For the actor Joe Cook see Joe Cook (actor).

Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947) was an Australian politician and sixth Prime Minister of Australia.^[1]

Early years

Cook was born in Silverdale, a small mining town near Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. He had no formal education and worked in the coal mines from the age of nine. He married Mary Turner in 1885 and shortly after emigrated to New South Wales.

Cook settled in Lithgow and worked in the coal mines, becoming General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887. In 1888, he participated in demonstrations against Chinese immigration.^[2] He was also active in the Single Tax League and was a founding member of the Australian Labor Party in 1891.^[3]

Political career

Joseph Cook in 1894

Federal Parliament

When the first federal Parliament was elected in 1901, Cook was elected, unopposed by Labor, member for Parramatta, a seat which then included the Lithgow area.^[2] He became Reid's deputy, but did not hold office in Reid's 1904-05 ministry, mainly because Reid needed to offer portfolios to independent Protectionist members. When Reid retired from the party leadership in 1908, Cook agreed to merge the Free Traders with Alfred Deakin's Protectionists, and became deputy leader of the new Commonwealth Liberal Party.

Cook served as Defence Minister in Deakin's 1909-1910 ministry, then succeeded Deakin as Liberal leader when the government was defeated by Labor in the 1910 elections. He had by this time become completely philosophically opposed to socialism.

Prime Minister

upright

Unfortunately for Cook, World War I broke out in the middle of the election campaign for the September 1914 election. Fisher was able to remind the voters that it was Labor which had favoured an independent Australian defence force, which the conservatives had opposed. Cook was defeated and Fisher resumed office.^[3]

Nationalist Party

In 1916 the Labor government split when Fisher's successor, Billy Hughes, tried to introduce conscription. Cook agreed to become Hughes's deputy in the new Nationalist Party, and became Minister for the Navy in Hughes's government. The Nationalists had huge victories in the 1917 and 1919 elections. Cook was part of the Australian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference where he defended the White Australia Policy and supported Australia's annexation of German New Guinea. He was Treasurer (finance minister) 1920-21.

Cook resigned from Parliament in 1921 and was appointed Australian High Commissioner in London, where he served until 1927. In 1928?1929 he headed the Royal Commission into South Australia as affected by Federation. He died in Sydney in 1947, aged 86.

Honours

Bust of Joseph Cook by sculptor Wallace Anderson located in the Prime Minister's Avenue in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens

See also

• Cook Ministry

Notes

Further reading

• G Bebbington, Pit Boy to Prime Minister, University of Keele, no date (quite rare but the only attempt at a Cook biography to date)

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