William Plain was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

-born Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician.

Born in Scotland, where he was educated, he migrated to Australia in 1890, where he became a farm worker and goldminer at Lara

Lara, Victoria

Lara is a residential rural suburb, 15 km north-east of Geelong, inland from the Princes Freeway to Melbourne.- History :The explorers Hume and Hovell arrived at Lara on December 16, 1824, believing that they had reached Westernport Bay...

, Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

. In 1908, he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly

Victorian Legislative Assembly

The Victorian Legislative Assembly is the lower house of the Parliament of Victoria in Australia. Together with the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house, it sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Melbourne.-History:...

 as the Labor

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...

 member for Geelong

Electoral district of Geelong

The Electoral district of Geelong is an electoral district of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. It is based around inner metropolitan Geelong and includes the suburbs of Bell Park, Drumcondra, East Geelong, Geelong, Geelong West, Newtown and South Geelong and parts of Highton, and North Geelong...

. He was also President of the Board of Land and Works and Commissioner of Crown Lands and Survey in 1913, as well as Minister for Water Supply and Agriculture. He left the Labor Party in the wake of the 1916 split over conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

, joining the Nationalist Party

Nationalist Party of Australia

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...

.

In 1917, he left the Assembly to contest 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,...

 as a Nationalist candidate for Victoria. He was defeated in 1922, but was re-elected in 1925; he was appointed early to the Senate after the death of Edward Russell

Edward Russell (Australian politician)

Edward John Russell was an Australian politician.Russell was born in Warrnambool, Victoria and educated at Newport State School and St Mary's Catholic School, Williamstown...

. In 1931 he was re-elected as a United Australia Party

United Australia Party

The United Australia Party was an Australian political party that was founded in 1931 and dissolved in 1945. It was the political successor to the Nationalist Party of Australia and predecessor to the Liberal Party of Australia...

Senator. He was defeated in 1937 and died in 1961.