Prime Minister
At the 1913 elections Cook won a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives, while Labor retained a majority in the Senate, and in doing so became the sixth Prime Minister of Australia. Unable to govern effectively without control of the Senate, Cook decided to bring about a double dissolution election under section 57 of the Constitution of Australia. He introduced a bill abolishing preferential employment for trade union members in the public service, a bill he knew the Senate would repeatedly reject. When this rejection duly took place, he sought and obtained a double dissolution of the Parliament from the Governor-General.
Unfortunately for Cook, World War I broke out in the middle of the election campaign for the September 1914 election. Fisher was able to remind the voters that it was Labor that had favoured an independent Australian defence force, which the conservatives had opposed. Cook was defeated and Fisher resumed office.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Cook
Famous quotes related to prime minister:
“Being prime minister is a lonely job.... you cannot lead from the crowd.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“Sometimes it takes years to really grasp what has happened to your life. What do you do after you are world-famous and nineteen or twenty and you have sat with prime ministers, kings and queens, the Pope? What do you do after that? Do you go back home and take a job? What do you do to keep your sanity? You come back to the real world.”
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“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
—Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)