Political Career
Cann won the Australian House of Representatives seat of Nepean at the 1910 election for the Australian Labor Party. He was defeated at the 1913 election. That year he unsuccessfully constested the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Upper Hunter. In 1914, he won the seat of Canterbury and held it to 1920, when it was absorbed in to the new multi-member seat of St George; he was one of the members for St George until the abolition of proportional representation in 1927. He was Secretary for Mines and Minister for Labour and Industry from April 1920 to October 1921, when he became Secretary for Mines and Minister for Local Government until the defeat of the James Dooley government in December 1921. He was not reappointed when Dooley regained power some hours later. He became Minister for Local Government and Minister for Public Health in Jack Lang's first ministry in June 1925. He held the Local Government portfolio until March 1926 and Public Health until May 1927. He opposed Lang's leadership and as a result lost preselection for the 1927 election—he ran unsuccessfully as an independent.
In 1930, Cann ran unsuccessfully as a Nationalist for the seat of Lakemba. He died in the Sydney suburb of Strathfield, survived by his wife.
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