Mick O'Halloran
Encyclopedia
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
(ALP) politician, serving in the Australian Senate
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...
and as opposition leader in the Parliament of South Australia
Parliament of South Australia
The Parliament of South Australia is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of South Australia. It consists of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly. It follows a Westminster system of parliamentary government....
.
Born in Yanyarrie in outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
South Australia, the Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
O'Halloran was educated at public schools before leaving to work on his parents' farm aged 13.
O'Halloran joined the ALP at 15 and was first elected to the South Australian House of Assembly
South Australian House of Assembly
The House of Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. The other is the Legislative Council. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Adelaide.- Overview :...
Electoral district of Burra at the 1918 election. He lost the seat at the 1921 election, but regained it in 1924. He also made an astute move in 1924 by marrying Mary Frances Rowe on 14 August 1924. They had no children, but Mary would act as O'Halloran's electorate officer and advisor for the remainder of his political life.
Following his defeat at the 1927 election, O'Halloran worked as an organiser for the Labor Party until his election to the Senate at the 1928 election
Australian federal election, 1928
Federal elections were held in Australia on 17 November 1928. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives, and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election...
. He served as the Deputy Opposition Leader in the Senate from 1932 until his defeat at the 1935 election.
After a failed bid to re-enter the Senate at the 1937 election, O'Halloran returned to state parliament at the 1938 South Australian election as the member for Frome
Electoral district of Frome
Frome is an electoral district of the House of Assembly in the Australian state of South Australia. It is named after Edward Charles Frome, the third surveyor-general of South Australia. The electorate is based around the industrial city of Port Pirie and the agriculture areas of Clare and Gilbert...
.
An eccentric, O'Halloran forbade any Labor people to enter Frome or campaign there and it became known as his personal fiefdom. Despite this, or possibly because of this, O'Halloran comfortably retained Frome for the rest of his life, and succeeded Robert Richards as Leader of the Opposition on 10 October 1949. In the process he became the first Catholic to lead the South Australian Labor Party.
During his eleven years as ALP leader, O'Halloran lost four consecutive elections to the Sir Thomas Playford IV
Thomas Playford IV
Sir Thomas Playford, GCMG was a South Australian politician. He served continuously as Premier of South Australia from 5 November 1938 to 10 March 1965, the longest term of any elected government leader in the history of Australia. His tenure as premier was marked by a period of population and...
led Liberal and Country League
Liberal and Country League
The Liberal and Country League was a major political party in South Australia throughout its forty year existence. Thirty-four years were spent in government, in part due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, introduced after coming to power.Created on 9 June 1932 as the...
(although the ALP gained a majority of the popular vote in each of these elections) but his leadership of the party remained unchallenged during this time.
O'Halloran used his influence within the ALP to support H.V. Evatt as federal ALP leader. Notwithstanding his own Catholicism, he resisted overtures to join the Catholic-dominated Democratic Labor Party
Democratic Labor Party
The Democratic Labor Party is a political party in Australia that espouses social conservatism and opposes neo-liberalism. The first "DLP" Senator in decades, party vice-president John Madigan was elected to the Australian Senate with 2.3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria at the 2010 federal...
, ensuring that the South Australian branch of the ALP remained free from the splits that occurred in Victoria and Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
.
The good working relationship O'Halloran had with Playford would be unthinkable in today's climate of adversarial politics. Philosophical differences did not prevent the two men from being friends. They dined together each week to discuss Playford's future plans for South Australia. In response, Playford would regularly, and publicly, call attention to the important role O'Halloran played in the running of the state, while O'Halloran once described Playford as "the best Labor Premier South Australia ever had".
For this continued rapport, both men had good reasons. Many of Playford's ideas were socialistic in nature (such as the development of government-owned electricity boards) and as such were anathema to his conservative colleagues, meaning that he often required ALP support to get his plans passed by parliament. O'Halloran, meanwhile, realised that with the "Playmander
Playmander
The Playmander was a form of electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, in place from 1936 to 1968. It consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population, as well as a change from...
" (Playford's version of the gerrymander) in place, there was little chance for the ALP to gain office in its own right. Maintaining cordial dealings with Playford was thus the ideal way to ensure that ALP-friendly legislation was passed.
This partnership meant that O'Halloran (despite his skills in public speaking, which many regarded as exceeding Playford's) was portrayed in the media as Playford's amenable offsider, leading the public to believe the key to South Australia's ongoing economic success was the status quo of Playford as Premier and O'Halloran as opposition leader. This may not have concerned O’Halloran a great deal, however; he appeared to be content to remain as Opposition Leader, once telling an acquaintance "I wouldn't want to be Premier even if I could be. Tom Playford can do more for my voters than I could if I were in his shoes."
Indeed, following the 1959 election, a cartoon highlighting O'Halloran's relief at losing yet another election was published and O'Halloran liked it so much he framed and hung it in his Parliament House Office.
O'Halloran’s de facto alliance with Playford also proved beneficial to him personally. For example, O'Halloran had eagerly sought to obtain a papal audience for many years, but had been informed that only Heads of State could be given such an audience. When he sadly mentioned this fact to Playford, the latter (who, as a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
, had no great interest in meeting the Pope) made arrangements to visit Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
while in Europe to attend Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
’s coronation. Playford took O'Halloran and Mrs O'Halloran to the Vatican with him.
O’Halloran's fondness for whiskey was renowned within state politics. He would regularly over-indulge during parliamentary sessions, and Playford would thoughtfully adjourn the House early so as not to embarrass him. Similarly, Don Dunstan
Don Dunstan
Donald Allan "Don" Dunstan, AC, QC was a South Australian politician. He entered politics as the Member for Norwood in 1953, became state Labor leader in 1967, and was Premier of South Australia between June 1967 and April 1968, and again between June 1970 and February 1979.The son of a business...
recalled an incident during the 1953 election campaign when O'Halloran arrived at a public meeting intoxicated, and had to be led away quietly before he fell over.
Despite these weaknesses, O'Halloran was universally liked. Labor's most effective orator prior to Dunstan’s entry into politics, O'Halloran was a "decent, heavily built but gentle man who ... wore an air of sleepy benevolence", smoked a pipe and spoke with an Irish brogue. O'Halloran was still Opposition Leader when he died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism
Pulmonary embolism
Pulmonary embolism is a blockage of the main artery of the lung or one of its branches by a substance that has travelled from elsewhere in the body through the bloodstream . Usually this is due to embolism of a thrombus from the deep veins in the legs, a process termed venous thromboembolism...
in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
.
Upon hearing the news of O'Halloran's death, the normally imperturbable Playford publicly wept. The Premier served as one of the pallbearers at O'Halloran's state funeral (the first state funeral for an opposition leader in South Australian history). In his eulogy on that occasion, Playford said that he had greatly respected O’Halloran as a man who always told the truth.