Lindsay Thompson

Lindsay Hamilton Simpson Thompson AO CMG (born October 15, 1923 in Warburton , Victoria , † July 16, 2008 ) was an Australian politician of the Liberal Party of Australia (LPA), who was the 40th Prime Minister of Victoria between 1981 and 1982 .

Life

Study and teacher

Thompson was the son of Arthur Kinnear Thompson and Ethel May Simpson, who were co-founders of the Mentone Girls' Grammar School . After the death of his father in 1925, he was half-orphaned at the age of two and, after attending the grammar school in Caulfield , began his military service in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1942 and was employed as a radio operator in New Guinea until 1945 .

After the war he began in 1946 an undergraduate course at the University of Melbourne , which he graduated in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honors. He then worked as a teacher at the Central School in Malvern between 1951 and 1952 and also completed postgraduate studies in history, which he completed in 1952 with a Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.). He then worked as a teacher at Melbourne High School between 1953 and 1954 , before falling seriously ill in 1954 and giving up teaching.

Party official and member of the Legislative Council

Thompson began his political career in the Liberal Country Party while he was still a student as chairman of the party's youth organization, Young Liberals , in Kew . From 1950 to 1952 he was secretary of the local Liberal Association and then from 1953 to 1954 President of the Liberal Party in Kew.

In a by -election on January 20, 1955, he was elected a member of the Legislative Council , the upper house of the Parliament of Victoria , and represented in this first until April 28, 1967 the interests of Higinbotham and then until his Resignation on May 18, 1970 by Monash . At the beginning of his membership in parliament, between 1955 and 1958, he was a member of the revision committees for libraries, printing, professional standards and legal statutes.

minister

1956 Thompson took his first government post as secretary of the Cabinet before it in July 1958 by Prime Minister Henry Bolte to Vice Chief Secretary of the Cabinet and the Vice-Attorney General in the government of the State of Victoria and held this office until July 1961 from. After a cabinet reshuffle, he served between July 1961 and May 1967 as Minister of Housing and Minister of Forests in the Bolte government, and from 1965 to 1967 as Minister with responsibility for welfare for the Aborigines . At the same time he held the Legislative Council between 1962 and 1970 as deputy chairman of the majority parliamentary group of the Liberal Country Party and was also president of the advisory board of the Caulfield Technical College in 1963 .

After the election of April 29, 1967, Thompson was appointed Minister of Education by Prime Minister Bolte after a new government reshuffle in May 1967 and held this position until May 1979, making him the minister with the longest uninterrupted term in office.

Member of the Legislative Assembly and Vice Prime Minister

In the election of May 30, 1970, Thompson was elected for the first time in the Malvern constituency as a member of the Legislative Assembly , the lower house of the Parliament of Victoria, and belonged to this until his resignation on November 5, 1982. In addition, Thompson, who was voted "Father of the Year" in 1970, was President of the Royal Life Saving Society Australia (RLSSA) between 1970 and 1996 .

In August 1972 he succeeded Bolte's government as prime minister, Rupert Hamer , vice prime minister and at the same time deputy chairman of the Liberal Party. He held these offices until June 1981. He also acted as chief secretary of the cabinet between May 1978 and June 1979.

During his tenure as Minister of Education, the so-called Faraday School Kidnapping occurred on October 6, 1972 . The unemployed friends Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland kidnapped six students and their teachers at the one-class school in the village of Faraday and demanded a ransom of one million Australian dollars . Thompson wanted to hand over the ransom personally, but the teacher and the students managed to escape beforehand, so that the ransom delivery was no longer necessary. For his courage, Thompson was awarded the Royal Humane Society Bronze Medal in 1974 .

After a restructuring of the Hamer government, Thompson, who in 1975 also became Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), became Treasurer in May 1979 and held this ministerial office until April 1982. In addition, he held between May 1979 and June 1981 as Minister for Police and Emergency Services (Minister for Police and Emergency Services) .

Prime Minister, defeated in 1982 and leader of the opposition

After Prime Minister Hamer's resignation, Thompson became his successor as Prime Minister on June 5, 1981, and at the same time took over the chairmanship of the Liberal Party. In addition, he continued to hold the post of finance minister in his government. At his suggestion, Brian Murray was named governor of Victoria in 1982 .

In the election of April 3, 1982, the Liberal Party suffered a serious defeat after decades against the Labor Party of John Cain, Jr. The Labor Party became the strongest party with 1,122,887 votes (50.01 percent), winning 4.77 percentage points as well as 17 seats. For the first time since 1955, it had an absolute majority in the legislative assembly and provided 49 of the 81 members.

Thompson's Liberal Party came in second with 860,669 votes (38.33 percent). It lost 3.11 percentage points and 17 seats, so that it only had 24 seats. In third place came the National Party of Peter Ross-Edwards , which received 111,579 votes (4.97 percent) and was able to keep its eight seats with only slight losses of 0.64 percentage points.

After the election, Cain became the new prime minister, while Thompson became opposition leader . In October 1982 he resigned as Leader of the Opposition and was replaced by Jeff Kennett . One month later, on November 5, 1982, he finally renounced his mandate in the Legislative Assembly.

Withdrawal from political life and later engagement

After retiring from political life, Thompson was involved in the private sector and numerous organizations and was vice-chairman of the Statewide Building Society between 1982 and 1987 , chairman of the Carnsworth Garoopna Nursing Home Appeal from 1986 to 1987, and chairman of the between 1987 and 1999 Board of Trustees of Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), of which he has been trustee since 1967.

Since 1987 he has been chairman of the Victorian Parliamentary Former Members Association of Victoria , since 1988 he has been chairman of the scholarship committee of the English Speaking Union and between 1988 and 2001 he was director of the Mutual Friendly Society .

Thompson, who was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1990, was also a trustee between 1985 and 1996 and, most recently, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Tennis Center in Melbourne from 1994 to 1996 , which includes the Rod Laver Arena .

His marriage to Joan Margaret Poynder on January 18, 1950 resulted in two sons and a daughter.

Publications

• Victoria Housing Today and Tomorrow , 1965
• Looking Ahead in Education , 1969
• A Fair Deal for Victoria , 1981
• I Remember , 1989

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the Parliament of Victoria (accessed 6 June 2015)