Allan Clyde Holding was an Australian politician who served as Leader of the Opposition in Victoria for ten years, and went on to become a federal minister in the Hawke government.
15 Facts About Clyde Holding
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In 1962 Clyde Holding was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Richmond, which had mostly been held by conservative Catholic Labor Party members, although his immediate predecessor, Bill Towers, was not.
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Clyde Holding was a supporter of the reforming federal Labor leader, Gough Whitlam, who was determined to reform the Victorian branch as a precondition of winning a federal election.
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Clyde Holding was a close ally of the ACTU president, Bob Hawke.
5.
Clyde Holding was unable to get the better of Hamer, and was roundly defeated at the 1973 and 1976 state elections.
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Clyde Holding resigned as Opposition Leader after the 1976 election to transfer to federal politics.
7.
Clyde Holding resigned from state Parliament in November 1977 and a month later he was elected to the House of Representatives for the comfortably safe seat of Melbourne Ports, which then included Holding's base in Richmond.
8.
Clyde Holding defeated Simon Crean, son of Holding's predecessor, Frank Crean, to win Labor pre-selection.
9.
The year before his transfer to federal politics, Clyde Holding saw off a leadership challenge from Barry Jones.
10.
Jones too resigned from state politics to go into federal politics in 1977 and both he and Clyde Holding would become ministers under Bob Hawke.
11.
When Hawke was elected Prime Minister at the 1983 election, he insisted that Clyde Holding be included in the ministry, and gave him the difficult but symbolically important portfolio of Aboriginal Affairs.
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Clyde Holding was a strong supporter of land rights for Indigenous Australians, and his main ambition as minister was to bring in legislation for uniform national land rights, which the 1967 amendment to the Australian Constitution would have permitted.
13.
In 1987 Clyde Holding was shifted to the portfolio of Minister for Employment Services and Youth Affairs.
14.
Clyde Holding held this post until the 1990 election, when he was dropped from the ministry.
15.
Clyde Holding remained in the House as a backbencher until his retirement in 1998.