Sydney McHugh (21 March 1892 – 20 September 1952) was an Australian politician. Born in

Quorn, South Australia Quorn is a small town and railhead in the Flinders Ranges in the north of South Australia, northeast of Port Augusta. At the , the locality had a population of 1,230, of which 1,131 lived in its town centre. Quorn is the home of the Flinders R ...

, he was educated at state schools before becoming a farmer and grazier. He served in the military from 1914 to 1918, 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 ...

. In 1924, he was elected to 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 ...

as the

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 ...

member for

Burra Burra Burra is a pastoral centre and historic tourist town in the mid-north of South Australia. It lies east of the Clare Valley in the Bald Hills range, part of the northern Mount Lofty Ranges, and on Burra Creek. The town began as a single company ...

. He was defeated in 1927, but held the seat again from 1930 to 1933. He transferred to the federal House of Representatives in 1938, winning a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

for the seat of

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

caused by the death of the sitting

United Australia Party The United Australia Party (UAP) was an Australian political party that was founded in 1931 and dissolved in 1945. The party won four federal elections in that time, usually governing in coalition with the Country Party. It provided two prim ...

member, Charles Hawker. McHugh faced long odds on paper. He needed a seemingly daunting 13 percent swing to win the seat, and his UAP opponent was former South Australian Premier

Richard Layton Butler Sir Richard Layton Butler KCMG (31 March 1885 – 21 January 1966) was the 31st Premier of South Australia, serving two disjunct terms in office: from 1927 to 1930, and again from 1933 to 1938. Early life Born on a farm near Gawler, South Austr ...

. However, on the third count, independent

Percy Quirke Percival Hillam Quirke (29 July 1898 – 25 March 1972) was an Australian politician. A farmer and soldier prior to entering politics, Quirke contested the normally safely conservative federal seat of Wakefield in a 1938 by-election as an i ...

's preferences flowed overwhelmingly to McHugh, allowing McHugh to take the seat on a shocking 20 percent swing. The seat's conservative nature reasserted itself in the 1940 election, when McHugh was defeated by UAP challenger

Jack Duncan-Hughes John Grant "Jack" Duncan-Hughes (1 September 1882 – 13 August 1962) was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for Boothby from 1922 to 1928, of the Australian Senate for South Australia fr ...

, the former member for Boothby. McHugh returned to state politics, winning the seat of

Light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 tera ...

in 1941 and holding it until 1944. He died in 1952 (aged 60).

References

Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Wakefield Members of the Australian House of Representatives Members of the South Australian House of Assembly 1892 births 1952 deaths 20th-century Australian politicians People from Quorn, South Australia Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of South Australia {{Australia-Labor-representative-stub