96 Facts About Joseph Cook

Sir Joseph Cook was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the sixth prime minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914.

Joseph Cook held office as the leader of the Liberal Party, having previously been leader of the Anti-Socialist Party from 1908 to 1909.

Joseph Cook emigrated to Australia in 1885, settling in Lithgow, New South Wales.

Joseph Cook continued to work as a miner, becoming involved with the local labour movement as a union official.

In 1891, Joseph Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as a representative of the Labor Party, becoming one of its first members of parliament.

Joseph Cook was elected party leader in 1893, but the following year left Labor due to a disagreement over party discipline.

Joseph Cook was then invited to become a government minister under George Reid, and joined Reid's Free Trade Party.

In 1901, Joseph Cook was elected to the new Federal Parliament representing the Division of Parramatta.

Joseph Cook became deputy leader of the federal Free Trade Party, again under George Reid, and in 1908 replaced Reid as party leader and Leader of the Opposition.

In what became known as "the fusion", Joseph Cook agreed to merge his party with Alfred Deakin's Protectionist Party in 1909, forming a unified anti-Labor party for the first time.

Joseph Cook became deputy leader of the new Liberal Party, allowing Deakin to become prime minister again, and was Minister for Defence until the government's defeat at the 1910 election.

Joseph Cook replaced Deakin as leader of the Liberals in January 1913, and a few months later won a one-seat majority over Andrew Fisher's Labor Party at the 1913 election.

Joseph Cook's party failed to secure a majority in the Australian Senate, making governing difficult, and as a result he engineered the first double dissolution.

In 1917, Joseph Cook was involved in a second party merger, joining the Liberals with Billy Hughes's National Labor Party to form the Nationalist Party.

Joseph Cook became the de facto deputy prime minister under Hughes, serving as Minister for the Navy and Treasurer.

Joseph Cook was a delegate to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he was a member of the committee that determined the borders of Czechoslovakia, and along with Hughes was one of two Australians to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

Joseph Cook died at the age of 86 as one of the last survivors of the first federal parliament.

Joseph Cook was born on 7 December 1860 in a small cottage in Silverdale, Staffordshire, England.

Joseph Cook was the second of seven children born to Margaret and William Cooke.

Joseph Cook's parents moved to a one-up-one-down a few months after his birth, before eventually settling in a terraced house on Newcastle Street.

Joseph Cook's father was a coal miner under the butty system at the nearby Hollywood pit.

Joseph Cook was killed in a mining accident in April 1873, forcing his oldest son to become the family's primary source of income.

Joseph Cook left school and began working in the coal mines at the age of nine, earning one shilling per day for ten to twelve hours of work.

Joseph Cook left school a second time after his father's death and returned to his former employment at the local colliery.

Joseph Cook worked in the coal mines, becoming General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887.

Joseph Cook was active in the Land Nationalisation League, which was influenced by the ideas of Henry George and strongly supported free trade, and was a founding member of the Labor Party in 1891.

Joseph Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as MP for the coalfields seat of Hartley in 1891, in Labor's first big breakthrough in Australian politics.

In 1894 Joseph Cook was the leader of those parliamentarians who refused to accept the Labor Party's decision to make all members sign a "pledge" to be bound by decisions of the Parliamentary Labor Party.

Joseph Cook's protest was based on Labor's attitude to the tariff question in particular, with his preference for free trade being increasingly at odds with his party.

Joseph Cook for his part maintained that the original Labor Party of 1891 was an entirely separate entity from the pledged party, hence that he had never been a member of what became the Labor Party.

Joseph Cook became an invaluable ally of Reid, despite the fact that the two men had distinctly different characters, and remained colleagues only at a distance.

Joseph Cook was appointed Postmaster-General of New South Wales when Reid formed a government in August 1894.

Joseph Cook chaired two intercolonial post and telegraph conferences in 1896, at which the Australian colonies agreed to fund a Pacific Cable linking Australia to North America.

Joseph Cook believed that a Senate which gave equal representation to each state regardless of population was undemocratic, and he was a strong believer in the liberal concept of subsidiarity, the idea that political decisions are best made at the most local level.

Joseph Cook initially had no plans to enter federal politics, hoping instead to succeed Reid as premier of New South Wales.

Reid offered the position of Postmaster-General in a future government as an inducement, but Joseph Cook did not agree to stand until a few weeks before the election.

Joseph Cook was elected with a substantial majority, following a bitter campaign in which he accused Sandford of adopting political positions for self-benefit.

Joseph Cook spoke in favour of nationalising the iron industry and introducing compulsory conciliation and arbitration, views in line with his previous political affiliation.

Joseph Cook was re-elected with an increased majority at the 1903 election.

Joseph Cook stood for the deputy leadership of the opposition when parliament resumed, but was defeated by Dugald Thomson, and was overlooked for ministerial office when Reid formed a government in August 1904.

Joseph Cook instead came to espouse liberalism, regarding its views about personal freedom as closely aligned with Methodism's understanding of the role of the individual in developing morality.

Joseph Cook believed that his own story proved that Australia was a land of great social mobility, and that the nation should continue to support individual opportunity rather than risking a socialist revolution in which the state would be empowered to control individuals.

Reid had hoped to call an early election and entrusted Joseph Cook with organising the anti-socialist campaign.

Joseph Cook was unanimously elected deputy leader of the Anti-Socialists on 28 July 1905, following Thomson's resignation.

Joseph Cook "started a political vendetta against Deakin", which "perfectly suited the mood of the party".

Joseph Cook was re-elected unopposed, following a redistribution which saw Parramatta lose much of its working-class areas.

When Reid resigned as party leader on 16 November 1908, Joseph Cook succeeded him the following day, and agreed to merge the Anti-Socialist Party with Alfred Deakin's Protectionists, in an effort to counter Labor's popularity.

Joseph Cook had, by this time, become completely philosophically opposed to socialism.

At the 1913 election, Joseph Cook championed private enterprise and attacked Labor's "socialist objective" as the "principle that the state must become more and more omnipotent, until it eventually takes over all the actions of the individual, shaping and determining all our production, distribution and exchange".

The Commonwealth Liberal Party led by Joseph Cook won a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives over the Labor Party, led by Andrew Fisher, and defeated its 6 referendum proposals.

Unable to govern effectively due to the hostile Senate, Joseph Cook decided to trigger a double dissolution under section 57 of the Constitution of Australia, the first time that provision had been used.

Joseph Cook introduced a bill abolishing preferential employment for trade union members in the public service.

Joseph Cook was greatly hindered by the fact that he had to cut short his campaign to focus on war matters, at a time when there were few alternatives to in-person political rallies.

Joseph Cook was defeated after a five-seat swing, and Fisher's Labor Party resumed office.

Joseph Cook told an election meeting at Horsham, Victoria, the following day to "remember that when the Empire is at war, so is Australia at war".

Joseph Cook would have three sons serve in the AIF during the war, one of whom was twice wounded at Gallipoli but miraculously survived.

Later in 1916, the so-called National Labor Party, consisting of those Labor members who supported Hughes, merged with the Commonwealth Liberals to form the Nationalist Party, as Joseph Cook decided to sacrifice his party's liberal identity and philosophy in the name of winning the war at any cost.

Joseph Cook became Minister for the Navy and de facto deputy prime minister in Hughes' reconfigured government.

Joseph Cook thought Hughes was autocratic and prone to taking credit for things that others had accomplished.

Joseph Cook did however admire Hughes' strong leadership and "immense energy", which contrasted with his own cautiousness.

Joseph Cook was acting prime minister on a number of occasions when Hughes was overworked or on visits abroad.

Joseph Cook campaigned strongly for the "Yes" vote in the second conscription plebiscite in 1917, touring three states and giving multiple speeches each day.

Joseph Cook participated in all fifteen sessions of the conference, but found that the most important work was being undertaken by Hughes behind closed doors; he was generally not consulted.

Joseph Cook visited Australian Army camps in South England and toured the British dockyards, consulting with Admiral John Jellicoe about the future of the Royal Australian Navy.

Joseph Cook visited his home town of Silverdale for the first time since he left England in 1886, and paid another visit to celebrate the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

Joseph Cook was one of the Australian delegates at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, which was led by Hughes.

Joseph Cook was chosen as the lead British delegate on the Commission on Czechoslovak Affairs, which was tasked with determining the final borders of Czechoslovakia.

Joseph Cook was hampered by his lack of knowledge of European geography and inability to speak French, the contemporary language of diplomacy.

Joseph Cook was generally in favour of an enlarged Czechoslovakia, believing that the lands of the Sudeten Germans had to be included in Czechoslovakia for security reasons.

Joseph Cook was strongly in favour of the creation of the League of Nations, and David Lloyd George considered him to be the most fervent supporter of the League in the entire British delegation.

Hughes was feted upon his return, but Joseph Cook did not receive similar adulation and returned to Sydney relatively quietly.

In March 1920, Joseph Cook was appointed Acting Treasurer in the absence of William Watt, who was attending a conference in London.

Joseph Cook took office at the height of the post-war boom and was faced with high inflation, but high unemployment as the economy attempted to absorb returned soldiers.

Joseph Cook was a fiscal conservative by nature, preferring to limit government spending and keep taxes low.

Joseph Cook was twice faced with significant revenue shortfalls, which he chose to fill primarily with overseas loans and only a small increase in taxation.

Joseph Cook arrived in London on 13 January 1922, where career diplomat Malcolm Shepherd had been charge d'affaires for a year.

Joseph Cook played a key role in organising the Australian pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924.

Joseph Cook represented Australia at the International Labour Conferences and the 1922 Genoa Conference, but did "little more than attend and subsequently report to his government".

Joseph Cook was a more active participant at the League of Nations, where he was Australia's chief delegate.

Joseph Cook appeared before the Permanent Mandates Commission on a number of occasions to answer questions about the administration of its League of Nations mandates, Nauru and New Guinea.

Joseph Cook overhauled the administration of Australia House, significantly reducing the number of staff and the annual running costs.

Joseph Cook particularly enjoyed the social and ceremonial aspects of his new position.

Joseph Cook hosted regular social functions at Australia House, and mixed more easily in high society than his predecessor, whose partial deafness tended to make him withdrawn.

Unlike his predecessors Reid and Fisher, Joseph Cook did not settle in London permanently after the end of his term as High Commissioner.

Joseph Cook arrived back in Sydney in September 1927 and bought a large house in Bellevue Hill, overlooking Sydney Harbour.

In 1928, Joseph Cook was appointed chairman of a royal commission into "the finances of South Australia, as affected by Federation".

Joseph Cook enjoyed a low-profile retirement, with Smith's Weekly observing in 1936 that no other high-ranking politician had "staged such a swiftly effective fade-out from the public view on retirement from the hurly-burly".

Joseph Cook was interviewed during the Sudeten Crisis and after the German invasion of Poland, on both occasions defending the Treaty of Versailles and blaming German aggression for the new war.

Joseph Cook ignored requests to write his memoirs, and in fact destroyed many of his personal papers; this would later present difficulties for his biographers.

Joseph Cook died at his home in Bellevue Hill on 30 July 1947, after a heart-related illness of about three weeks.

Joseph Cook was granted a state funeral, held at the Wesley Chapel on Castlereagh Street, and then cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium.

Joseph Cook died at the age of 86, surpassing George Reid as Australia's longest-lived prime minister; his record was broken by Hughes a few years later.

Joseph Cook was the oldest living prime minister for a record span of over 27 years, following the death of Edmund Barton in 1920.

Joseph Cook was appointed to the Privy Council on 16 July 1914.

Joseph Cook was knighted in 1918 as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George.

In 2024, the namesake was finally altered to be joint between both men, to give recognition to Joseph Cook and have a division named after him.