Sam Loxton - Political Career

Political Career

Loxton joined the Armadale branch of the Liberal Party in 1950. Henry Bolte, the Liberal leader in Victoria, was the state opposition leader at the time, and encouraged him to enter politics. The cricketer’s entry into electoral politics came after he was involved in a debate at a cricket club meeting. A person at the gathering reported his argumentative performance to senior Liberal Party figures, and soon after, Bolte began actively courting the cricketer. On 28 September 1954, Loxton won pre-selection and was endorsed as the Liberal candidate for the electorate of Prahran. At the time, the seat was comfortably held by the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP), who had captured 61.59% of the vote at the previous election. The Liberals were not optimistic about their chances, and Bolte told his candidate "You won't win, but we'd like you to fly the flag".

The cricketer refused to think that his candidacy was simply there to make up the numbers, and he told Bolte as much. The start of the election campaign coincided with the 1954–55 grade cricket finals. Loxton took 7 wickets and scored 129 runs to help Prahran claim the title for the first time in 32 years, and was hailed as a local hero. It capped off a season in which he topped the competition batting averages and took the most wickets. In a close-run contest, the cricketer defeated the sitting ALP member Bob Pettiona by only 14 votes on the two party preferred count. He was aided by preferences from the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), which had broken away from the ALP during the 1950s, claiming that the root organisation was too soft towards communism; fears of left-wing influence was causing great concern in Australian society at the time. Loxton polled 35.70% of the first preferences, well behind Pettiona's 47.25%, but received almost all of the DLP's 13.66% of the vote as preferences to end with 50.04%. The result helped bring Bolte's Liberals to power, and they stayed in office until 1982, by which time Loxton had retired.

Loxton entered the Victorian parliament in 1955, and served as government whip from 1961 until his retirement in 1979. At the time of his election, he was the youngest member of parliament, and was given the honour of making the Address-in-Reply, the first speech after opening of the new sitting by the governor, using it to advocate increased lending from the government-owned banks to promote higher levels of home ownership. At the 1958 election, Loxton consolidated his hold on the seat, leading on first preferences (43.67%), and ending with 54.85% of the two party preferred vote to halt Pettiona's attempted comeback. During the election campaign in 1961, a campaign meeting in Prahran that was attended by Premier Bolte and Loxton drew several hundred people and descended into chaos; heckling and some scuffles broke out. At this election, the Liberals' primary vote fell to 41.69% behind the Labor Party's candidate George Gahan 45.29%, and he had to rely on DLP preferences to retain the seat with a reduced two party preferred vote of 52.71%. The Liberals may have been hindered by a how-to-vote card circulated on election day by a third party that had a pro-Liberal headline, but instructed the reader to mark the ALP candidate as their first preference. Loxton managed to secure a court injunction—believed to be the first of its kind in Victoria—prohibiting further distribution of the material, but not before hundreds of misleading instructions had been disseminated.

In 1964, Loxton increased his primary vote to 45.77% and defeated Pettiona for the third time, ending with a fairly safe 57.72% after the distribution of preferences. In 1967, the retired cricketer repelled a political challenge by Jack Dyer, an iconic former footballer of the Richmond Tigers famed as one of the toughest players in history, and retained his seat at further elections in 1970, 1973 and 1976 before opting to retire at the 1979 poll. Without Loxton's personal appeal, the Liberals lost the seat to the ALP upon his departure. As he continued to play first-class cricket for three years after his election to parliament, he was a busy man, and team-mates described him as a hard-working representative, recalling that he often brought his political paperwork to the ground with him, going through the material while waiting in the dressing room for his turn to bat. Although he was a low-key presence in the parliamentary chambers, Loxton served on the library committee from 1958 to 1961, and he was known for his work ethic and thorough approach, as well as his "sporting charisma".