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Sir George Houston Reid (1845–1918), Premier, Prime Minister and High
Commissioner, was born on 25 February 1845 at Johnstone, Renfrewshire,
Scotland, youngest. The family moved to Liverpool two months later, and in
May 1852 arrived in Melbourne.
George Reid spent some time at the Melbourne Academy (Scotch College)
where, he recalled, he learned to ‘read, write and count fairly well’, but
had ‘a lazy horror of Greek’. When he arrived in Sydney at 13 he was
placed as a junior clerk in a merchant’s counting-house.
In 1864 he became an assistant accountant in the Colonial Treasury. The
annual salary of £200 was enough to enable him to enjoy life, and acquire
a reputation as a bon vivant and something of a ladies’ man. Later he was
to speak of a youth misspent on pleasure, but the facts hardly match this
interpretation.
At 15 he had joined the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts Debating Society,
later becoming one of its leading figures; he was active in the Young
Men’s Presbyterian Union, for a time as secretary; and he did not neglect
his work, as his rapid promotion in the treasury indicates — by 1874 he
was chief clerk of the correspondence branch and his salary had doubled.
He had published a pamphlet, The diplomacy of Victoria on the postal
question (1873), which set out the New South Wales case in favour of
establishing mail-steamer routes other than the subsidised Peninsular and
Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s service which terminated at Melbourne.
Reid early showed a strong interest in politics. In the late 1850s he
attended many of the public debates on manhood suffrage and other
democratic reforms, where he was struck by ‘the unbridled eloquence’ of
political reformers, and ‘the gloomy forebodings’ of their conservative
opponents; such impressions laid the basis of an approach to political
issues which if never cynical was always pragmatic.
Reid’s ability to see both sides of a controversial question accounted for
his eventual undeserved reputation as a fence-sitter that in 1898 won him
the tag ‘Yes-No Reid’. But on one issue he saw little scope for compromise
— the question of free trade and protection.
In the mid-1870s Reid was aware of the need for a coherent defence of
free-trade principles.
On 19 September 1879 Reid was admitted to the Bar. He had begun serious
reading in 1876, and as a result was appointed secretary of the Attorney
General’s Department in 1878. His decision to study law was essentially
motivated by his political ambitions. As a public servant he could not sit
in parliament, but he now had a profession which might enable him to enter
politics.
In November Reid nominated for the four-member constituency of East
Sydney. His speeches earned an opinion of him as perhaps the best platform
speaker in the Empire. He topped the poll.
Reid was not prepared to sacrifice his busy social life and had to devote
much time to establishing his Bar practice: he was not therefore a very
active member during his early years in parliament, though he took up the
cause of a free public library and was responsible for an important
measure on the width of streets and lanes.
He was dissatisfied with the government’s unwillingness to reform the land
laws; but there was also some mysterious personal quarrel with Parkes
which, despite later co-operation in defence of free trade, remained
unhealed until Parkes’s last days. Reid clashed frequently with ministers
over such matters as their legislation against Chinese, local option and
civil service reform; and in October he mounted an attack on their land
policy.
The Public Instruction Act of 1880, based on the idea of ‘free, compulsory
and secular’ education, had, like most laws which seek to turn a slogan
into a policy, produced something close to administrative chaos. Reid’s
vigorous, imaginative and liberal direction not only sorted this out at
the primary level but also established the colony’s first high schools and
the beginning of a system of technical education which became a model for
the other colonies. In October 1883 he introduced the bill which
inaugurated degree courses for evening students at the University of
Sydney.
In January 1884 Reid was unseated because of an administrative oversight.
By the time he was returned in the election of November 1885 the political
situation had changed greatly. Reid maintained an attitude of independence
during the chaotic factional maneuvering which followed this election.
However, Reid and Parkes vigorously attacked the customs duties bill, and
when the government collapsed at the end of 1886 and Parkes was sent for,
he offered Reid his choice of ministry. Reid declined, apparently because
of his distrust of Parkes’s motives and perhaps also because of a
conviction that he would be swallowed up by the Premier.
He sought to be Parkes’s equal, not his subordinate, in the crusade
against protection which was to give New South Wales politics its
direction for the rest of the century. In the following election his
campaign paralleled the premier’s; when Parkes was confirmed in office
Reid was again offered a portfolio and again he declined.
He also declined the speakership. During the next two years Reid acted as
a kind of back-bench conscience, generally supporting the legislative
programme but frequently criticising it from a liberal point of view: he
was particularly critical of a harsh new measure against Chinese
immigration.
In April 1889 Reid was involved in the establishment of the Free Trade and
Liberal Association of New South Wales to advance a programme of liberal
legislation, based on free trade and direct taxation. Unwilling to allow
an extra-parliamentary organisation to dominate him, Parkes was meanwhile
turning his mind in a new direction, and in June began the Federation
campaign which culminated in the meeting of the National Australasian
Convention in Sydney in March-April 1891. Reid was openly suspicious of
Parkes’s sudden enthusiasm for Federation.
A campaign developed that destroyed any chance of the draft constitution
being accepted in New South Wales. Reid’s objections were based partly on
the belief that the colony’s free-trade principles would be placed in
jeopardy, and that New South Wales by joining would be acting like a
reformed alcoholic who set up house with five drunkards, leaving the
question of beverages to be decided later by majority vote; but equally
important was his conviction that in the powers the draft gave to the
Senate, and in its failure to prescribe responsibility of executive, it
provided inadequate guarantees of democratic government.
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