Archie Cameron

The Honourable Archie Cameron
Cameron as Speaker of the House
12th Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives
In office 22 February 1950 – 9 August 1956
Preceded by	Sol Rosevear
Succeeded by	Sir John McLeay
Leader of the Country Party
In office 13 September 1939 – 16 October 1940
Deputy	Harold Thorby Arthur Fadden
Preceded by	Earle Page
Succeeded by	Arthur Fadden
Minister for Commerce
In office 14 March 1940 – 28 October 1940
Prime Minister	Robert Menzies
Preceded by	Sir Earle Page
Succeeded by	George McLeay
Minister for Navy
In office 14 March 1940 – 28 October 1940
Prime Minister	Robert Menzies
Preceded by	Frederick Stewart
Succeeded by	Billy Hughes
Postmaster-General
In office 7 November 1938 – 26 April 1939
Prime Minister	Joseph Lyons Earle Page
Preceded by	Alexander McLachlan
Succeeded by	Eric Harrison
Member of the Australian Parliament for Barker
In office 15 September 1934 – 9 August 1956
Preceded by	Malcolm Cameron
Succeeded by	Jim Forbes
Leader of the South Australian Country Party
In office 1928 – 9 June 1932
Preceded by	Malcolm McIntosh
Succeeded by	party abolished
Member of the South Australian Parliament for Wooroora
In office 26 March 1927 – 7 August 1934
Preceded by	Allan Robertson
Succeeded by	Albert Robertson
Personal details
Born	(1895-03-22)22 March 1895 Happy Valley, South Australia, Australia
Died	9 August 1956(1956-08-09) (aged 61) Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Political party	Country (federal, 1927–40) Country (state, until 1932) LCL (state, 1932–1934) UAP (1940–44) Liberal (1944–56)
Spouse	Margaret Walsh ​ (m. 1925)​
Occupation	Farmer

Archie Galbraith Cameron (22 March 1895 – 9 August 1956) was an Australian politician. He was a government minister under Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies, leader of the Country Party from 1939 to 1940, and finally Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1950 until his death.

Cameron was born in Happy Valley, South Australia. After serving in World War I, he took up a farm near Loxton as a soldier settler. He was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly in 1927, and to the House of Representatives at the 1934 federal election. Cameron was Postmaster-General in the Lyons government from 1938 to 1939. He replaced Earle Page as leader of the Country Party in September 1939, and in March 1940 led the party back into coalition with the United Australia Party (UAP), which Page had broken off. Cameron was de facto deputy prime minister under Menzies, as well as Minister for Commerce and Minister for the Navy. However, he was deposed as Country Party leader in October 1940, subsequently defecting to the UAP (and later joining the new Liberal Party). Cameron's last appointment was as Speaker, where he was highly respected. He was known throughout his political career for his eccentric manner and strong personality.

Early life

Cameron was born in Happy Valley, South Australia, the son of Mary Ann (née McDonald) and John Cameron. His parents were both immigrants from Scotland. He was educated at state schools and worked on his father's farm at Happy Valley until 1916, when he joined the First Australian Imperial Force and fought on the Western Front. He was gassed while in the front, suffering severe damage to his heart and lungs. After World War I Cameron took up farming near Loxton as part of a soldier settlement scheme, and became active in the newly formed Country Party.

State politics

An early member of the Country Party, Cameron unsuccessfully stood for the South Australian House of Assembly seat of Wooroora at the 1924 state election. He reprised his candidacy in Wooroora at the 1927 state election and was elected.

Cameron was elected state leader of the Country Party in 1928. Prior to the 1931 federal election he was involved in the formation of the Emergency Committee of South Australia as a united anti-Labor party. In 1932 he led his party into a merger with the Liberal Federation to form the Liberal and Country League. The Country Party's terms were stiff; among them, Cameron wanted a safe seat for the merged party in Federal Parliament at the next election. Accordingly, Cameron resigned from state parliament in 1934 in order to run in that year's federal election.

Federal politics

Early years

Cameron was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1934 federal election, standing as the LCL candidate in the seat of Barker. He joined the parliamentary Country Party upon his election, in accordance with LCL rules which allowed their federal MPs to choose to sit with either the Country Party or the United Australia Party (UAP). Shortly after taking his seat he moved a motion to expel Lang Labor MP Jock Garden from parliament for his former Communist affiliation, which caused a "near-riot".

Cameron did not have long to wait for ministerial preferment; in 1937 he was appointed an assistant minister in the government of Joseph Lyons. In November 1937, Cameron stood for the deputy leadership of the Country Party following the retirement of Thomas Paterson; he did not win enough votes to make the second ballot. He briefly served as acting minister for commerce in 1938, and during that time became the first minister to be "named" by the Speaker. Later that year, he became Postmaster-General. He temporarily suspended radio 2KY's licence because he objected to political views expressed on it (2KY was the property of the ALP's New South Wales branch).

Leader of the Country Party

Cameron as Country Party leader

Cameron was elected leader of the Country Party on 13 September 1939, following the resignation of Earle Page. He defeated John McEwen by seven votes to five, with two abstentions. According to McEwen, the result was skewed by the absence of four MPs who had refused to sit with the Country Party with Page as leader – a motion to re-admit them was defeated by seven votes to six. McEwen claimed in his memoirs that the dissident MPs were "all strong supporters of mine and, had they been allowed to vote, I would have won the election". They were all re-admitted to the party a few months later.

In March 1940, Cameron took the Country Party back into the coalition government under Menzies, becoming the de facto deputy prime minister as well as Minister for Commerce and Minister for the Navy. The Country Party lost three seats to Labor 1940 election, costing the Coalition its majority. Country Party MPs tired of Cameron's domineering style, and removed him as leader. Arthur Fadden was chosen as interim leader and after Page and McEwen deadlocked on three ballots. Cameron then immediately resigned from the ministry, and from the Country Party: he joined Menzies's party, the United Australia Party. He rejoined the Army and spent the rest of the war on active service in the Directorate of Military Intelligence at Army Headquarters, Melbourne, where he did useful work on the Japanese order of battle. While he was in the service, he faced what would be his only really close electoral contest. At the 1943 election, trade unionist Harry Krantz slashed Cameron's majority from a comfortably safe 15.9 percent to an extremely marginal 1.7 percent. Cameron was left as the only non-Labor MP from South Australia, and the only non-Labor member outside the eastern states (the member for Northern Territory, Adair Blain, was an independent, but did not have full voting rights).

During World War II, Cameron was a strong supporter of mass internment of enemy aliens. In November 1940, shortly after his resignation from the ministry, the Australian War Cabinet decided to allow interned aliens the right to appeal their internment to a tribunal. While remaining a government backbencher, Cameron unsuccessfully moved for the disallowance of the relevant regulation by the House of Representatives and in April 1941 moved a no-confidence motion in the army minister Percy Spender for his handling of internment. Cameron argued that enemy aliens "enjoy no rights whatever" during war-time and were a "danger to the nation" unless proven otherwise, with the appeals tribunals placing the government "in the hopelessly ridiculous position of appearing before a tribunal to defend its own actions". His motion was not put to a vote as no other MP was willing to second it, but in response Spender defended his actions and stated Cameron's intent was to "indulge his peculiar megalomania in order to get some notoriety out of his action".

Speaker of the House of Representatives

Cameron followed most of the UAP into Menzies's new party, the Liberal Party, and when the Liberals won the 1949 elections Menzies appointed him Speaker of the House: mainly, it was said, to keep him out of the Cabinet. He presided over the House with an autocratic style that caused a number of celebrated rows with members on both sides. Cameron's health never recovered from his World War I gassing, and in August 1955 he contracted influenza. Despite this, he fought that year's election and was handily reelected. He died of a heart attack in August in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney.

Personal life

Cameron married Margaret Eileen Walsh on 15 April 1925. They had a son and a daughter together; his daughter predeceased him.

Cameron was raised Presbyterian, but later converted to Catholicism, which was his wife's religion. The Sydney Morning Herald reported in 1950 that he was a "deeply religious man". In parliament, he attracted attention for choosing to make an affirmation rather than swear the oath of office. He did so each time he was elected and was the only member of the House of Representatives to do so during his time in office; after his death no other MPs chose to make an affirmation until 1969. He told an interviewer that "if a man's word is worthless no amount of oath-taking will make him worthy".