting during his teenage years. By 1939, he had become a regular exhibitor with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, highly regarded for his prize-winning portraits. In 1940, Hele enlisted in the Army and in 1941 was appointed as an official war artist. He would go on to become Australia’s longest serving and most prolific war artist, producing over 500 works. Although he also painted many landscapes, Hele was best known for his portraits, winning the SA Melrose Prize for Portraiture three times and the Archibald Prize five times, notably with his portrait of Prime Minister Robert Menzies. In 1969 he was made a CBE, and in 1982 was knighted for his services to art. Hele was a trustee to the board of what was then known as the National Gallery of SA 1956-69. His work is represented in all major Australian national, state and regional galleries.
2
Archie Galbraith Cameron
by Ivor Henry Thomas Hele
1952
Oil on canvas
106 x 91 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. E Riddler, ‘Smith, William Joshua (1905–1995)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2019; FWD Rost, ‘Joshua Smith b. 1905’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2011; ‘Smith, Joshua (William Joshua)’, 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. 895. Websites accessed 26 March 2021.
2. ‘Sir Ivor Henry Thomas Hele CBE (1912–1993)’, Virtual War Memorial Australia; ‘Ivor Hele 1912–1993‘, National Portrait Gallery, 2021; ‘Ivor Hele: the heroic figure’, Australian War Memorial; J Hylton, ‘Hele, Sir Ivor Henry (1912–1993)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2017; ‘Hele, (Sir) Ivor Henry Thomas’, 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. 509. Websites accessed 26 March 2021.