State Politics
In 1882, Gould was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the member for Patrick's Plains (renamed Singleton in 1894). Initially an opponent of the coalition associated with Henry Parkes and John Robertson, he later supported Robertson's government in 1885. By 1887 he was supporting his career with his own legal practice in Singleton and Sydney, and when the party system came into being in New South Wales in that year he identified as a Free Trader. In 1889 he was appointed Minister for Justice under Parkes, serving until 1891; he held the position again under George Reid from 1894 to 1898. During the first period of his ministry he became involved in a dispute with the Chief Justice, Sir Frederick Darley, over requests for improved court accommodation and a contested punishment for contempt of two witnesses. Despite embarrassing his premier, he remained close with Parkes throughout his state career and in later years frequently gave speeches in his memory.
Gould's career as justice minister was marked by consolidation of the law, tightening of licensing laws and reforms relating to police courts. A supporter of Federation, he nevertheless opposed the 1898 bill, which he believed deprived New South Wales of adequate recognition. He was defeated in the election of that year, but in 1899 he was one of Premier Reid's twelve appointments to the Legislative Council that enabled the passage of the legislation for a referendum on Federation.
Read more about this topic: Albert Gould
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or politics:
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)