From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rt Hon Sir John Gorton
19th Prime Minister of Australia Elections: 1969
In office 10 January 1968 – 10 March 1971
Preceded by	John McEwen
Succeeded by	William McMahon
Born	9 September 1911(1911-09-09) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died	19 May 2002 (aged 90)
Political party	Liberal

Sir John Grey Gorton GCMG AC CH (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002), Australian politician, was the 19th Prime Minister of Australia.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Political career 3 Prime Minister 4 Honours 5 See also 6 Footnotes 7 Further reading 8 External links

John Grey Gorton was born near Melbourne, the son of an orange orchardist John Rose Gorton, an Englishman who had emigrated to Australia via South Africa, where he had prospered during the Boer War. The senior Gorton had separated from his wife, and later had two children (John jr and a daughter) out of wedlock with Alice Sinn, the daughter of an Irish railway worker. Alice died of tuberculosis when the younger John Gorton was seven, and he went to live with his father's estranged wife in Sydney ^[1]. He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School, Geelong Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1935 he married Bettina Brown of Maine, USA. Together they had three children: Joanna, Michael and Robin. Five years later he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot. He survived two serious crashes, and in one he suffered severe cranio-facial injuries, requiring extensive re-constructive surgery that left his face permanently disfigured.

Although Gorton had been a member of the Country Party before the war, in 1949 he was elected to the Senate for the Liberal Party. He served in various positions under Robert Menzies and Harold Holt, including Minister for the Navy, Minister for Works, Minister for the Interior and Minister for Education as well as Leader of the Government in the Senate. Gorton was an energetic and capable minister, and began to be considered leadership material once he moderated his early extremely right-wing views.

Harold Holt disappeared while swimming on 17 December 1967 and was declared presumed drowned two days later. His presumed successor was Liberal deputy leader William McMahon. However, on 18 December, the Country Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen announced that the Country Party would not continue to serve in the coalition if McMahon were to be the new Liberal leader. His reasons were never stated publicly, but in a private meeting with McMahon, he said "I will not serve under you because I do not trust you". ^[2] McEwen's shock declaration triggered a leadership crisis within the Liberal Party; even more significantly, it raised the threat of a possible breaking of the Coalition, which would spell electoral disaster for the Liberals -- they were only able to win and hold power with Country Party support, and the Liberal Party had never won sufficient seats in any federal election to be able to govern in its own right.

The Governor-General Lord Casey swore McEwen in as Prime Minister, on an interim basis pending the Liberal Party electing its new leader. McEwen agreed to accept an interim appointment provided there was no formal statement of time limit. This appointment was in keeping with previous occasions when a coalition conservative government had been deprived of its leader. ^[3] Casey also concurred in the view put to him by McEwen that to commission a Liberal temporarily as Prime Minister would give that person an unfair advantage in the forthcoming party room ballot for the permanent leader.

In the subsequent leadership struggle, Gorton was championed by Army Minister Malcolm Fraser and Liberal Party Whip Dudley Erwin, and with their support he was able to defeat his main rival, the Minister for External Affairs Paul Hasluck, to become Liberal leader even though he was a member of the Senate. He was elected party leader on 9 January 1968, and appointed Prime Minister on 10 January, replacing McEwen. He became the only Senator in Australian parliamentary history to be Prime Minister. He remained a Senator until, in accordance with the Westminister tradition that the Prime Minister is a member of the lower house of parliament, he resigned on 1 February 1968 in order to contest the House of Representatives by-election for the electorate of Higgins (necessitated by Holt's death). That by-election was held on 24 February; there were three other candidates, but Gorton achieved a massive 68% of the formal vote. He visited all the polling booths during the day, but was unable to vote for himself as he was still enrolled in the western Victorian seat of Mallee^[4]. Between 1 February and 24 February he was a member of neither house of parliament.

Gorton was initially a very popular Prime Minister. He carved out a style quite distinct from those of his predecessors - the aloof Menzies and the affable, sporty Holt. Gorton liked to portray himself as a man of the people who enjoyed a beer and a gamble, with a bit of a "larrikin" streak about him. Unfortunately for him, this reputation later came back to haunt him.

He also began to follow new policies, pursuing independent defence and foreign policies and distancing Australia from its traditional ties to Britain. But he continued to support Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, a position he had reluctantly inherited from Holt, which became increasingly unpopular after 1968. On domestic issues, he favoured centralist policies at the expense of the states, which alienated powerful Liberal state leaders like Sir Henry Bolte of Victoria and Sir Robert Askin of New South Wales. He also fostered an independent Australian film industry and increased government funding for the arts.

Gorton proved to be a surprisingly poor media performer and public speaker, and was portrayed by the media as a foolish and incompetent administrator. He was unlucky to come up against a new and formidable Labor Opposition Leader in Gough Whitlam. Also, he was subjected to media speculation about his drinking habits and his involvements with women. He generated great resentment within his party, and his opponents became increasingly critical of his reliance on an inner circle of advisers - most notably his private secretary Ainsley Gotto. At the 1969 elections, the Coalition lost the two-party preferred vote, but the Democratic Labor Party's longstanding practice of preferencing against Labor allowed the Coalition to win enough seats to stay in office. The Coalition lost most of the sizeable majority in the House of Representatives they had inherited from Holt - it was reduced from 45 seats to seven.

After the election, Gorton was challenged for the Liberal leadership by David Fairbairn, but so long as McEwen's veto on McMahon remained in place, he was fairly safe. McEwen retired in January 1971, and his successor, Doug Anthony, told the Liberals that the veto no longer applied. With the Liberal Party falling further behind Labor in the polls, a challenge was launched in March with the resignation of the Defence Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who attacked Gorton on the floor of Parliament in his resignation speech, saying that Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister."

Gorton called a Liberal Party meeting to settle the matter. A motion of confidence in his leadership was tied. He could have kept his position by using his casting vote but he chose to resign, and McMahon was then elected leader and thus Prime Minister. In a surprise move, Gorton contested and won the position of Deputy Leader, forcing McMahon to make him Defence Minister. This farcical situation ended within a few months when McMahon sacked him for disloyalty.

After Labor won the 1972 election, Gorton served in the Shadow Ministry of Billy Snedden until after the 1974 election, when he was dropped. When Fraser became Liberal leader in 1975, Gorton resigned from the party and sat as an independent. He denounced the dismissal of the Whitlam government by Sir John Kerr, and unsuccessfully stood for an Australian Capital Territory Senate seat at the 1975 election as an independent.

Gorton retired to Canberra, where he kept out of the political limelight, although he quietly rejoined the Liberal Party. Bettina Gorton died in 1983, and in 1993 he remarried Nancy Home. In his old age he was rehabilitated by the Liberals; his 90th birthday party was attended by Prime Minister John Howard. He died in his ninety-first year in Sydney.

Gorton was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1968, a Companion of Honour in 1971, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1977 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1988.

• First Gorton Ministry
• Second Gorton Ministry

• Alan Reid, The Gorton Experiment, Shakespeare Head Press, 1971 (highly critical)
• Ian Hancock, John Gorton: He Did It His Way, Hodder, 2002 (sympathetic)

• John Gorton - Australia's Prime Ministers / National Archives of Australia
• John Gorton at the National Film and Sound Archive

Political offices
Preceded by Charles Davidson	Minister for the Navy 1958 – 1963	Succeeded by Jim Forbes
Preceded by Gordon Freeth	Minister for Works 1963 – 1967	Succeeded by Bert Kelly
	Minister for the Interior 1963 – 1964	Succeeded by Doug Anthony
New title	Minister in charge of Commonwealth Activities in Education and Research 1963 – 1966	Succeeded by Malcolm Fraser
	Minister for Education 1966 – 1968
Preceded by John McEwen	Prime Minister of Australia 1968 – 1971	Succeeded by William McMahon
Preceded by Malcolm Fraser	Minister for Defence 1971	Succeeded by David Fairbairn
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Harold Holt	Member for Higgins 1968 – 1975	Succeeded by Roger Shipton
Party political offices
Preceded by Harold Holt	Leader of the Liberal Party 1968 – 1971	Succeeded by William McMahon

v • d • e Prime Ministers of Australia
Barton · Deakin · Watson · Reid · Fisher · Cook · Hughes · Bruce · Scullin · Lyons · Page · Menzies · Fadden · Curtin · Forde · Chifley · Holt · McEwen · Gorton · McMahon · Whitlam · Fraser · Hawke · Keating · Howard · Rudd

v • d • e Leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia
Menzies · Holt · Gorton · McMahon · Snedden · Fraser · Peacock · Howard · Peacock · Hewson · Downer · Howard · Nelson