Talk:Father of the Australian House of Representatives

Confusion

Before I rush in to change anything, can I just think aloud first. The page seems to be confusing 2 sets of people: (a) longest-serving members according to their total length of service, and (b) the Father of the House, the member with the longest continuous period of service. Obviously there are overlaps, but the 2 concepts are clearly different. As the title of this article makes no mention of continuous service, and as there is a separate article about Father of the House, it seems that the original intention was for set (a) to be listed here, with only passing reference to Fathers of the House and appropriate links to that page.

Almost all the information provided here is about Fathers of the House, and the detail of it belongs with that article. However mention is made of Eddie Ward. He served for a very long time and certainly deserves to be in a list of long-serving members, however he did not qualify as Father of the House because he had a gap in his service and the clock had to be reset when he was re-elected. The same would apply for a number of other members who are not mentioned (eg. Ben Chifley). It would also apply to those around 1963-69, 1977-80 and 1982-83, when there was no Father. Menzies, Clark, Cameron, Fraser and Snedden are mentioned, but there would have been others who had long enough service to qualify in a list of long-serving members.

Seems to me the concept of "longest-serving members" needs to be clarified and defined. Maybe a list of all members who have served, say, 20 years or more, whether or not continuous, ordered by total length of service, would do the trick. Probably all the Fathers of the House would be on the list, but not just them. Cheers JackofOz 00:19, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as Father of the House in Australia, and never has been. I am annoyed that someone has rewritten the Australian section of Father of the House to suggest otherwise.

from John Howard's Talk Page: Ben, the correct procedure is to make your changes and see what happens, rather than list them all here. Some of them I would oppose, but I am not inclined to argue about changes which haven't been made yet. Edit wars are the Wikipedia equivalent of natural selection: without them there is no evolution. Adam 11:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Yes, it may not have any formal status in Australia, but informally the term Father of the House is very much alive, very much recognised, and very much part of the lore of the Australian Parliament. (I'm almost certain it is also used in the state parliaments). The fact that some women object to its alleged sexism, attests to its existence. Ruddock is sometimes referred to as such in the media - of course, that doesn't make it somehow formal, it just mean the term exists, it is used, everyone knows what is meant by it, and it is a fact. If (as you say) Father of the House is a fiction in Australia, why doesn't that article say so and stop there, rather than mentioning Ruddock? Either he's the Father of the House (in which case his name should be mentioned), or there's no such thing (in which case no names should be mentioned). Annoyance is a problem, but I'm sure you'll get over it.

• The article lists members with the longest continuous service, not longest overall service.

The title makes no mention of "continuous". If that is its intention, it should say so unambiguously. Paradoxically, that would make it virtually equivalent to a list of Fathers of the House (whether or not you agree that any such term exists).

• Eddie Ward qualified on this ground because the break in his service was very early in his career.
• Chifley served 1928-31 and 1940-51. He would never have been longest-serving member on any definition.
• I see no need to change the article. You are free to write another article listing all members who served more than 20 years if you want, but this article has a precise topic and should not have other stuff included.

But that's the point you're missing, Adam. It's definitely not as precise as it might be. Without mention of continuous service, it is ambiguous. It certainly confused me. Yes, I think I will create a list of long-serving members, but I'd be interested in other views first.

Adam 00:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Those were my unsigned rejoinders above. In the meantime, I have continued to discuss the existence or non-existence of the Australian Father of the House over at that article's talk page. JackofOz 03:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

A search of Hansard shows that the expression "Father of the House" has been used in the Australian House of Representatives five times in the past seven years. Given the tens of millions of words uttered in the House over that time, I would not call this a frequent rate of usage. I maintain my view that this is not an established usage in Australian politics, and indeed I think its currency has declined in recent years because of its perceived patriarchal overtones. Given this, and given that the position of longest-serving member confers no status or privileges, I think the Australian usage of the term merits no more than the current brief paragraph in this article. Adam 03:54, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Who Next

Who are the candidates to replace Phillip Ruddock as father of the house should he leave parliament? I understand that the longest serving MHRs after Ruddock are the Prime Minister John Howard and Liberal Party of Australia backbencher Alan Cadman, both elected in 1974. With Alan Cadman not being endorsed by his party to stand again, and with John Howard firmly committed to sticking around until the next election, I guess that makes Howard effectively the 'heir apparent' for lack of better terminology. The next candidate/s after that may be anyone that was elected in the 1975, 1977 or 1980 elections, but is there many old timers around from way back then? Before Phillip Ruddock took the mantle of 'Father of the House' from Ian Sinclair, he was elected to parliament some ten years after Sinclair, so along those lines it may be the case that the next 'Father of the House' will be someone elected later like around the 1983 or 1984 federal elections. I think I will add a section to the article along these lines. I'm fairly sure that John Howard is at the top of the list of possible replacements for Phillip Ruddock. Ajayvius 08:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

---

Assuming Howard and Ruddock resign after an election defeat that leaves Wilson Tuckey (first elected in 1980) as the longest serving member. With Kim Beazley's retirement Roger Price (first elected 1984) will be the longest serving Labor MP. PMA 07:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Purpose of this List

One of the problems I’ve always had with this list is that it can’t quite seem to make up its mind what it’s for.

• It’s not merely a list of Fathers of the House, because if it were it wouldn’t list names such as Menzies, Clark, Cameron, Fraser and Snedden, none of whom were ever Fathers. And if it were confined to the Fathers, it shouldn’t exist as a separate article but be merged with Father of the House. In fact, I'm surprised we don't have a list of Fathers in that article, but that's a separate issue.
• But equally, it’s not a list of all members who’ve served more than a certain number of years, such as this one, which uses 30 years as the cut-off point, and lists Maloney, Makin, Brennan, Groom, Francis, Holt, Cadman, Howard, Scullin, Jull and Lazzarini, which we don’t have. (It also lists Cadman twice, which seems to be a typo for somebody else.)

So, I think we need to better define what the purpose of the list is. My suggestion is to model it after the Parl Handbook list, use 30 years as the criterion, and include all the names. We can indicate which of the names happened to also be Fathers of the House. Or, we could use 25 years or whatever we think is a suitable cut-off point. -- JackofOz (talk) 12:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Revisited

My post from March 2008 seems to have got nowhere, so I'm going to have another go.

There's an issue with this list and its partner (List of longest-serving members of the Australian Senate) that I've been struggling for years to address. There are two quite separate, but not entirely unrelated, concepts:

• A. members who have served (whether continously or not) a specific period of time, or greater, as defined by some arbitrary cut-off point
• B. members who have been serving longer continuously than any other member of the House, at a particular point in time.

The people in A do not necessarily belong to B. For example: William Maloney, Norman Makin, Frank Brennan, Joe Clark, David Watkins, Alan Cadman, John Howard, Littleton Groom, Josiah Francis, Harold Holt, Bob Menzies, Jim Scullin, Clyde Cameron, David Jull and Hubert Lazzarini all appear in the Parliamentary Handbook’s "Longest serving members" list, the criterion there being 30 years or more of service, but none of them were ever the "Longest-serving member" (as we currently define that term).

Conversely, the people in B do not necessarily belong to A. For example, Jim Killen and Doug Anthony were both "Fathers of the House" (* see below) by virtue of having served longer, continuously, than any other members (as of a particular date), but neither of them served 30 years, so they don’t appear in the Parl Handbook’s list.

The same distinction applies to the Senate: Patrick Lynch, Thomas Crawford and Harry Foll all served 30 years or more, but were never Fathers of the Senate. And Brian Harradine, Ron Boswell, Doug McClelland and Peter Durack were all Fathers of the Senate but served less than 30 years (although Boswell is still serving, and may yet get there).

The issue shows up when articles are linked to these pages:

• Boswell: "He is the longest serving member of the Senate." - That could be taken to mean that his service in the Senate is a record – which is not the case.
• Harradine: "At his retirement he was the longest-serving member of the Senate". - That could be taken to mean that he held the record at the time of his retirement, but has since been overtaken – neither of which are the case.
• Watson: "From July 2005 until he left parliament in June 2008, he was the longest-serving member of the Senate" – that could be interpreted that he broke the record in July 2005, and held it till he left in June 2008 – which is not the case.
• Durack: "He served in the Senate from 1 July 1970 to 30 June 1993 making him one of the longest-serving Australian senators." – that could mean that his 23-year service was matched by very few others. But that’s not the case because there are 11 senators who served longer, and he doesn’t even make it to the Parl Handbook list of longest serving senators.

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point. The point is that the terminology "longest-serving" is highly ambiguous. Sometimes it means A; sometimes it means B; sometimes it means both; and sometimes it means neither. We shouldn't expect our readers to go on a chase to find out exactly what it does mean in any particular case. If wording is not transparent, it should be replaced.

(*) Now, the next issue is the term "Father of the House/Senate". Does this mean "the member/senator currently serving who has served longer, continuously, than any other currently serving member/senator"? I would assert that it means exactly that. I’ve argued this @ Talk:Father of the House, but Adam Carr would have none of it. He insisted that the term "Father of the House/Senate" does not even exist in Australia. If it doesn’t exist in Australia, the Australia section of that article should say, simply, "This term is not used in Australia". But I’ve argued, with evidence, that it most certainly is used. Adam himself proved that the term has been used in Hansard. (The relative infrequency of its use, a tool Adam used to counter me, is neither here nor there.) Since he left WP, the article has been changed to reflect what everyone (except Adam, apparently) believes. Also, that article describes "List of longest-serving members of the Australian House of Representatives" as the "main article". If it’s not meant to be talking about exactly the same thing as "Father of House/Senate", then it shouldn’t be linked to it in that way. So, the evidence suggests that they are the same thing. If that’s the case, we should call a spade a spade, cut to the chase, and rename this article "List of Fathers of the Australian House of Representatives". That way, any member who really was a Father can be linked to it from their own article, they can be called "Father of the House" in their article, and there’s no ambiguity anywhere.

Now, we also need a separate list of members/senators who served more than some cut-off point. The Parl Handbook uses 30 years. We could do the same, or we could have 25 years, or whatever we think is appropriate. Then anyone who appears in that list could be linked, not as a “longest-serving member/senator”, but as a “member/senator who has served 25/30/whatever years”. In some – but by no means all - cases, a member will be linked to both lists – people like Billy Hughes and Earle Page are obvious cases where this would apply.

The new list would also be able to point to the Father lists in the cases where the entries were indeed Fathers; and the Father lists would be able to point to the 25+ years lists where they did, in fact, serve 25+ years.

Before I do any work on this, I’d be grateful for any comments on what I’m proposing. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No need for page

I agree with the previous comments that the expression "Father of the House" is not used commonly in Australia. Yes, the term has been recently used about Ruddock, but do we need to have a page devoted to the topic? What this page is effectively doing is retrospectively giving various people a title that they never had in life.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:33, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

This list is dubious at best

This article's lead attempts to prove that there was no Father of the House before Billy Hughes because, logically, there could be no Father of the House until only one member of the initial group of MPs was left standing. Leaving aside for the moment that the list contains entries for "co-fathers", undercutting the last-man-standing assumption, the term was used in Hansard as early as 1901. As it happens, the tie breaker was age. The first Father of the House was William Henry Groom, as pointed out by Edmund Barton,[1][2] Richard Crouch,[3] and Paddy Glynn.[4] Whether or not this list should continue in existence has been debated, it seems, in the past. Regardless of which side has the right of it, the information at this point is, at best, only partially correct. -Rrius (talk) 04:53, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

No such thing

I said it 12 years ago at the top of this page, and I'll say it again (having now worked in Canberra for four different federal MPs since 2003): There is no such thing as a "Father of the House" in Australia. This article therefore is a complete fabrication which should be abolished. Regards Dr Adam Carr, Canberra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.191.189.35 (talk) 08:52, 22 November 2017 (UTC)