Presidents of the Australian Senate

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Turley Givens Newlands

Presidents of the Australian Senate

The President of the Australian Senate, is a Senator elected by the Senate. The President chairs meetings of the Senate, is the the spokesperson for the Senate, represents the Senate in dealing with the Governor-General, the executive government, the House of Representatives, persons outside the Parliament, and overseas. The role has its roots in the tradition of speaders of the houses of the British Parliament and the Australian colonial Parliaments.

The first President of the Senate, Richard Baker, said in the Senate in 1904:

The difficulties of the dual position which I am called upon to fill are very great, and I ask that allowances may be made for me. In the first place, I have to perform the ordinary duties of a President or a Speaker, and in the second place, under our Constitution, I have to give not a casting vote, but a deliberative vote when, as it sometimes happens, party feeling runs high. The difficulty of reconciling these dual positions is very great … (Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, 2 March 1904, p. 6)

Source: "The Role of the President of the Senate", Parliament of Australia, Commonwealth of Australia, accessed 9 February 2015.

Presidents of the Senate since 1901

Name	State or Territory	Party	Term of Office
Richard Chaffey Baker	SA	Free Trade	9.5.1901–31.12.1906
Albert John Gould	NSW	Anti-Socialist Party	20.2.1907–30.6.1910
Joseph Henry Lewis Turley	QLD	Australian Labor Party	1.7.1910–8.7.1913
Givens, Henry Thomas	QLD	Australian Labor Party Nationalist Party from 1917	9.7.1913–30.7.1914 8.10.1914–30.6.1926
John Newlands KCMG	SA	Nationalist Party	1.7.1926–13.8.1929
Walter Kingsmill	WA	Nationalist Party	14.8.1929–30.8.1932
Lynch, Patrick Joseph	WA	Nationalist Party	31.8.1932–30.6.1938
John Blyth Hayes	TAS	United Australia Party	1.7.1938–30.6.1941
Cunningham, James	WA	Australian Labor Party	1.7.1941–4.7.1943
Brown, Gordon	QLD	Australian Labor Party	23.9.1943–19.3.1951
Mattner, Edward William	SA	Liberal Party of Australia	12.6.1951–7.9.1953
McMullin, Alister Maxwell	NSW	Liberal Party of Australia	8.9.1953–30.6.1971
Cormack, Magnus Cameron	VIC	Liberal Party of Australia	17.8.1971–11.4.1974
O’Byrne, Justin Hilary	TAS	Australian Labor Party	9.7.1974–11.11.1975
Condor Louis Laucke	SA	Liberal Party of Australia	17.2.1976–30.6.1981
Harold William Young KCMG	SA	Liberal Party of Australia	18.8.1981–4.2.1983
McClelland, Douglas	NSW	Australian Labor Party	21.4.1983–23.1.1987
Sibraa, Kerry Walter	NSW	Australian Labor Party	17.2.1987–5.6.1987 14.9.1987–31.1.1994
Beahan, Michael Eamon	WA	Australian Labor Party	1.2.1994–30.6.1996
Reid, Margaret Elizabeth	ACT	Liberal Party of Australia	20.8.1996–18.8.2002
Calvert, Paul Henry	TAS	Liberal Party of Australia	19.8.2002–14.8.2007
Ferguson, Alan	SA	Liberal Party of Australia	14.8.2007–25.8.2008
Hogg, John	QLD	Australian Labor Party	26.8.2008–6.7.2014
Parry, Stephen	TAS	Liberal Party of Australia	7.7.2014–

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