Phillip Lynch
Phillip Reginald Lynch , KCMG , PC (born July 27, 1933 in Carlton , Melbourne , Victoria ; † June 19, 1984 in Frankston , Melbourne, Victoria) was an Australian politician of the Liberal Party of Australia (LP) who, among other things, between 1966 and in 1982 was a member of the House of Representatives and minister several times.
Life
Professional career, MP and minister
Phillip Reginald Lynch, the eldest child of fitter Reginald Thomas Lynch and his wife Dorothy Louise Reilly, grew up in Kew and first attended the Marist Brothers School , a school run by the Marist School Brothers , in Hawthorn and the Jesuit- run Xavier College in Melbourne . In 1952 he began with financial support through a partial scholarship an undergraduate course at the University of Melbourne , which he finished in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). He was involved in the student council, the National Union of Australian University Students and the Newman Society named after John Henry Newman . He strongly opposed the White Australia Policy , which aimed to prevent non-whites from immigrating to Australia . He thought about joining the Australian Labor Party (ALP) but did not feel represented by the left in the state of Victoria . He was drawn to the Liberal Party of Australia (LP) for its social conservatism and because it became the natural home of small businesses, although he became one of the few Catholic representatives in a largely Protestant party. In the federal elections in 1955, he ran unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party in the constituency of Scullin , a safe stronghold of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). From 1956 to 1958 he was President of the Young Liberal Movement of Australia in the state of Victoria. It was at this time that he met the future Secretary of State Andrew Peacock , with whom he would share friendly and less friendly rivalries in the future. In the years between 1956 and 1963 he was a member of the Executive Council of the Liberal Party for the first time. After nearly a year as long teacher at the Collingwood Technical School had taught, he began working as a consultant and eventually became managing director of Manpower Australia Pty Ltd . He was a member of the "Institute of Directors in Australia" and a member of the Australian Institute of Management . He entered the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1959 and was only Vice President in 1962 and President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne in 1963 and President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce of Australia in 1966 . During this time he also obtained a Diploma in Education in 1964 .
Lynch began his political career when he was first elected to the House of Representatives on November 26, 1966 in the Flinders constituency , after he had previously won the party primary against several well-known candidates. On February 28, 1968 he was appointed by Prime Minister John Gorton as Minister for the Army in his government Gorton II and held this ministerial office until November 12, 1969. Subsequently, there was a controversy during the Vietnam War after he initially denied the violation of the Geneva Conventions when interrogating a suspected member of the Viet Cong and later downplayed it. However, after the violation turned out to be waterboarding , he offered his resignation as army minister, which was rejected by Prime Minister Gorton. Nevertheless, he changed the department in the government of Gorton III and acted between November 12, 1969 and March 10, 1971 as Minister for Immigration (Minister for Immigration) and at the same time as Assistant Minister in the Treasury (Minister assisting the Treasurer) . In the McMahon government, formed on March 12, 1971 , he initially remained Minister for Immigration and at the same time as Assistant Minister in the Treasury, but took over the office of Minister for Labor and National Service on March 22, 1971 , after the previous incumbent Billy Snedden became the new Treasury Secretary. He held this post until December 5, 1972, after the coalition of the Liberal Party and Country Party had previously suffered a defeat against the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the December 2, 1972 elections .
Deputy party chairman and opposition
After this electoral defeat, Phillip Lynch became the new deputy chairman of the Liberal Party and here, too, the successor to Billy Snedden, who in turn had been elected as the successor to the previous Prime Minister William McMahon as the new chairman of the Liberal Party. The offices of vice-chairman and again as a member of the Executive Board of the Liberal Party he held for ten years until April 1982, when John Howard succeeded him. He also supported Snedden in late 1974 when Tony Staley and other politicians challenged Snedden's leadership. In March 1975, however, he turned his loyalty to Snedden and supported Malcolm Fraser , who became the new leader of the Liberal Party and thus also the leader of the opposition . In its shadow cabinet , he served as shadow treasury minister , was Lynch and was a free market advocate who spoke out against government regulations, bounties , subsidies , tariffs , government marketing agencies and high personal taxes. From 1972 to 1974 he played a key role in the revision of the Liberal Party's basic program, the party's first major realignment since the late 1940s. He helped to develop a coherent alternative economic policy, although within the Liberal Party fighting between the different wing of the party continued.
In 1975, Lynch's office was instrumental in uncovering the so-called Loan Affair , which involved secret negotiations between Gough Whitlam's Labor government ministers trying to raise large foreign loans from unconventional sources. Using local and international information, he and others in the opposition said that the use of intermediaries such as Pakistani Tirath Khemlani was illegal, economically damaging and showed financial incompetence. Although he did not feel comfortable with his role as an "attack dog " ("Attack Dog") and preferred to discuss politics, he thus contributed to the destabilization of the Whitlam III government . The scandal resulted in the overthrow of Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Cairns and Minister of Mines and Energy Rex Connor . The governor-general , Sir John Robert Kerr , finally dismissed the third Whitlam administration on November 11, 1975, creating a constitutional crisis, and scheduled new elections for December 13, 1975.
Return of the Liberal Party to government
Thereupon it came on 11 November 1975 from the formation of the Liberal Party and National Country Party existing (NCP) coalition - Government Fraser I , in Lynch office as Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer) took over. In the parliamentary election on December 13, 1975 , the Labor Party suffered a clear defeat. The Liberal Party received 68 of the 127 seats, the NCP 22 and Labor 36. Labor and the LP each had 27 of the 60 senators in the Senate, the NCP won 7 seats. In the subsequently formed Fraser II government , he continued to serve as Treasury Secretary between December 22, 1976 and November 19, 1977. In this role he began reducing the national debt and the effects of regulation by the federal government on economic life. Prime Minister Fraser and senior National Country Party ministers were less enthusiastic about what sparked conflict within the government. In 1976 Fraser divided the previous treasury into the two independent ministries for treasury and finance, with Lynch taking over responsibility for both and also serving as Minister for Finance from December 7, 1976 to November 19, 1977 . On January 17, 1977, he was also a member of the British secret Privy Council ( Privy Council )
His government spending cuts were halted in October 1977 when the opposition launched a bitter attack on him over an alleged conflict of interest arising from his involvement in a 1973 constituency land development project for Stumpy Gully Road in Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula . Two of the then partners had been criticized in an investigation into other land developments, and Lynch was accused of profiting from speculation regarding the Stumpy Gully deal. Another controversy arose earlier when he bought a unit in the Golden Gate Building in Surfers Paradise , Queensland , in July 1977 . On November 19, 1977, shortly after he had scheduled an early election for December, Prime Minister Fraser forced him to resign as Secretary of Treasury and Finance and installed John Howard as acting Secretary of the Treasury. During this time, Lynch was hospitalized for treatment for kidney stones .
In the early parliamentary elections on December 10, 1977 , the Labor Party made slight gains at the expense of the ruling parties, but the government retained its absolute majority in both chambers of parliament. Following the election and formation of the Fraser III government on December 20, 1977, Howard remained Treasury Secretary while Eric Robinson became Treasury Secretary. Lynch in turn now took over the post of Minister for Industry and Commerce . Although a legal and financial audit cleared him of any wrongdoing, the relationship between him and Fraser remained strained. At the same time, he remained deputy chairman of the Liberal Party. In his role as Minister for Industry and Trade, business managers such as Arvi Parbo and Peter Derham were among his advisors. In the elections for deputy chairman of the Liberal Party he was able to prevail against James Killen in 1977 and against Andrew Peacock in 1980 and remained in this position until April 1982. On November 3, 1980, he took over the office of Minister for Industry and Trade in the government Fraser IV and remained in this until October 11, 1982, whereupon Andrew Peacock became his successor. On December 31, 1980, he was beaten because of his many years of service to the Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) and has since had the suffix "Sir".
In October 1982, Lynch's health deteriorated. He resigned his seat in the House of Representatives on October 22, 1982 and founded a management consultancy in Melbourne, where Henry Kissinger was one of his clients. He has also served on the boards of several companies such as Bonds Coates Patons Ltd and NEC Australia Pty Ltd and served on the Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of Australia . His marriage to occupational therapist Leah Brigid O'Toole in the Church of the Infant Jesus in Koroit on February 8, 1958 resulted in three sons. He died on June 19, 1984 in Frankston of complications from cancer and was buried in Frankston Cemetery.
Web links
- Parliamentary Handbook for the 45th Parliament. (PDF; 13.4 MB) Parliament of Australia, accessed on September 29, 2019 .
- Brian Buckley: Lynch, Sir Phillip Reginald (1933–1984) in Australian Dictionary of Biography (online version)
- Entry in Prabook
- Entry in Rulers
Individual evidence
- ^ Australia: Army Ministers in Rulers
- ^ Australia: Treasurer in Rulers
- ^ Australia: Finance Ministers in Rulers
- ^ Privy Councilors since 1969 in Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
- ↑ Knights and Dames in Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lynch, Phillip |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lynch, Phillip Reginald (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1933 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Carlton , Melbourne , Victoria |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 19, 1984 |
| Place of death | Frankston , Melbourne , Victoria |