Justin Fox Greenlaw Foxton
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Justin Fox Greenlaw Foxton C.M.G. (September 24, 1849 - June 23, 1916) was an Australian politician, barrister and soldier.
Foxton was born in Melbourne and educated at the private Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, graduating in 1862. He moved to Queensland in 1864 where he was admitted to the bar in 1871. He practised as a solicitor at Stanthorpe, and then went to Brisbane and entered into partnership with his old mentor, J. M. Thompson. Foxton held the Legislative Assembly seat of Carnarvon from 1883 until 1904. Defeated at the 1904 elections he entered federal politics as a member for Brisbane in the House of Representatives in 1906, and was minister without portfolio in the third Deakin ministry from June 1909 to April 1910, when he was defeated at the general election.
Foxton joined the old volunteer forces when a very young man and rose to be brigadier in command of the Queensland field force (Commonwealth military forces). He represented Australia at the Imperial conference on naval and military defence of empire in 1909, and was for some time A.D.C. to the Governor General of Australia. He was keenly interested in cricket, was president of the Queensland Cricket Association, chairman of trustees of the Brisbane Cricket Ground, and a member of the Australian board of control. He brought in a factories and shops act in 1896 which showed a distinct advance in humanitarian legislation, and its provisions were further extended in his factories and shops act of 1900. These acts made him justly known as the father of shop and factory legislation in Queensland. He also implemented the 1901 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act. This Act, the first effective such measure in Queensland, implemented a system of policed missions and reserves and stopped some female exploitation.
He died at Brisbane of cerebro-vascular disease.
[edit] References
- Serle, Percival. (1949). "Foxton, Justin Fox Greenlaw". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
- Waterson, D. B. Foxton, Justin Fox Greenlaw (1849 - 1916), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, Melbourne University Press, 1981, pp 569-570.
