1. Sir John Grey Gorton was an Australian politician, farmer and airman who served as the 19th prime minister of Australia from 1968 to 1971.
124 Facts About John Gorton
1. 2.
John Gorton held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, having previously served as a senator for Victoria.
3.
John Gorton was the first and only member of the upper house of the Parliament to assume the office of prime minister.
4.
John Gorton enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940, and was a fighter pilot in Malaya and New Guinea during the Second World War.
5.
John Gorton returned to farming after being discharged in 1944, and was elected to the Kerang Shire Council in 1946; he later served a term as shire president.
6.
John Gorton took a keen interest in foreign policy, and gained a reputation as a strident anti-Communist.
7.
John Gorton was promoted to the ministry in 1958, and over the following decade held a variety of different portfolios in the governments of Sir Robert Menzies and Harold Holt.
8.
John Gorton was responsible at various times for the Royal Australian Navy, public works, education, and science.
9.
John Gorton was elevated to the Cabinet in 1966, and the following year, he was promoted to Leader of the Government in the Senate.
10.
John Gorton defeated three other candidates for the Liberal leadership after Harold Holt's disappearance on 17 December 1967.
11.
John Gorton became the first and only senator to assume the office of Prime Minister, but soon transferred to the House of Representatives in line with constitutional convention.
12.
John Gorton's government continued Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, but began withdrawing troops amid growing public discontent.
13.
John Gorton retained office at the 1969 federal election in the Coalition's 20th year in office, albeit with a severely reduced majority.
14.
John Gorton briefly was an opposition frontbencher under Billy Snedden, but stood down in 1974 and spent the rest of his career as a backbencher.
15.
Notably, during this period John Gorton moved the motion which decriminalised homosexuality federally and in the territories.
16.
John Gorton resigned from the Liberal Party when Fraser was elected leader and he denounced the dismissal of the Whitlam government; at the 1975 election he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate as an Independent in the ACT and advocated for a Labor win.
17.
John Gorton later spent several years as a political commentator, retiring from public life in 1981.
18.
Evaluations of his prime ministership have been mixed; although he is generally ranked higher than either Holt or McMahon, John Gorton is usually considered to have been a transitional prime minister who ultimately fell short of his potential for greatness.
19.
John Grey Gorton was the second child of Alice Sinn and John Rose Gorton; his older sister Ruth was born in 1909.
20.
John Gorton had no birth certificate, but official forms recorded his date of birth as 9 September 1911 and his place of birth as Wellington, New Zealand.
21.
John Gorton's birth was registered in the state of Victoria as occurring on that date, but in the inner Melbourne suburb of Prahran.
22.
At some point before 1932, John Gorton's father told him that he had actually been born in Wellington.
23.
John Gorton apparently believed he was born in Wellington, listing the city as his place of birth on his RAAF enlistment papers, and claiming so to a biographer in 1968.
24.
John Gorton's father was born to a middle-class family in Manchester, England, UK.
25.
John Gorton reputedly escaped the Siege of Ladysmith by sneaking through Boer lines, and then made his way to Australia.
26.
John Gorton was involved in various business schemes in multiple states, and was to said to have "lived on the brink of a fortune which never quite materialised".
27.
John Gorton never denied his illegitimacy as an adult, but it did not become generally known until a biography was published during his prime ministership.
28.
John Gorton spent his early years living with his maternal grandparents in Port Melbourne, as his parents were frequently away on business trips.
29.
John Gorton's grieving father sent his son to live with his estranged wife Kathleen.
30.
John Gorton initially lived with Kathleen and Ruth at their home in Cronulla.
31.
John Gorton did not excel academically, failing the Intermediate Certificate on his first attempt, but was a well-liked boy and good at sports.
32.
John Gorton began spending his holidays with his father, who had purchased a property in Mystic Park, Victoria, and planted a citrus orchard.
33.
John Gorton left Shore at the end of 1926, and the following year began boarding at Geelong Grammar School, which he would attend for four years from 1927 to 1930.
34.
John Gorton represented the school in athletics, football, and rowing, and in his final year was a school prefect and house captain.
35.
John Gorton arrived in England in early 1932, and after a period at a "cramming school" passed the exam to enter Brasenose College.
36.
John Gorton took flying lessons around the same time, and was awarded a pilot's licence in June 1932.
37.
John Gorton began his degree in October 1932 and finished in June 1935 with an "upper second" in history, politics and economics.
38.
John Gorton was initially something of an outsider, with relatively little money and no social connections.
39.
John Gorton had expected to take up a position at The Herald and Weekly Times, Keith Murdoch's newspaper group.
40.
John Gorton had taken over the management of the orchard as soon as his father entered hospital.
41.
John Gorton employed up to ten seasonal workers during picking season.
42.
On 31 May 1940, following the outbreak of World War II, John Gorton enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve.
43.
John Gorton was accepted and commissioned into the RAAF on 8 November 1940.
44.
John Gorton trained as a fighter pilot at Somers, Victoria and Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, before being sent to the UK.
45.
John Gorton completed his training at RAF Heston and RAF Honiley, with No 61 Operational Training Unit RAF, flying Supermarine Spitfires.
46.
John Gorton was disappointed when his first operational posting was No 135 Squadron RAF, a Hawker Hurricane unit, as he considered the type greatly inferior to Spitfires.
47.
John Gorton was not properly strapped in and his face hit the gun sight and windscreen, mutilating his nose and breaking both cheekbones.
48.
John Gorton made his way out of the wreck and was rescued by members of the Royal Dutch East Indies Army, who provided some medical treatment.
49.
John Gorton later claimed that his face was so badly cut and bruised, that a member of the RAF sent to collect him assumed he was near death, collected his personal effects and returned to Singapore without him.
50.
John Gorton then spent almost a day on a crowded liferaft, in shark-infested waters, with little drinking water, until the raft was spotted by HMAS Ballarat, which picked up the passengers and took them to Batavia.
51.
In March 1944, John Gorton was sent back to Australia with the rank of Flight Lieutenant.
52.
John Gorton's final posting was as a Flying Instructor with No 2 Operational Training Unit at Mildura, Victoria.
53.
John Gorton was then discharged from the RAAF on 5 December 1944.
54.
John Gorton remained on the council until 1952, overlapping with his first term in the Senate, and from 1949 to 1950 was shire president.
55.
John Gorton's first major speech, in April 1946, was an address to a welcome-home gathering for returned soldiers at the Mystic Park Hall.
56.
In what John Gorton Brogden has described as "Australia's best unknown political speech", he exhorted his audience to honour those who had died in the war and saying "we must do our most to alleviate the immediate suffering, and we must take our place in the world, not as a self-sufficient, sealed-off unit, but as a member of a family, the members of which are dependent the one upon the other".
57.
John Gorton told the crowd in Kerang that they should oppose the establishment of banks run by politicians, and objected in particular to the government's decision not to take the issue to a referendum.
58.
John Gorton had been a supporter of the Country Party before the war, along with most of his neighbours.
59.
In March 1949, John Gorton was elected to the state executive of the new organisation, which named itself the Liberal and Country Party.
60.
In June 1949, John Gorton stood for the Victorian Legislative Council as the LCP candidate in Northern Province.
61.
John Gorton was relatively unknown within the party, and his rural background was a major factor in his selection.
62.
John Gorton was re-elected to additional terms at the 1951,1953,1958, and 1964 elections, and from 1953 occupied first place on the Coalition's ticket in Victoria.
63.
John Gorton developed a reputation as a "hardline anti-communist", speaking in favour of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill and campaigning for the "Yes" vote during the 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party.
64.
From 1952 to 1958, John Gorton served on the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, including as chairman for a period.
65.
John Gorton developed a keen interest in Asia, which was rooted in his anti-communism, and joined parliamentary delegations to Malaya, South Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines.
66.
John Gorton strongly supported Australia joining the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, a collective defence initiative designed to prevent the spread of communism in the region.
67.
John Gorton supported Taiwanese independence and opposed Australian recognition of the People's Republic of China.
68.
John Gorton was elevated to the ministry after the 1958 election, as Minister for the Navy.
69.
John Gorton regularly attended meetings of the Naval Board, unlike previous ministers, and championed its recommendations at cabinet meetings.
70.
John Gorton was able to secure most elements of the board's desired modernisation program, despite Townley showing more interest in the air force.
71.
John Gorton postponed the phasing out of the Fleet Air Arm, due to occur in 1963, and secured the purchase of 27 Westland Wessex helicopters.
72.
John Gorton was a supporter and admirer of Robert Menzies, who was sympathetic to his ambitions for higher office and assigned him additional responsibilities.
73.
John Gorton was appointed assistant minister to the Minister for External Affairs in February 1960, working under Menzies and later under Garfield Barwick and Paul Hasluck.
74.
John Gorton was made Minister for Works and Minister for the Interior, relatively low-profile positions dealing mostly with administrative matters; the latter post was taken over by Doug Anthony after a few months.
75.
John Gorton was given oversight of the Australian Universities Commission, the Australian National University, the Commonwealth Archives Office, the Commonwealth Literary Fund, and the National Library of Australia.
76.
John Gorton was elevated to cabinet, and at the end of the year was given the title Minister for Education and Science.
77.
John Gorton was placed in charge of the new Department of Education and Science, the first time those portfolios had been given a separate department at federal level.
78.
John Gorton presided over a "major intrusion" of the federal government into the education sector.
79.
John Gorton's tenure saw significant increases in the number of university scholarships available, the number of new university entrants, and overall funding of education.
80.
One of the first major issues John Gorton confronted was that of state aid to non-government schools.
81.
John Gorton believed that private schools should have equal access to federal government funding, and in 1964 announced that the government would fund science laboratories for private schools.
82.
In September 1965, John Gorton created the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Advanced Education, tasked with advising the government on non-university technical and further education.
83.
John Gorton announced that the federal government would fund technical colleges on a pro-rata basis with the states, and personally oversaw the establishment of the Canberra College of Advanced Education, the forerunner of the University of Canberra.
84.
John Gorton's reputation was significantly enhanced by his role in the VIP aircraft affair, a political controversy relating to the use of Royal Australian Air Force VIP aircraft by the Holt government and its predecessor the Menzies government that came to a head in October 1967.
85.
John Gorton did so on the grounds that the government could not maintain such a cover-up.
86.
John Gorton's act has been credited for helping thrust him into general public view; boosting his standing among his parliamentary colleagues; and for the first time John Gorton began to be viewed as a serious future leadership contender, which proved to be critical to his election as Holt's successor three months later.
87.
However, although John Gorton defended Howson in Parliament, the affair sowed the seeds of long-term enmity between him and Howson, the latter turning into a staunch, vocal opponent of John Gorton during his years as prime minister and beyond.
88.
John Gorton's presumed successor was Liberal deputy leader William McMahon.
89.
John Gorton's reasons were never stated publicly, but in a private meeting with McMahon, he said "I will not serve under you because I do not trust you".
90.
John Gorton was elected party leader on 9 January 1968, and appointed prime minister on 10 January, replacing McEwen.
91.
John Gorton was the only senator in Australia's history to be prime minister and the only prime minister to have ever served in the Senate.
92.
John Gorton remained a senator until, in accordance with the Westminster tradition that the prime minister is a member of the lower house of parliament, he resigned on 1 February 1968 to contest the by-election for Holt's old House of Representatives seat of Higgins in south Melbourne.
93.
John Gorton visited all the polling places during the day, but was unable to vote for himself as he was still enrolled in Mallee, in rural western Victoria.
94.
John Gorton began to follow new policies, pursuing independent defence and foreign policies and distancing Australia from its traditional ties to Britain.
95.
John Gorton fostered an independent Australian film industry and increased government funding for the arts.
96.
John Gorton proved to be a surprisingly poor media performer and public speaker, and was portrayed by the media as a foolish and incompetent administrator.
97.
John Gorton was unlucky to come up against a new and formidable Labor Opposition Leader in Gough Whitlam.
98.
Still, John Gorton saw the sizeable 45-seat majority he had inherited from Holt cut down to only seven.
99.
John Gorton graciously accepted the apology, while inviting the Opposition to withdraw its motion that Ramsey be immediately arrested by the serjeant-at-arms of the House.
100.
John Gorton called a Liberal caucus meeting for 10 March 1971 to settle the matter.
101.
Under Liberal caucus rules of the time, a tied vote meant the motion was passed and hence John Gorton could have remained as party leader and Prime Minister without further ado.
102.
In 1972, businessman David Hains commissioned a series of polls in marginal electorates that showed the Coalition would significantly increase its vote if John Gorton mounted a successful comeback; for instance, polling in the Division of Henty found that his return would add eight points to the Liberal vote.
103.
However, John Gorton generally downplayed the polling and did not mount an active campaign to oust McMahon.
104.
The seat of Henty, which became a particular point of Hains' polling as Hains made his case for John Gorton to be restored as prime minister, was narrowly retained by the Liberals despite a huge swing towards Labor.
105.
John Gorton was one of five candidates who stood the resulting leadership ballot, but polled only the fourth-highest total as Billy Snedden won a narrow victory over Nigel Bowen.
106.
Early in 1973, John Gorton stated his public support of "abortion on request, under certain conditions"; he was opposed to "compulsory pregnancy".
107.
John Gorton nonetheless voted against David McKenzie and Tony Lamb's private member's bill to legalise abortion in the Australian Capital Territory, as he believed it did not provide clear enough guidelines for medical practitioners.
108.
In October 1973, John Gorton introduced a motion in the House of Representatives calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, co-sponsored by Labor's Moss Cass.
109.
John Gorton dismissed arguments that decriminalisation would violate "God's law", noting that many religious leaders were in favour of a change, and stated that the existing law had led to "bashing", blackmail, and suicides.
110.
John Gorton was dropped from shadow cabinet after the election, as was McMahon.
111.
On 3 March 1975, as leadership tensions continued to build, John Gorton announced that he would not recontest his seat in parliament at the next election, citing his unwillingness to be a perpetual backbencher.
112.
On 23 May 1975, John Gorton announced his resignation from the Liberal Party and his intention to be an independent candidate for one of the new Australian Capital Territory Senate seats.
113.
John Gorton hoped to join Steele Hall on the crossbench and secure the balance of power.
114.
John Gorton's candidacy received endorsements from the small local branches of the Liberal Movement and the Australia Party.
115.
John Gorton advocated a vote and "a resounding victory" for Labor in election ads aired nationally, in protest against the dismissal of the Whitlam government.
116.
John Gorton had campaigned mainly on local issues, which obscured his candidacy somewhat in an election that was a virtual referendum on the Whitlam government.
117.
John Gorton retired to Canberra, where he largely kept out of the political limelight.
118.
John Gorton wrote and recorded around 400 segments over the following four years, which were syndicated and broadcast by over 80 radio stations around the country.
119.
John Gorton frequently criticised the Fraser government, but grudgingly admired Fraser's ability to get his way as prime minister.
120.
John Gorton died at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital at the age of 90 in May 2002.
121.
John Gorton was cremated after a private service and his ashes interred within the 'Prime Ministers Garden' at Melbourne General Cemetery.
122.
John Gorton was a nominal Christian at least in the early part of his life, but was not a churchgoer.
123.
John Gorton attended Anglican schools, and was influenced by the Christian socialist views of James Ralph Darling, his headmaster at Geelong Grammar.
124.
John Gorton was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1968, a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1971, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1977, and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1988.