17 Facts About Joseph Cahill

John Joseph Cahill, known as Joe Cahill or JJ Cahill, was a long-serving New South Wales politician, railway worker, trade unionist and Labor Party Premier of New South Wales from 1952 to his death in 1959.

Joe Joseph Cahill, as he was popularly known, was born on 21 January 1891 in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern, the son of Irish-born parents, Thomas Joseph Cahill, and Ellen Glynn.

Joseph Cahill's father was born in County Limerick and was a NSW railways labourer at the nearby Eveleigh Railway Workshops, and his mother was the daughter of Irish immigrants from County Clare.

Joseph Cahill made his first attempt to enter politics as a member of the Parliament of New South Wales, when he stood as the Labor candidate for the Legislative Assembly seat of Dulwich Hill at the March 1917 election.

Joseph Cahill's father had died in June 1916 at the age of 58 while on active service as a reservist Sergeant-Major in the Australian Garrison Artillery.

Eight years after his first tilt at state politics, Joseph Cahill was elected as one of the members of the NSW Legislative Assembly seat of St George at the 1925 state election, which brought the Labor party back into government under Jack Lang.

Joseph Cahill was never counted among the close allies of Lang, and remained on the backbench throughout Lang's two terms in government.

However, Joseph Cahill lost his bid to be re-elected for Arncliffe to United Australia Party's Horace Harper, at the 1932 election, with the electoral tide sweeping out the dismissed Lang Labor government.

Joseph Cahill subsequently supported William McKell, when he successfully challenged Lang for the Labor Party leadership in September 1939, and was elected to the party executive.

Joseph Cahill was the Labor Party campaign director for the September 1940 federal election, which resulted in the ALP under John Curtin gaining the popular vote and winning three additional seats from Robert Menzies' United Australia Party Government, which was forced into minority status, and later fell in a confidence vote in October 1941.

On 16 May 1941, Joseph Cahill was sworn in along with the rest of the ministry as Secretary of Public Works by the Governor at Government House.

The government had long supported the re-establishment of a state shipbuilding enterprise following the UAP Government of Bertram Stevens closing the NSW Government Dockyard in Newcastle in 1933, and consequently in 1942 Joseph Cahill directed the opening of the NSW Government Engineering and Shipbuilding Undertaking in Newcastle, which was enshrined in the passage of the Government Engineering and Shipbuilding Undertaking Act, 1943.

In 1944 Joseph Cahill became Minister for Local Government, a position he would hold for eight years; he used this position to augment local governments' powers.

In September 1949, the serving Deputy Premier, Jack Baddeley, announced his retirement from parliament and his appointment as Director of the State Coal Mines Control Board, and Joseph Cahill stood to succeed him as deputy.

Joseph Cahill ran against Clive Evatt, William Francis Sheahan, Bob Heffron, and Clarence Martin.

Joseph Cahill won the state elections of 1953,1956, and 1959.

Joseph Cahill announced an international competition for its design in September 1955.