Robert James Stuart-Robertson (16 September 1866 – 2 June 1933) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

from 1907 until his death and was the Minister for Public Health for 4 months in 1927. He was a member of the Labor Party.

Biography

Stuart-Robertson was born in

Booligal Booligal is a village in the Riverina area of western New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It is located on the Cobb Highway, on the Lachlan River north of Hay. Booligal is a part of Hay Shire local government area. The name of the village is an ...

and was the son of Robert John Stuart Robertson, a self-proclaimed doctor, and Catherine Eleanor JOYCE. Stuart-Robertson's birth date has been claimed as 10 August 1874, however the date of 16 September 1866 is evidenced by his official birth record. He was educated to elementary level at Bourke, where his family moved after his father's alleged death when Stuart-Robertson was 4 years old. Despite the rumour that Robert senior had died during the 1870s in Queensland, Robert senior died on 3 July 1899 at George Street Asylum, Parramatta, New South Wales. Stuart-Robertson undertook a number of unsuccessful retail businesses in Bourke and

Cobar Cobar is a town in central western New South Wales, Australia whose economy is based mainly upon base metals and gold mining. The town is by road northwest of the state capital, Sydney. It is at the crossroads of the Kidman Way and Barrier Hig ...

. During this time he became active in the ALP and was a delegate to the annual State Labor Conference. In 1905 he moved to Sydney and worked as a shop assistant. He helped to found the Shop Assistants Union. At the

1907 Events January * January 14 – 1907 Kingston earthquake: A 6.5 Mw earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, kills between 800 and 1,000. February * February 11 – The French warship ''Jean Bart'' sinks off the coast of Morocco. ...

general election, he was the Australian Labor Party candidate for the Legislative Assembly seat of Camperdown and defeated the sitting member James Smith. The seat of Camperdown was abolished when NSW elections were conducted using proportional representation with multi-member seats between 1920 and 1927. During this time Stuart-Robertson was the ALP member for Balmain. With the reintroduction of single member seats in 1927 he became the member for Annandale, which he represented until his death. Stuart-Robertson remained loyal to the

party leader In a governmental system, a party leader acts as the official representative of their political party, either to a legislature or to the electorate. Depending on the country, the individual colloquially referred to as the "leader" of a political ...

, Jack Lang during the numerous and complex schisms that occurred in the NSW branch of the party in the 1920s and 30s (see

Lang Labor Lang Labor was a faction of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) consisting of the supporters of Jack Lang, who served two terms as Premier of New South Wales and was the party's state leader from 1923 to 1939. Following the expulsion of the N ...

). Lang described him as a "strait-laced reformer" who dressed in a deacon's coat and objected to the advertising of alcohol. As a result, he was unpopular in caucus and his only ministerial appointment was as Minister for Health in a caretaker government prior to the 1927 election. Lang formed this government solely from his supporters when he encountered significant opposition from the caucus elected cabinet. Stuart-Robertson, under the pen name of "D Ross" and at the time Secretary of the Cobar School of Arts, authored a novel entitled ''A Woman (A Tale of Australian Life in the Early Fifties)'', published in 1901 by J A Bradley of the ''Cobar Leader'' office, Barton Street, Cobar, New South Wales. A copy of this book is held in the rare books section of the Mitchell Library, New South Wales.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stuart-Robertson, Robert 1866 births 1933 deaths Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales Colony of New South Wales people