John Frederick Herbert (16 September 1868 – 26 June 1943) was an Australian politician who represented the

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 The House of Assembly was creat ...

multi-member An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections ma ...

seat of

Wallaroo Wallaroo is a common name for several species of moderately large macropods, intermediate in size between the kangaroos and the wallabies. The word "wallaroo" is from the Dharug ''walaru'', and not a portmanteau of the words "kangaroo" and "wal ...

from 1912 to 1918. He represented the

United Labor Party The South Australian Labor Party, officially known as the Australian Labor Party (South Australian Branch) and commonly referred to simply as South Australian Labor, is the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party, originally formed ...

until he joined the National Party in the 1917 Labor split. Herbert was born at

, and was a carpenter by trade. He moved to

Broken Hill Broken Hill is an inland mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, Australia. It is near the border with South Australia on the crossing of the Barrier Highway (A32) and the Silver City Highway (B79), in the Barrier Range. It is ...

at a young age, where he was involved in the

1892 Broken Hill miners' strike The 1892 Broken Hill miners' strike was a sixteen-week strike which was one of four major strikes that took place between 1889 and 1920 in Broken Hill, NSW, Australia. During the four months from July to November 1892, both local miners and ...

. He returned to Wallaroo over a decade later, where he was a

Corporate Town of Wallaroo The Corporate Town of Wallaroo was a local government area in South Australia from 1874 to 1997, centred on the town of Wallaroo. History The municipality was proclaimed on 25 June 1874, following a petition from local residents that February, ...

councillor for eight years, including as mayor in 1912 and 1913, and later town clerk for sixteen years, resigning the latter role in 1936 due to ill health. He was an active sportsman, variously successful at football, cricket swimming and rowing. He was a member of the

Independent Order of Oddfellows Manchester Unity Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independen ...

for over sixty years, and was secretary of the Wallaroo lodge for many years. Herbert was elected to the House of Assembly for the United Labor Party at the 1912 state election. He was re-elected unopposed in 1915. He left the Labor Party for the new National Party in the 1917 Labor split over conscription. He was overwhelmingly defeated by a Labor candidate when he ran for re-election at the 1918 election, polling less than half the Labor vote even at Wallaroo township.

References

1868 births 1943 deaths Members of the South Australian House of Assembly Mayors of places in South Australia Colony of South Australia people {{Australia-politician-stub