Ted Theodore

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Hon Ted Theodore

Edward Granville Theodore (29 December 1884 - 28 February 1950), Australian politician, was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the second son of a Romanian immigrant called Basil Teodorescu. He was educated at a state primary school in Adelaide, but left school at 12 to work on the Adelaide docks. In 1900 he left for the goldfields of Western Australia, but failed to make his fortune there and decided to try his luck at Broken Hill, New South Wales, instead. In 1907 he moved to north Queensland, where he prospected for tin in the Chillagoe area.

Theodore was an active trade unionist and became a leading member of the Amalgamated Workers Association in his area. This union later merged with Australia's largest union, the Australian Workers Union (AWU), and Theodore became Queensland state president of the AWU in 1913. Meanwhile, he had been elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1909 for the Australian Labor Party. His position in the AWU made him a power in the Parliamentary Labor Party, and when Labor won a majority in the Assembly for the first time in 1915, he became Treasurer and Secretary for Public Works in the government of Thomas Ryan.

In 1919 Ryan resigned and Theodore succeeded him as Premier of what was then Australia's only Labor state government, following the great split in the Labor Party over the issue of conscription in World War I. He was a popular and successful Premier, and soon began to be talked about as a possible federal Labor leader. It was during his term that the upper house of Parliament was abolished. In 1925 he resigned as Premier and stood for a Queensland seat at the federal election, but was unexpectedly defeated.

Theodore was elected to the House of Representatives for the seat of Dalley in Sydney at a by-election in 1927. His status as an outsider in Sydney Labor politics was a permanent problem for him, but he soon made his mark in federal Parliament. In 1929 he became Deputy Leader of the Labor Party under James Scullin. In October 1929 Scullin defeated the conservative government of Stanley Bruce and became Prime Minister, while Theodore became Treasurer.

The effects of the Great Depression were soon felt in Australia, and the Scullin government, like most others, had no solutions to mounting unemployment and the collapse of world trade, on which Australia's export-based economy depended.

Meanwhile, a conservative government had taken power in Queensland, and appointed a Royal Commission to investigate Theodore's financial dealings while he had been Premier. The Commission found that Theodore and another Labor minister, William McCormack, had corruptly profited by authorising the purchase by the state of a copper mine at Mungana while concealing the fact that they had a financial interest in the mine, which furthermore was not economically viable. In June 1930 the "Mungana Affair" forced Theodore's resignation.

Without Theodore's leadership and financial skills, the Scullin government drifted into deeper crisis. When it became apparent that the Queensland government did not intend charging Theodore with any offence, Scullin re-appointed him as Treasurer, in January 1931. This led to the resignation of a conservative group of ministers led by Joseph Lyons, who soon left the Labor Party and became Opposition Leader.

During 1931 Theodore faced the greatest economic crisis in Australian history. The government imported an advisor from the Bank of England, Dr Otto Niemeyer, who recommended an "orthodox" solution, including sharp reductions in government spending such as pensions and unemployment benefits. The radical Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, on the other hand, campaigned for the repudiation of Australia's debt to bond-holders in London.

Theodore rejected both these alternatives and proposed instead an expansion of credit to farmers and small business, through the issue of "fiduciary notes" which could be redeemed after the Depression. His Fiduciary Notes Bill was denounced as financially unsound by orthodox economists and the banks, and was eventually defeated in the Senate. Theodore has been described as a visionary proto-Keynesian for this proposal, although it cannot be known what effect his measures would have had on the Depression had the bill been passed.

In late 1931 the followers of Lyons and Lang joined in the House of Representatives to pass a no-confidence motion in the Scullin government, and an election was held in December. Theodore had no base of support in Sydney and he lost his seat to a Lang candidate. This ended his political career, although several offers were made to him during the 1930s to return. Instead he went into business, becoming a business partner of Frank Packer in gold-mining ventures in Fiji and other enterprises, making him a rich man. He was chairman of directors of Packer's press company, Consolidated Press, and director of several other companies.

During World War II Theodore served the Curtin and Chifley governments as Director of the Allied Works Council. After the war his health declined and he died in 1950. Subsequent Labor leaders such as Gough Whitlam regarded Theodore as a potentially great "lost leader" of the Labor Party, although it is unlikely that he could have become Party leader after the Mungana Affair. The full truth of this matter is still debated, but the balance of opinion is that Theodore did act corruptly in relation to the mine purchase.

[edit] Further reading

Red Ted: The Life of E. G. Theodore, Ross Fitzgerald, University of Queensland Press, 1994
The Mungana Affair: State Mining and Political Corruption in the 1920s, K. H. Kennedy, University of Queensland Press, 1978

Preceded by T.J. Ryan	Premier of Queensland 1919–1925	Succeeded by William Gillies
Preceded by Dr Earle Page	Treasurer of Australia 1929–1930	Succeeded by James Scullin
Preceded by James Scullin	Treasurer of Australia 1931-1932	Succeeded by Joseph Lyons
Preceded by Arthur Blakeley	Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party 1929–1931	Succeeded by Frank Forde