1. William Kidston was an Australian bookseller, politician and Premier of Queensland, from January 1906 to November 1907 and again from February 1908 to February 1911.
16 Facts About William Kidston
1. 2.
William Kidston was born in Falkirk, Scotland on 17 August 1849, the son of an ironworker.
3.
In Rockhampton, Kidston started a new career as a bookseller.
4.
William Kidston wrote a poem, entitled The Ballot is the Thing, in support of the unionists' goals.
5.
William Kidston stood unsuccessfully as a separatist candidate for Rockhampton in 1893.
6.
In Parliament, William Kidston began agitating for a broad coalition of progressive elements to defeat the conservative "Continuous Ministry" now led by Hugh Nelson and achieve electoral reform.
7.
William Kidston was again re-elected in 1902, by which stage the separatist movement was dying down.
8.
The faltering Ministerialists were beginning to fracture, and when Robert Philp resigned as premier following a narrow win on an important vote, William Kidston briefly found himself Treasurer in 1899 in the world's first parliamentary labour government under Anderson Dawson.
9.
William Kidston was, along with William Browne, one of two Labor members of the ministry.
10.
Labor became the largest party in the parliament but William Kidston was content to let Morgan retain the dominant role in the coalition.
11.
William Kidston defended Labor's coalition with Morgan, arguing that it had resulted in a public works programme, and fairer taxation and electoral systems.
12.
The early years of William Kidston's premiership were dominated by his fight with the conservative Legislative Council, which rejected much of his legislation.
13.
In 1908, when William Kidston asked the governor, Lord Chelmsford, to appoint more Council members to secure passage of his legislation, Chelmsford refused and William Kidston resigned in protest.
14.
William Kidston's party won the most seats, and formed a government with Labor's support.
15.
William Kidston proceeded with laws enacting electoral reform and the establishment of Wages Boards.
16.
William Kidston enacted further electoral reform by redistributing electorate boundaries, abolishing dual-member electorates, and entrenching one vote one value, though that would later be undone through malapportionments by subsequent governments.