Rex Mason

Rex Mason (1935)

Henry Greathead Rex Mason , CMG (born June 3, 1885 in Wellington ; † April 2, 1975 ibid) was a New Zealand Labor Party politician who was a member of the House of Representatives for forty years between 1926 and 1966 and was several times a minister in various departments.

Life

Lawyer, local politician and member of parliament

Mason was the son of the Cape Town- born typesetter Harry Brooks Mason, and the Australian Henrietta Emma Rex, who co-founded the Women's Social and Political League in 1894 . After attending Wellington College , he began studying mathematics at Wellington College , which he completed in 1907 with a Master of Arts (MA) with honors. He completed a subsequent study of law with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) and then settled in Pukekohe in 1911 , where he began to work as a lawyer .

Mason began his political career in local politics when he became mayor of Pukekohe in 1915 . After joining the New Zealand Labor Party , founded in 1916 , he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in the Manukau constituency in 1919, without success . He was an influential member of the Labor Party in Auckland in the 1920s and unsuccessfully applied for a seat in the House of Representatives in the constituency of Eden in the 1922 and 1925 elections . In a by-election in April 1926, however, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives in this constituency, benefiting from the fact that the votes for the Reform Party there until now were split by the former Reform Party candidate Ellen Melville , who was non- party . He represented the constituency of Eden and the resulting constituencies of Auckland Suburbs , Waitakere and most recently New Lynn for forty years until the elections on November 26, 1966. In addition to his parliamentary activities, he continued to be involved in local politics and was a member of the 1931-1939 Auckland Transport Committee. After narrowly defeated in his candidacy for mayor of Auckland in 1933, he served as chairman of the Auckland Transport Committee between 1935 and 1939.

Labor Party President and Political Views

Mason, who was elected President of the Labor Party in 1931, played a key role in the party's Political Affairs Committee in the early 1930s, which held the elections on May 26-27. November 1935. In doing so, the party changed its hitherto socialist course towards a program that laid the foundations for the welfare state in New Zealand. His own rather social democratic stance came into play. He advocated that people over 55 should receive a decent pension, welfare benefits should be paid to the unemployed and disabled, workers and farmers should receive fair wages, all employees should receive full wages during a fortnightly annual vacation and that the necessary public works should be further developed .

Together with several other MPs and numerous supporters of the party, Mason took the view that only the state could create and spend loans and currencies. He took early 1930s in numerous events in part, which consolidated the support of the Labor Party by farmers through by Clifford Hugh Douglas embossed Social Credit Party were affected. In 1934 he wrote Common sense of the money question , a collection of his earlier speeches in which he described the reform party governments in the 1920s as an "extensive moneylender government". He worked closely with the MP and later Minister Frank Langstone and worked with him for the Labor Party Congress in 1933, the proposals for the credit policy of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand , the central bank of New Zealand. There, however, the somewhat more cautious approach of the Labor Party's financial policy spokesman Walter Nash was adopted. These different views in the reform of the financial and monetary system shaped the relationship between him and Nash throughout his life.

Minister 1935 to 1949

Rex Mason (seated right) with the other Savage Cabinet Ministers in 1935

After the victory of the Labor Party in the elections on December 26-27. November 1935 Mason was of Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage for Attorney General and Minister of Justice (Attorney General and Minister of Justice) in the Cabinet appointed. As such, he formed the Law Revision Committee, a committee that was responsible for numerous important legislative reforms. After the elections on 14./15. October 1938, marked by growing debates about electoral democracy and financial policy, he remained one of the most influential ministers in the Savage cabinet. On the other hand, he maintained his contacts with Frank Langstone, John A. Lee and other currency reformers. When Lee was expelled from the Labor Party in 1940 for his attacks on Mason, Mason wrote a letter to Lee offering his resignation. However, he took Lee's advice and continued to work in the Labor Party.

After Prime Minister Savage's death on March 27, 1940, Mason remained in the first cabinet of the new Prime Minister Peter Fraser Attorney General and Minister of Justice. At the same time he was also Minister of Education on April 30, 1940 (minister of education) and on 7 July 1943 they Minister of Native ( Minister of Native Affairs ) . In 1944 he published Education today and tomorrow , in which he described the new state school system, which was largely developed by the head of the education department of the Ministry Clarence Edward Beeby. The enrollment test was abolished and a resulting reform of the curriculum for secondary schools eliminated the differences between secondary schools and technical high schools .

After the Labor Party won the elections on May 26-27. November 1946, Mason remained attorney general and attorney general and education minister in Fraser's second cabinet . However, he handed the office of education minister on October 18, 1947 to Terry McCombs , while he held the offices of attorney general and attorney general until the end of Fraser's tenure on December 13, 1949.

Years of opposition and renewed appointment as minister from 1957 to 1960

Mason (seated, second from right) with the other ministers in the Nash Cabinet in 1957

After the defeat of the Labor Party in the elections on 29./30. November 1949, Mason remained an influential MP in the House of Representatives, dealing with numerous topics such as legislative reforms and financial and monetary policy. Between November 1950 and April 1956 he introduced a bill for a decimal system for coins (Decimal Coinage Bill) several times , which, however, did not find support from his party friends before a decimal currency system was finally introduced in 1967.

In the elections of November 30, 1957, Mason was re-elected to the House of Representatives by a large margin in his constituency of Waitakere , supported in particular by the constituency's electorate from Yugoslavia , who were supported by his decent pension for immigrants, which he supported in the 1930s and later naturalized nationals benefited. Furthermore, a legislative reform initiated by him enabled the expansion of the sale of alcoholic beverages in western Auckland, which supported Yugoslav winemakers in particular.

After the Labor Party won these elections, Prime Minister Walter Nash reappointed him as Attorney General and Minister of Justice on December 12, 1957, as well as Minister of Health in his cabinet , to whom he was appointed until the end of his term on December 12. December 1960 belonged. The Labor Party had previously lost the November 26, 1960 elections. During this time he tried to reform the criminal law, which was only implemented in 1961 by the new government of the New Zealand National Party . Among other things, the death penalty for murder was abolished.

Re-elected and resigned from the House of Representatives in 1966

Due to the size of his previous constituency Waitakere , the resulting new constituency New Lynn was created for the elections on November 30, 1963 , which he also won with a clear majority. Between 1963 and 1966 the Labor Party began to modernize the party under Arnold Nordmeyer and after 1965 under its new young chairman Norman Kirk . Many of the Labor politicians had been members of the House of Representatives for over 80 years and were still members of the House of Representatives, as was Mason himself. In 1966, a decision was made to amend the party statutes, according to which MPs should resign when they turned 70. For this reason, despite internal party protests, in the spring of 1966, Jonathan Hunt, who was just 28 years old, was a new Labor candidate for the New Lynn constituency.

In October 1966, Mason resigned his parliamentary mandate a month before the November 26, 1966 election and became Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) in 1967 . He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in law (Honorary LL.D.) by the Victoria University of Wellington for his services as Attorney General and the legal reforms initiated during this time .

His marriage to Dulcia Martina Rockell in Auckland on December 27, 1912 resulted in two sons and two daughters, including the botanist Ruth Mason . His wife Dulcia Mason died in 1971.

Publications

• Common sense of the money question , 1934
• Education today and tomorrow , 1944

Web links

• Biography in Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Zealand: Key Ministries
2. ^ New Zealand: Key Ministries
3. ^ New Zealand: Key Ministries
4. ↑ Jonathan Hunt was a member of the House of Representatives from 1966 to 2005, temporarily a minister and, most recently, from 1999 to 2005 Speaker of the House of Representatives.
5. ^ Ruth Mason in Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand