Clyde Holding

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Allan Clyde Holding (born 27 April 1931), Australian politician, was Leader of the Opposition in Victoria for ten years, and was later a federal minister.

Holding was born in Melbourne and educated at Trinity Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated in law. He joined the Australian Labor Party as a student, and during the Labor Party split of 1954-55, during which he supported the party’s federal leader, Dr H.V. Evatt, he was Secretary of the Young Labor organisation in Victoria. As a young lawyer he was a prominent campaigner against the death penalty and in favour of the rights of indigenous Australians. His law firm, Holding, Ryan and Redlich, became one of the leading industrial law firms in Melbourne.

In 1962 Holding was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Richmond, which had previously been held for many years by conservative Catholic Labor members. The Labor Party had been in opposition in Victoria since the 1955 split and was in a very weak state. The Opposition Leader, Clive Stoneham, was no match for the dominant Liberal Premier, Sir Henry Bolte. After Labor suffered its fourth straight defeat at the 1967 elections, Holding was elected party leader.

Although Holding was in some ways a social radical, he was opposed to the left-wing faction which had taken control of the Victorian Labor Party following the 1955 split, which had seen many right-wing members expelled. In particular, he supported government aid for non-government, including Catholic, schools, which the left bitterly opposed. He was a supporter of the reforming federal Labor leader, Gough Whitlam, who was determined to reform the Victorian branch as a precondition of winning a federal election. He was also a close ally of the ACTU president, Bob Hawke.

During the 1970 state election campaign, which some commentators suggested Labor could win as a result of voter fatigue with the Liberals after their 15 years in power, Holding campaigned on the new federal policy of supporting state aid to non-government schools. The week before the election, the left-wing state president, George Crawford and state secretary, Bill Hartley, issued a statement saying that a Victorian Labor government would not support state aid. As a result Whitlam refused to campaign for Labor in Victoria, and Holding was forced to repudiate his own policy. Faced with evidence of Labor disunity, the voters re-elected the Bolte government.

This episode led directly to federal intervention in the Victorian branch of the Labor Party. In 1971 the left-wing leadership was overturned by the National Executive and allies of Whitlam, Hawke and Holding took control. The left then formed an organised faction, the Socialist Left, to agitate for socialist policies, supported by some unions. This continuing conflict in the party made it difficult for Holding to oppose the Liberal government effectively. The surge in support for federal Labor which saw Whitlam elected Prime Minister in 1972 was not reflected in Victorian state politics. Bolte retired in 1972, and his successor, Dick Hamer, comfortably won the 1973 and 1976 state elections.

Holding resigned as Opposition Leader after the 1976 elections, and in 1977 he was elected to the House of Representatives as member for the seat of Melbourne Ports, which then included Holding’s base in Richmond. He defeated Simon Crean, son of the retiring member Frank Crean, to win Labor preselection. After the 1980 election, at which Hawke was elected to federal Parliament, Holding emerged as Hawke’s key “numbers man” in his campaign to become leader of the federal Labor Party.

When Hawke was elected Prime Minister at the 1983 elections, he insisted that Holding be included in the ministry, and gave him the difficult but symbolically important portfolio of Aboriginal Affairs. Holding was a strong supporter of land rights for indigenous Australians, and his main ambition as minister was to bring in legislation for uniform national land rights, which the 1967 amendment to the Australian Constitution would have permitted. But the Labor Premier of Western Australia, Brian Burke, strongly objected to such a step, which would have upset the powerful mining and pastoral industries in his state. Burke lobbied Hawke and as a result Holding was forced by Hawke to drop the proposal. This was the end of Holding’s close relationship with Hawke.

In 1987 Holding was shifted to the portfolio of Employment Services and Youth Affairs. In 1988 shifted again to Transport and Communications Support. A few months later he was promoted to Cabinet and made Minister for Immigration, but later in the year there was another reshuffle and he was demoted to the Arts and Territories portfolio, outside Cabinet. He held this post until the 1990 elections, when he was dropped from the ministry. He remained in the House as a backbencher until his retirement in 1998.

Preceded by Clive Stoneham	Leader of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria 1967–1977	Succeeded by Frank Wilkes
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Frank Crean	Member for Melbourne Ports 1977–1998	Succeeded by Michael Danby
Preceded by None	Minister for Aboriginal Affairs 1984–1987	Succeeded by Gerry Hand
Preceded by Ralph Willis	Minister for Employment Services and Youth Affairs 1987–1988	Succeeded by Peter Duncan
Preceded by Peter Duncan	Minister for Transport and Communications Support 1987–1988	Succeeded by Peter Morris
Preceded by Mick Young	Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs 1988	Succeeded by Robert Ray
Preceded by John Brown	Minister for the Arts and Territories 1988–1990	Succeeded by Ros Kelly