biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1862–1928)
|
| biography:
| Australian politician and prime minister (1908–9, 1910–13, 1914–15), born in Crosshouse, East Ayrshire, SW Scotland, UK. A coal-miner from the age of 12, he emigrated to Queensland in 1885. From mining, he gradually moved into trade union activity and politics, entering the Queensland state assembly in 1893 and the first federal parliament in 1901. He was Australian Labor Party leader in 1907, then prime minister. At the start of World War 1 he made the dramatic promise to support the war effort ‘to the last man and the last shilling’. He later became Australian high commissioner in London (1916–21). |
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