Bob Heffron - Political Career

Political Career

In 1927, Heffron contested Botany unsuccessfully on behalf of Lang Labor against Thomas Mutch, who had split from Jack Lang. He won Botany in 1930 and held it to 1950 and he was then member for Maroubra until 1968. In 1936, he began to organise against Lang, who had him and his followers expelled in August 1936. They formed the Industrial Labor Party, known as the Heffron Labor Party. In 1939, ILP was readmitted to the New South Wales Labor Party, under pressure from the Federal Executive of the party, and Heffron, William McKell and Lang contested the leadership of the reunited party, with McKell winning.

Once the state Labor Party had overcome the divisive 1930s legacy of Lang and had regained office in 1941, Heffron became a cabinet minister. In the series of Labor governments which ruled New South Wales uninterruptedly from 1941 to 1965, Heffron always held a prominent place. His main portfolios were those of Emergency Services (1941–44) and, above all, Education (1944–52, 1953–59); in 1946 he published a book on educational policy called Tomorrow Is Theirs.

In youth a Catholic, he spent most of his adulthood – unusually for a New South Wales Labor politician at the time – outside the Roman Church. He unsuccessfully attempted to gain the Premiership upon the retirement of William McKell in 1947 (though McKell had hoped that Heffron would succeed him), and again at the departure of James McGirr in 1952. Finally, when Joseph Cahill died in office (October 1959), Heffron was elected Premier unopposed.

By this stage Heffron's best days were behind him; his reign coincided with the ever increasing political importance of television, on which his old-fashioned and rhetorical speaking style, honed on public platforms forty years previously, seldom appeared to advantage. According to future Premier Bob Carr (who eventually succeeded Heffron in the eastern Sydney electorate of Maroubra), the still-embittered Lang referred to Heffron as "Mr Magoo". In Robert Askin the New South Wales Liberals had, for the first time, a confident, tough, and photogenic leader, skilled – unlike Heffron – in TV debate, although Labor did respectably at the 1962 election. Heffron retired to the backbenches in 1964, his successor as Premier being Jack Renshaw.

Heffron died in the Sydney suburb of Kirribilli in 1978, aged 87, and was survived by two daughters.