Sir George Francis Reuben Nicklin, (6 August 1895 – 29 January 1978) was an Australian politician. He was the
Premier of Queensland
The premier of Queensland is the head of government in the Australian state of Queensland.
By convention the premier is the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority in the unicameral Legislative Assembly of Queensland. The premier is ap ...
from 1957 to 1968, the first non-
Labor Party premier since 1932.
[Nicklin, Sir George Francis (Frank) (1895–1978)]
— Australian Dictionary of Biography
The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's ...
. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
Early life and career
Nicklin was born in
Murwillumbah
Murwillumbah ( ) is a town in far north-eastern New South Wales, Australia, in the Tweed Shire, on the Tweed River. Sitting on the south eastern foothills of the McPherson Range in the Tweed Volcano valley, Murwillumbah is 848 km north-eas ...
,
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
on 6 August 1895, the son of newspaper proprietor George Francis Nicklin and his
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
-born wife, Edith Catherine ( Bond).
[
He was educated at Murwillumbah Public School and Highfield College in Turramurra, Sydney. In 1910 the family moved to Beerwah in Queensland, where Nicklin's father took up banana farming. Nicklin enrolled in the army in 1916 served with distinction during ]World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, where he was promoted to corporal
Corporal is a military rank in use in some form by many militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. The word is derived from the medieval Italian phrase ("head of a body"). The rank is usually the lowest ranking non ...
and was awarded the Military Medal
The Military Medal (MM) was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other arms of the armed forces, and to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land. The award ...
.[ On his return to Queensland he bought a small pineapple farm at Palmwoods, 100 kilometres north of Brisbane, through a soldier-settler scheme. Nicklin saved wisely and put his farming experience to good use, and his farm succeeded where many others failed. He led many fruit-growers' organisations, and then became involved in Country Party politics.][
When the Member for the solid Country Party seat of Murrumba retired in 1932, Nicklin became the new candidate for the hybrid urban-regional seat in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. He won the seat,] although the Country and Progressive National Party Government of A. E. Moore was heavily defeated. Nicklin, therefore, entered Parliament as an opposition backbencher. He transferred to the newly created Sunshine Coast seat of Landsborough in 1950.[
Nicklin was a popular and hardworking local member, and remained popular throughout very difficult times for the Country Party in Queensland. The opposition was fractured and weak, and the Government of ]William Forgan Smith
William Forgan Smith (15 April 188725 September 1953) was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of the state of Queensland from 1932 to 1942. He came to dominate politics in the state during the 1930s, and his populism, firm leadership ...
very secure. Nicklin's preferred area was agriculture, and he made many speeches on the subject.
Opposition Leader
In 1941 the opposition suffered another severe defeat, with Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
winning 41 seats to the Country Party's 14 and the United Australia Party's four. After the election, the Queensland caucuses of the two non-Labor parties decided to merge as the Country-National Organisation
The Country-National Organisation was a short-lived conservative political party in the Australian state of Queensland during the Second World War.
In Queensland the conservative parties had previously united from 1925 until 1936 as the Country a ...
. Opposition leader Ted Maher
Theodore "Ted" Maher (born June 9, 1958) is a former Green Beret turned registered nurse who was convicted of arson in a 1999 fire that killed Edmond Safra and another nurse, Vivian Torrente, at Safra's Monaco penthouse apartment. In October 2007 ...
stood down, and Nicklin was elected to lead the merged party.[ The merger fell apart in 1944, but Nicklin remained as head of a Country-UAP coalition.
Nicklin was leader of the opposition for sixteen years,][ losing five elections in a row (1944, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1956). In 1942 Labor abolished full preferential voting in favour of first-past-the-post, meaning that the Country Party and UAP could no longer rely on each other's preferences in seats that they both contested. Even more damaging to the coalition's chances was the introduction of a zonal electoral system in 1949, in which seats in the traditional Labor north and west of the state required fewer members than the Country-Party dominated south-east or the ]Queensland People's Party
The Liberal Party of Australia (Queensland Division), branded as Liberal Queensland, was the Queensland division of the Liberal Party of Australia until 2008.
It was initially formed in October 1943 as the Queensland People's Party (QPP), whic ...
(formerly UAP, soon to be the Liberals) dominated metropolitan areas.
Despite these setbacks, Nicklin was never challenged for the leadership. Many coalition members appeared to have despaired of ever defeating Labor, and were content to simply represent their constituencies. Accordingly, Nicklin was left to handle most of the business of opposition. He acknowledged to a 1955 conference of leading Country Party figures that their chances of ever being seated to the right of the speaker were slim, but he continued as opposition leader anyway. After the 1956 election, in which he was severely defeated by Labor's Vince Gair
Vincent Clair Gair (25 February 190111 November 1980) was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of Queensland from 1952 until 1957, when his stormy relations with the trade union movement saw him expelled from the Labor Party. He was e ...
, Nicklin considered retiring from politics. However, his fortunes would soon change.
The late 1950s saw increasing fear of communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
in Australia, and increasing tensions between the Parliamentary Labor Party and the party's union-dominated Central Executive (QCE) in Queensland. These tensions boiled over in 1957, when the QCE pushed the Government to introduce three weeks' paid leave for public servants. Gair refused, and Nicklin backed him, arguing that the QCE was dominated by unaccountable left-wing trade union leaders with communist sympathies.
On 24 April Gair was expelled from the ALP, and he and his supporters formed the Queensland Labor Party (QLP). This body would later join the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) which had arisen out of a split in the ALP in Victoria. Reduced to a minority government, Gair negotiated with Nicklin for support from the Country Party in Parliament. However, Nicklin broke them off at the suggestion of federal Country Party leader Arthur Fadden
Sir Arthur William Fadden, (13 April 189421 April 1973) was an Australian politician who served as the 13th prime minister of Australia from 29 August to 7 October 1941. He was the leader of the Country Party from 1940 to 1958 and also served ...
(himself a Queenslander), who believed that given the ructions in Labor, Nicklin had a good chance to become Premier himself.
On 12 June 1957, Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice of Queensland
The chief justice of Queensland is the senior judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland and the highest ranking judicial officer in the Australian state of Queensland. The chief justice is both the judicial head of the Supreme Court, as well as t ...
Alan Mansfield
Sir Alan James Mansfield, (30 September 1902 – 17 July 1980) was an Australian barrister, judge, and the 18th Governor of Queensland, serving from 1966 until 1972.
Early life
Mansfield was born on 20 September 1902 in Brisbane, Queensland, wh ...
(Governor John Lavarack
Lieutenant General Sir John Dudley Lavarack, (19 December 1885 – 4 December 1957) was an Australian Army officer who was Governor of Queensland from 1 October 1946 to 4 December 1957, the first Australian-born governor of that state.
Early l ...
was indisposed) ordered Parliament to reassemble. Shortly after 10:30 pm that night, Treasurer Ted Walsh
Ted Walsh (born 14 April 1950) is an Irish amateur jockey turned racehorse trainer who was born and raised in Co. Cork but based in Kill, County Kildare, Ireland. Ted is also father to amateur Irish National Hunt jockey, Katie Walsh and profes ...
moved that supply
Supply may refer to:
*The amount of a resource that is available
**Supply (economics), the amount of a product which is available to customers
**Materiel, the goods and equipment for a military unit to fulfill its mission
*Supply, as in confidenc ...
be granted to the Gair QLP government. The remnants of the ALP, now led by Jack Duggan, crossed the floor and voted against the Government. Sensing his long-denied chance had come, Nicklin instructed the Coalition to block supply as well, bringing the Gair government down. It had been the shortest session of Parliament in Queensland's history.
Premiership
In the ensuing 3 August election, every QLP MP faced an ALP challenger, while every ALP MP faced a QLP challenger. This created dozens of three-cornered contests, and the two Labor factions could not direct preferences to each other even if they'd wanted to do so.
Taking advantage of the split in the Labor vote, Nicklin's Country-Liberal coalition came to power with 42 seats – the first non-Labor Government since 1932. The two Labor factions won only 31 seats between them.[ Nicklin was the first of six consecutive Country/National Party leaders to become Premier.
Nicklin's first priority was to reverse the zonal electoral system in favour of his Government. Nicklin's redistribution was fairer than Hanlon's, but it still favoured the Country Party.][ The far-western region went down from five seats to three, and the provincial cities (which had traditionally voted ALP) were separated from their hinterlands, in which new Country Party seats were created. As a result, Liberals gained new seats in Brisbane, and in return they agreed not to contest the zonal electoral system, despite the fact that it allowed the Country Party to be the senior coalition partner even if it won fewer votes than the Liberal Party (which it did after 1966). Another electoral reform in the form of compulsory preferential voting was introduced in 1960, when it became clear that the QLP no longer posed a threat, and that QLP voters were likely to give their preferences to a Country-Liberal coalition over the ALP in any event. Largely on the strength of QLP preferences, the Coalition scored a healthy four-seat swing in the 1960 state election—the first time since 1912 that a non-Labor government had been reelected. The QLP eventually became the Queensland branch of the Democratic Labor Party.
The Country and Liberal Parties enjoyed a harmonious relationship, with Nicklin and Liberal leader Kenneth Morris being friends as well as colleagues.][ The parties had some disputes over seat allocation in the mid-1960s, and Morris was not always an easy man to work with, but on the whole the Nicklin Government saw a period of remarkably cordial relations between the Nationals and Liberals, especially compared with the strife of later years. Morris retired in 1962 and was succeeded by Sir Alan Munro, also a staunch coalitionist. After only three years, Munro handed the Liberal leadership to Sir , who was also a very staunch coalitionist.
By comparison with the political turbulence in Queensland during the 1950s and the 1970s, the 1960s were singularly subdued. Primarily the Nicklin Government concentrated on employment relations and on developing the state's infrastructure. In general, Nicklin saw little reason to lose electoral capital by passing tough industrial relations laws during times of prosperity. However, the most serious crises of the Nicklin Premiership were based in poor handling of unions.
In 1961, at Morris' insistence, the old Industrial Court was replaced by the Industrial Relations and Arbitration Commission, which had less power. It could not raise award payments, although it could decrease them. At the time, the miners of Mount Isa Mines (MIM) were lodging a claim for a wage rise, which could not go through the new commission. This resulted in a strike which only ended with an uneasy truce. The dispute broke out again in 1964, and again the mine needed to be closed down. Here, Nicklin acted erratically. First he did nothing for months, then passed a harsh order-in-council expanding police powers to deal with the strike. This came just as the issues behind the strike were being resolved, and caused the negotiations to break down again. While the mines could eventually reopen, Nicklin was condemned for poor handling of the crisis.][
As he was leading a government that lacked experience, Nicklin knew that he would be relying heavily on Queensland's leading bureaucrats. He treated the public service union with care, restoring the privilege of a half-day's leave to visit the annual exhibition.
Nicklin viewed his own achievements as Premier in terms of state development. Like most Queensland Premiers, he believed in building and capital works. Under Nicklin, road mileage doubled, irrigated land doubled, and a number of projects such as the ]Moogerah Dam
The Moogerah Dam is a mass concrete double curvature arch dam with an un-gated spillway across the Reynolds Creek that is located in the South East region of Queensland, Australia. The main purposes of the dam are for irrigation of the Reynold ...
were undertaken. Mining boomed – total mining output almost trebled, and Weipa became the largest bauxite mine in the world. The Nicklin Government, especially through effective Treasurers such as Tom Hiley, was good at attracting foreign customers for Queensland's minerals and other produce.
Probably Nicklin is best remembered for his probity, which earned him the nickname 'Honest Frank'. It is not recorded who first coined the term, but it spread quickly and was widely accepted, even by Nicklin's opponents, as being accurate. Nicklin was not widely known when he became Premier, and while he was too modest a man to indulge in self-aggrandising publicity he was skilled enough as a politician to benefit from the way in which his reputation for decency stuck with him.[
Nicklin held his Cabinet to high standards. He was only forced to dismiss ministers on two occasions, once for tax evasion and once for a sexual harassment scandal, and in both cases he lied to cover the real reasons for the ministers' departure. These stories seem to be the only deliberate untruths he ever told to the public while in office. Nicklin's hold over his cabinet was firm, and there was no question that ministers who could not live up to Nicklin's standards were summarily dismissed.
From 1966 Nicklin's health declined markedly, and at the end of 1967 he announced that he would retire from politics on 17 January 1968. He had served 35 years in the legislature and 27 years as leader of the non-Labor forces in Queensland. His 10 years and five months as Premier was then a Queensland record. In 1968 he was knighted, and in a rare concession to formality chose to be dubbed 'Sir Francis'. He died on 29 January 1978, aged 82. At his own choice, he was not given the pomp and ceremony of a state funeral.][
]
Assessment
In many ways, Nicklin broke the mould of Queensland Premiers. Neither authoritarian nor populist in temperament, he was willing to share the power for which he had been forced to wait many years, and he was prepared to defer to those whom he knew to possess greater knowledge or talent than he. Both of these traits made his Government successful. His outstanding achievement was probably the mere fact that his Premiership was such a quiet and uneventful time. He was friendly and well liked by the people of Queensland, and was known as 'the gentleman Premier'.
Still, there is some debate over whether Nicklin's geniality was entirely genuine or whether it concealed an iron fist. There were rumours that he inspired fear in his cabinet, although this is common among successful Premiers and Prime Ministers. He remains something of a paradox – determined yet open, honest and outwardly benevolent. Not the wisest or most imaginative of Queensland Premiers, he nonetheless achieved a good deal without needing to hog the limelight. He was lucky to have been in office during a time of stability and prosperity, and it is true that his administration benefited from the parlous state of the ALP after Gair's downfall. Even so, his Premiership is generally considered by historians to have been a success.
The state electorate of Nicklin and the Nicklin Way
Nicklin Way (SR6) is a major road in Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. It is named after former Queensland Premier Frank Nicklin, who opened the road on 5 June 1965. It runs from the southern end of the Sunshine Motorway at Mooloolaba in ...
arterial road, both based on the Sunshine Coast, are named in his honour.
References
Further reading
* Stevenson, B. (2003). "George Francis Reuben Nicklin – The Gentleman Premier," in ''The Premiers of Queensland'' (Eds. Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb and Rae Wear), University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicklin, Frank
1895 births
1978 deaths
National Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Queensland
Premiers of Queensland
Australian Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George
Australian politicians awarded knighthoods
Australian recipients of the Military Medal
Leaders of the Opposition in Queensland
20th-century Australian politicians
Australian military personnel of World War I
Australian Army soldiers
Volunteer Defence Corps officers