22 Facts About Frank Anstey

Francis George Anstey was an Australian politician and writer.

Frank Anstey served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1910 to 1934, representing the Labor Party.

Frank Anstey was Minister for Health and Minister for Repatriation in the Scullin government from 1929 to 1931.

Frank Anstey was born in London, England, the son of an iron-miner who died five months before his son was born, and he had little formal education.

Frank Anstey stowed away on a passenger ship when he was 11 and arrived in Melbourne in 1877.

Frank Anstey then spent ten years working on ships to the South Pacific islands.

Frank Anstey became a cleaner in Melbourne, where he soon became involved in politics.

Frank Anstey worked on the Melbourne tramways and became President of the Tramways Employees Union.

In 1898, Frank Anstey co-founded the Victorian Labour Federation with George Elmslie and Tom Tunnecliffe.

Frank Anstey gained prominence as the lead speaker at meetings of the VLF, which collapsed in 1900 "amid political bickering and personal recriminations".

Frank Anstey subsequently focused his efforts on the mainstream United Labor Party.

In 1902 Frank Anstey was elected as a Labor member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for East Bourke Boroughs, and from 1904 he was member for Brunswick, both electorates being in the working-class suburbs of Melbourne.

Frank Anstey switched to federal politics at the 1910 election, winning the seat of Bourke in the House of Representatives.

Frank Anstey saw Australia as an economic colony of the finance houses of the City of London, which, like many in the labour movement at this time, he described as the "money power".

Frank Anstey's views are typified by this passage from a 1907 editorial in the newspaper of the Australian Workers' Union:.

Frank Anstey was one of the few Labor members who opposed the war from the start, and as a result he was highly unpopular for a time.

Frank Anstey published a pamphlet called The Kingdom of Shylock in 1917.

In 1922 Frank Anstey became Assistant Leader of the ALP in the House, a post he held until 1927.

Frank Anstey supported the Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, who advocated repudiating Australia's debts to British bondholders and using the funds to create employment in order to increase production.

Frank Anstey is especially remembered as the mentor of John Curtin, on whom he had a great influence in Curtin's early years.

Frank Anstey wrote extensive unpublished memoirs, but burned them shortly before his death.

Frank Hardy wrote in his book, The Hard Way, that Frank Anstey received a visit from John Wren, who asked Anstey to eradicate any reference to him in Anstey's memoirs, to prevent them from becoming an expose of Wren's gambling empire.