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Speaker, 20 November 1940 to 21 June 1943
Nationalist Party, 1929 to 1931
United Australia Party, 1931 to 1943
Walter Nairn (1879-1958) was the 10th Speaker of the House.1 By remaining as Speaker after his party lost government, he held an anomalous position, and he became the first Speaker to resign mid-term.
Born at Alberton, Victoria, Nairn was one of four children of Scottish-born farmer William and his Victorian-born wife Margaret. After his father’s death in 1890, Nairn won a scholarship to South Melbourne College where he matriculated in 1894. In 1896, he followed his brother to WA, where he found employment first as a proofreader and journalist and then as a law clerk. Following the death of his first wife, Philomena Boladeras, after just two years of marriage, he married Mary Josephine Bertram in 1905 in Victoria. They lost their first child but later had a son and a daughter.
With his brother, William, Nairn became active in politics, becoming the founding secretary and treasurer of the WA Protectionist League in 1907. In 1909, the same year that he was admitted to the Bar, he won a seat on the North Perth municipal council. He resigned mid-term to contest the 1911 Legislative Assembly election but was unsuccessful.
For the next 18 years Nairn pursued a career in law, setting up his own firm in 1921. He remained active in the Protectionist (later Liberal) League and in 1929 was persuaded to stand for the federal seat of Perth for the Nationalist Party. He held the seat for four subsequent elections.
A conscientious parliamentarian, Nairn was attentive to matters relating to WA, particularly tariff issues. In 1940, he was elected unopposed to the Speakership. He coped well with the challenges of presiding over the House at a time when numbers were finely balanced. When Labor assumed control of the House in 1941, it welcomed Nairn remaining as Speaker, as the new Curtin Government lacked a parliamentary majority in its own right. His own party provided its blessing, recognising the need for stability during wartime.
He faced controversy in 1942, first when he followed the lead of the President of the Senate and banned staff from certain newspapers from the House because of an article considered to have ridiculed senators, and again when an article he himself wrote for The Nationalist (published under his name and title as Speaker) attracted criticism for its party-political nature. However, Nairn continued to serve as Speaker until June 1943, when, in ‘somewhat contentious’ circumstances,2 he resigned to bolster the Opposition’s numbers ahead of a no-confidence motion to be moved against the Curtin Government.
Nairn contested the following election in August 1943 but was defeated by the Labor candidate. He resumed legal practice, which he continued up until his death in 1958 in Perth.
William Nicholas Rowell
Artist and stage designer William Rowell (1898-1946) was born in Carlton, Melbourne, where he spent the first 10 years of his childhood before moving to regional Victoria with his family. Inspired by his older brother John and his artist friends, Rowell developed his artistic sensibility attending the Working Men’s College and the National Gallery of Victoria Art School where he was taught briefly by Max Meldrum. Rowell excelled at the School winning a prize for landscape painting, followed by a successful solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1920. He continued his work painting theatre scenery in the decade following whilst regularly exhibiting his landscapes. By the 1930s, Rowell had begun painting portraits. In 1936 he returned to the Athenaeum Gallery exhibiting portraits of, among others, artist friends William Beckwith McInnes and Louis McCubbin. He was later awarded the SA Melrose Prize for Portraiture, and the George Crouch Prize for contemporary painting in 1939 and 1942. Rowell was a foundation member of the Australian Academy of Art. His work is represented in state and regional galleries across Australia.
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Walter Maxwell Nairn
by William Nicholas Rowell
c. 1942
Oil on canvas
84.8 x 67 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection
References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from the following unless otherwise sourced: L Layman, ‘Nairn, Walter Maxwell (1905–1958)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2021; GS Reid and M Forrest, Australia’s Commonwealth Parliament 1901– 1988: Ten Perspectives, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 39–40; G Souter, Acts of Parliament: A narrative history of the Senate and House of Representatives, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 341–42; ‘The Speakership Travesty’, The Canberra Times, 22 June 1943, p. 2. Websites accessed 30 August 2021.
2. W Nairn, ‘Mr. Speaker: Resignation of the Honorable W.M. Nairn – Election of Mr. J.S. Rosevear’, House of Representatives,
Debates, 22 June 1943, p. 6.
3. A Mackenzie, ‘Rowell, William Nicholas (Will) (1898–1946)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed 15 April 2021; ‘Rowell, William Nicholas’, 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. 845.