Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) prior to the passage of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 the Houses of the Australian Parliament had the power to expel a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives;

(b) the expulsion of a Member of this House is the most drastic of sanctions;

(c) on 11 November 1920, the then Member for Kalgoorlie, Mr Hugh Mahon, was expelled from this House; and

  (d) Mr Mahon is the only Member to have ever been expelled from this House;

(2) acknowledges that Mr Mahon was expelled:

(a) by a motion brought on hastily and with limited time for debate;

(b) by a vote of the House on party lines; and

  (c) without the due process and procedural fairness that such an important issue deserves; and

(3) recognises that:

(a) it was unjust on the limited evidence for the institution to which Mr Mahon had been democratically elected to reverse the decision of his constituents; and

(b) the expulsion of Mr Mahon was a misuse of the power then invested in the House.

This motion recognises the unjust expulsion of a member of this House 96 years ago. This motion is motivated by two of my former colleagues—Sharryn Jackson and Melissa Parke. I note that the current member for Fremantle will be following me speaking on this motion.

Hugh Mahon was a founding member of the federal parliament. The Hon. Mr Mahon served as a member for 17 years and is the only member ever to have been expelled from federal parliament thus far. Thankfully, our parliament no longer holds the power to expel an elected member, but it did right up until 1987, when it passed the Parliamentary Privileges Act.

Hugh Mahon represented the federal seat of Coolgardie and then Kalgoorlie for the Australian Labor Party. Mahon, like most of the founding members of the Australian parliament, was not born in Australia. He was Irish. He came to Australia in 1882, having been a journalist and political activist in his mother country. He had even spent time in a Dublin jail with Charles Stewart Parnell, the famous Irish national land leaguer.

Mahon was not known for his frivolity. He was once described as 'a democrat whose snobbish coldness of demeanour would make a snake shudder'. The events that led to Hugh Mahon's expulsion from parliament reflect more on the character of others that on Mr Mahon himself. It is important to put some context to the timing of the expulsion to understand the political climate surrounding the event. Hugh Mahon was expelled from parliament on 11 November 1920, a mere four years after the Easter 1916 uprising. One month before his expulsion, in October 1920, in Cork, Ireland, Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney died in jail after a 74-day hunger strike. MacSwiney was imprisoned after having been charged with sedition by the British.

Mahon attended an Ireland league meeting in Melbourne on 7 November where he savagely attacked British policy and the Empire. He referred to the British Empire as 'this bloody and accursed despotism'. Two days after the league meeting Prime Minister Billy Hughes, a former Labor member, read a portion of Mahon's speech in parliament and asked Mahon if it were correct. The Hansard reflects that Mahon protested that he had never been disobedient to the rules of the House or shown disrespect to the Speaker of the House. When Prime Minister Hughes asked whether the House could take it that the report of his statement was correct, Mahon responded, 'You are not to take anything of the kind.' A letter was sent to Mahon advising him that a motion was to be moved in parliament calling for his expulsion. Mahon informed the Prime Minister in writing that his speech was not seditious or disloyal and that the reported extracts were incomplete and taken out of context.

Unfortunately, Mahon was unable to be present in the House when the motion was moved to expel him due to an accident. In his absence the motion that Hugh Mahon be expelled from the House, having by seditious and disloyal utterances been guilty of conduct unfitting to remain a member of this House, was moved. The motion was passed with only Mahon's 25 Labor colleagues dissenting, ending the parliamentary career of Hugh Mahon, a member democratically elected by his constituents.

As Martin Luther King Jr once said:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Upon his expulsion, Hugh Mahon showed his true loyalty to the parliament. Even though he knew there was no substance to the complaint made against him, he respected the fact that a majority of the House had voted to expel him. Hugh Mahon's living descendants can be proud of the way he conducted himself during what would have been a very difficult time for him and his family. They can be proud of his loyalty to his Irish roots, to his beloved Labor Party and to the nation he had served loyally and faithfully for 17 years as a member of this House.

Hugh Mahon's expulsion can be seen, with the benefit of hindsight, as mere grubby political manoeuvring, especially when the sword thrower at the time of his expulsion, later, in a condolence motion made in the House of Representatives upon Mahon's death, professed an unceasing respect and admiration for Mahon and his fervent love for his country—not sentiments that could coexist with a genuine conviction that Mahon had uttered 'seditious and disloyal' statements.

I believe it is important that this House, the modern parliament, now recognises, although belatedly, that the expulsion of Mahon was a misuse of the political power that the House possessed at that time. I acknowledge the distress that this event has caused the Mahon family, and I hope that his descendants are able to take some comfort from this motion. I fervently hope that this recognition today by my colleagues will correct the true legacy of one of this parliament's founding members, the Hon. Hugh Mahon.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. Is there a seconder?

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the seconder.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to identify with all the remarks of the member for Moreton, in the first instance, and secondly say that the world has changed for the better. As you said, in 1987 we passed legislation in this House that made sure that we could not expel a member inappropriately from this House. The great losers in the Hugh Mahon case, in my opinion, were the electors of Kalgoorlie. It is very important that we as a nation have respect for the decisions taken by the Australian people. The decision taken by the Australian people all those years, more than 90 years, ago was that they elected Hugh Mahon to this House.

You had to get into the mind of Hugh Mahon to understand why he made the remarks that he made then, but in this day we would say he had the right to make them, through freedom of speech. We have the rule of law. We have the opportunities for free association. Can I go on? I think every member in this room understands exactly what I am talking about. The fact that, even after he was expelled from the parliament and the word 'sedition' was mentioned as to his remarks, it was never taken to court, it was never tested in a courtroom, probably proved more the case that it may have been political manoeuvring at the time rather than the remarks that somebody made at an Irish Ireland League event.

It was an Irish league event. We do not understand—although I spoke to an old priest one time. The member for Menzies will enjoy this. It was at the time when the republic was being discussed in Australia. I was talking to this priest, and it became very clear out of our conversation that he did not have a high regard for the English or their government.

I say to you today that Hugh Mahon came out here as virtually a refugee. He came out here under another name so he would not be rearrested in Ireland for the actions that he had taken in protest there. He came out as a refugee to get away from the persecution that he felt that the English government were perpetrating on the Irish people. Isn't it right, then, that in this new, free nation, Australia, which he was in, he could express those opinions and express them as a member of parliament at an Irish league function after the death of somebody who had been on a 74-day fast protesting against the English tyranny over the Irish, as they saw it at that time?

Isn't it right that he, Hugh Mahon, would be so offended that he would, from Australia, use the strongest language to condemn those that he saw as oppressing his people?

And Australia was so important at that time. When you read what happened around that time, the women, and many of the men, who were deported to this country were activists—many of them Irish activists. That is why we are like we are as a nation, because of our roots that go back to those activists. And remembering that for many of the women who were deported out here in those days, the laws were such—this may be irrelevant—that the man owned all of the goods and chattels of the woman, and if the woman ran out of money and the man moved onto another woman with money that first woman was left in dire straits. These women probably had two options: prostitution or theft. Australia received the benefit of these educated, talented women in those tragic times.

Having said that, we recognise that in this day and age, Hugh Mahon would never be removed from this House. It would not happen because now, as a matter of privilege, we have a committee, which I chair. There has to be a reference to that committee from the parliament, and then there is time for reasonable discussion and consideration of what may be a member's inappropriate actions. We respect the people of Kalgoorlie and the family and descendants of Hugh Mahon, and we hope that this motion today brings them some pleasure.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton for bringing forward this motion, which seeks to redress an injustice done almost 100 years ago. And I thank the member for McMillan for his thoughtful contribution.

On 11 November 1920, Hugh Mahon, who was originally the member for the Federation seat of Coolgardie, and subsequently the member for Kalgoorlie, was expelled from his place in the House of Representatives. His seat was declared vacant and he lost the by-election that followed. As a new member, I am thankful to say I have limited experience of the parliament's disciplinary procedures, but I know enough to understand that expulsion is an extraordinarily harsh measure. In fact, as the motion makes clear, this process only occurred that one time. It was a political act, and it was poorly considered.

Hugh Mahon's crime was to call for an Australian republic at an Irish national demonstration in Melbourne on 7 November, an occasion that was made more febrile by the news that the mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, had died after a hunger strike of 74 days. It was a time when the question of Irish nationalism was alive and hot, and of course sharp sectarian divisions were well and truly present here in Australia. The rally considered and passed three motions, the last of which read:

That this meeting of Australian citizens, in view of the policy of oppression and tyranny pursued by the English Government in Ireland, and which has brought eternal disgrace upon the whole British Empire, of which Australia forms a part, pledges its support to any movement for the establishment of an Australian republic.

In the parliamentary week that followed, and on the basis of newspaper reports, Prime Minister Billy Hughes moved a motion that read:

That, in the opinion of this House, the honorable Member for Kalgoorlie, the Honorable Hugh Mahon, having, by seditious and disloyal utterances at a public meeting on Sunday last, been guilty of conduct unfitting him to remain a Member of this House and inconsistent with the oath of allegiance which he has taken as a Member of this House, be expelled this House.

And so it was done by a vote on party lines of 34 to 17. Hugh Mahon himself was absent from proceedings and was not able to speak on his own behalf, but afterwards he was unrepentant and was reported as saying in TheWA Record:

The indignity surely attaches to the garrotter, not to his victim.

While one should hesitate to judge history through the prism of a contemporary perspective, it is clear the expulsion of Hugh Mahon was hasty and unfair as a matter of process, and that it delivered an outcome that was hugely disproportionate to any real offence or danger. I accept that calling for an Australian republic at the time was freighted with heavy meaning. Even so, the expulsion of Hugh Mahon was a misuse of power.

There have been a few instances where our version of the Westminster system has produced travesties, and it is a curious echo that 11 November was the day on which Hugh Mahon was expelled from parliament in 1920 and also the day on which Gough Whitlam was dismissed as the prime minister in 1975.

In the case of the Dismissal, the fundamentally antidemocratic and dangerous outcome was enabled by structural flaws that were, in part, subsequently addressed by constitutional change, especially with respect to casual Senate vacancies. In the case of Hugh Mahon, the reform necessary to prevent a recurrence of his mistreatment was eventually delivered in the form of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987.

But neither outrage would have occurred without a certain amount of malice aforethought; and, ultimately, those responsible for that kind of misjudgement have to take responsibility for it. It is fortunate no-one was similarly expelled in the interim period. At the time, Hugh Mahon himself considered the implications of what had occurred in the following terms: 'This episode may serve as a precedent when Labor is again in the ascendant. If a future Labor government's interests should be promotable by expulsion of an obnoxious opponent they will find the track cleared and the procedure simplified by Hughes.' We can be thankful that such a course was never taken. After all, two wrongs do not make a right.

Let me say in conclusion that, like Hugh Mahon, I support an Australian republic and that in my view the achievement of full sovereign autonomy for our nation through a proper process is well overdue. Our current Prime Minister, nearly 20 years ago, was part of an effort towards that end. In my view, it is high time we returned to that cause. When we do cross the twin thresholds of constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and the achievement of an Australian republic, I look forward to the creation of a new national day that marks a more inclusive, independent and mature Australia that is better connected to the culture and heritage of our first Australians and that grows free from the tether of its colonial past.

This motion calls for recognition that what was done with the expulsion of Hugh Mahon from parliament was wrong. I do not think there can be any doubt on that front. When we do achieve an Australian republic, which I hope is soon, it will be, among many other things, a form of vindication for Hugh Mahon. It will be a long-awaited achievement of independence.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, wish to make a few preliminary observations about the motion moved by the member for Moreton. My observations are preliminary for three reasons: firstly, that the research that I did over the weekend is necessarily incomplete; secondly, that research raises as many questions as it provides answers, so far as I am concerned; and, thirdly, a general reluctance on my part to revisit matters of a different age—this one now almost a century ago—and a preference to allow history to decide these matters as people see it in the future.

However, I want to place my remarks in context and that context is the role of Billy Hughes. Hughes was obviously a complex character. At best, he was a fierce nationalist and a defender of the British Empire. But he was also prepared, at the time, to fuel the fires of sectarianism in a way that few other people in this country have done. As I wrote in my recently published book on Joseph Lyons:

No issue since Federation has caused as much political turmoil in Australia as the conscription debates during the First World War. Neither the Vietnam War nor the Whitlam Government dismissal, two divisive events of more recent times, generated the bitter passions that erupted in 1916 and 1917 when Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes proposed to introduce military conscription … The Great War also exposed an undercurrent of ugly sectarianism in Australia which was exacerbated by the conflation of the troubles in Ireland and the war against Germany. In 1913, the Irish Home Rule Bill had passed the House of Commons three times, overcoming the constitutional block of the House of Lords, but it was effectively ignored by British military forces in Ireland and the Asquith government, leading to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent execution of its leaders. To many Irish nationalists in Australia, respect for English constitutionality was shattered.

In 1917, Billy Hughes seized upon a statement made by the then Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, to establish a sectarian issue about which he could rally support for his second attempt to introduce conscription. Dr HV Evatt's book Australian labour leader: the story of W.A. Holman and the labour movement, a biography of the New South Wales Premier William Holman and a supporter of Hughes, sets out the strategy of the Little Digger—and it was clear:

Mr Hughes made his fight definitely an anti-Mannix fight, as a matter of tactics. Mannix, he said, is against the British Empire. Very well, then, we are against Mannix. At one time it looked as if the whole organisation of the campaign was very much less concerned with the defeat of the Hun than with that of the turbulent Catholic prelate.

Hughes, as I said, unleashed a torrent of sectarianism that swept the nation. Large rallies across Australia often erupted into chaos and violence. Speakers were targeted for physical attack.

My father, who was born into an Anglican family in 1911, recalled the bitter divisions and recriminations in a small Victorian country town during his childhood. Indeed, at that time in my electorate, a place where people of German heritage had immigrated, many were rounded up and detained. German place names were changed. Hence, in my electorate, Wilhelm and Bismarck streets and German Lane were renamed King, Victoria and George streets. The fact that these original street names had been chosen by Lutherans who had settled in Australia after escaping Prussia's rising militarism from the 1860s was lost in the fervour of the times.

We know this issue split the Labor Party nationally. In November 1916, two weeks after losing the first conscription vote, Billy Hughes walked out of the Labor Party caucus, taking 23 supporters with him. With support from the liberals, Hughes formed a new Nationalist government. The following May he won the 1917 election and subsequently introduced the second conscription referendum. So determined was Hughes to pass the proposal that he censored the no case. Despite this, the proposal was lost by a larger margin than the first referendum was, partly because the news of the horror of the great world war—a century ago on the Somme, at places like Fromelles and Pozieres, thousands of young Australians were killed in bombardments—was reaching home. Indeed, in that second referendum, a majority of Australians on active service voted against it, a reversal of the position in the 1916 referendum.

So these matters need to be taken in the context of the times. They were times which we hope are not repeated so far as the conduct of politics in Australia is concerned. That is why they are preliminary remarks about the issue.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allocated for this debate has now expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.