27 Facts About Joseph Carruthers

Sir Joseph Hector McNeil Carruthers was an Australian politician who served as Premier of New South Wales from 1904 to 1907.

Zachary Gorman has argued that Joseph Carruthers played a central role in re-orientating Australian liberalism to sit on the centre-right of the political divide, influencing political developments at both the Federal and State level.

Joseph Carruthers was born in Kiama, New South Wales to Charlotte Prince and John Joseph Carruthers.

Joseph Carruthers attended William Street National School and Fort Street High School in Sydney.

In 1887, Joseph Carruthers obtained the most votes for the four-member Legislative Assembly seat of Canterbury, on a platform of local issues, free trade, social reform, land reform, industrial conciliation and arbitration, and an elective Legislative Council.

Joseph Carruthers held Canterbury until 1894, when he switched to the new seat of St George.

Joseph Carruthers took a special interest in technical schools, particularly Ultimo Technical College, which later established a great reputation.

Parkes resigned in October 1891, and Joseph Carruthers was instrumental in ensuring that Parkes was replaced as leader of the Free Trade Party by his close friend George Reid.

Joseph Carruthers was given the position of Secretary for Lands, and passed an important Crown Lands Act in 1895.

Joseph Carruthers made an able speech in introducing this measure and his reforms were widely supported.

Joseph Carruthers was an ardent federalist, a cause he supported for both economic and patriotic reasons.

Joseph Carruthers saw federation as necessary for a White Australia Policy, though this was a policy he would develop misgivings about later in life.

Joseph Carruthers was elected third on the list as one of the 10 New South Wales representatives at the 1897 Federal convention.

Lee was not very successful and soon Joseph Carruthers replaced him as leader of the New South Wales opposition, creating the Liberal and Reform Association as the successor to the Free Trade Party.

Joseph Carruthers had deliberately moved the party away from the tariff issue, which was now a Federal responsibility, and established a broad platform embodying the principles of Gladstonian classical liberalism.

Joseph Carruthers positioned his support for enterprise and economic freedom against what he saw as the increasingly socialistic policies of the Progressive Minister for Public Works Edward William O'Sullivan and the Labor Party, arguing that politics required clear 'lines of cleavage' with a two-party system to give people a clear choice at elections.

In doing so Joseph Carruthers placed his liberal party on the centre-right of the political divide, a move George Reid would copy with his Federal anti-socialist campaign.

Joseph Carruthers party won the July 1904 election on "an alliance of Liberalism, temperance and Protestantism".

In 1907, Joseph Carruthers succeeded in forcing a "fusion" of much of the Progressive Party with the LRA, further cementing the liberals as the main opposition to the Labor Party in New South Wales.

Joseph Carruthers persuaded William Sandford to agree to William Sandford Limited contracting to supply all of the New South Wales Government's needs for iron and steel, for a seven-year period, in 1905.

Joseph Carruthers was twice married and was survived by Lady Carruthers, three sons and four daughters.

Joseph Carruthers was a successful Premier, laying a pattern of how liberal governments would operate.

Joseph Carruthers was chairman of the New South Wales Cricket Association and the Board of Associated Race Clubs; a trustee of the art gallery, and a member of the university senate.

Joseph Carruthers was a friend of Frederick Earle Winchcombe, who was the founding President of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia.

Joseph Carruthers followed Winchcombe as President of the Society in 1911, serving only one term of office.

Always a popular MP with his constituents, Joseph Carruthers has by later commentators been judged "a peppery little man" of "untiring energy".

Joseph Carruthers was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1908.