Frank Nicklin - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Nicklin was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales on 6 August 1895, the son of a newspaper proprietor. In 1910 the family moved to Beerwah in Queensland, where Nicklin's father took up banana farming. Nicklin enrolled in the army in 1916 served with distinction during World War I, where he was promoted to corporal and was awarded the Military Medal. On his return to Queensland he bought a small pineapple farm at Palmwoods, 100 kilometres north of Brisbane, through a soldier-settler scheme. Nicklin saved wisely and put his farming experience to good use, and his farm succeeded where many others failed. He led many fruit-growers' organisations, and then became involved in Country Party politics.

When the Member for the solid Country Party seat of Murrumba retired in 1932, Nicklin became the new candidate. He won the seat, although the National Progressive Country Party Government of A. E. Moore was heavily defeated. Nicklin, therefore, entered Parliament as a humble opposition backbencher. He transferred to Landsborough in 1950.

Nicklin was a popular and hardworking local member, and remained popular throughout very difficult times for the Country Party in Queensland. The opposition was fractured and weak, and the Government of William Forgan Smith very secure. Nicklin's preferred area was agriculture, and he made many speeches on the subject.

In 1941 the opposition suffered another severe defeat, with Labor winning 41 seats to the Country Party's 14 and the United Australia Party's four. After the election, the two non-Labor parties decided to merge. Opposition leader E. B. Maher stood down, and Nicklin was elected to lead the new Country-National Party. The merger fell apart in 1944, but Nicklin remained as head of a Country Party-UAP coalition.

Nicklin was leader of the opposition for sixteen years, losing five elections in a row. In 1942 Labor abolished full preferential voting, meaning that the Country Party and UAP could no longer rely on each other's preferences in seats that they both contested. Even more damaging to the coalition's chances was the introduction of a zonal electoral system in 1949, in which seats in the traditional Labor north and west of the state required fewer members than the Country-Party dominated south-east or the Queensland People's Party (formerly UAP, soon to be the Liberals) dominated metropolitan areas.

Despite these setbacks, Nicklin was never challenged for the leadership. Many coalition members appeared to have given up on the idea of forming Government and were content to simply represent their constituencies. Accordingly Nicklin was left to handle most of the business of opposition. He acknowledged to a 1955 conference of leading Country Party figures that their chances of ever being seated to the right of the speaker were slim, but he continued as opposition leader anyway. After the 1956 election, in which he was severely defeated by Labor's Vince Gair, Nicklin considered retiring both from the Country Party leadership and from parliament. However, his fortunes would soon change.

The late 1950s saw increasing fear of communism in Australia, and increasing tensions between the Parliamentary Labor Party and the party's union-dominated Central Executive (QCE) in Queensland. These tensions boiled over in 1957, when the QCE pushed the Government to introduce three weeks' paid leave for public servants. Gair refused, and Nicklin backed him, arguing that the QCE was dominated by unaccountable left-wing trade union leaders with communist sympathies.

On 24 April Vince Gair was expelled from the ALP, and he and his supporters formed the Queensland Labor Party (QLP). This body would later join the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) which had arisen out of a split in the ALP in Victoria. Reduced to a minority government, Gair negotiated with Nicklin for support from the Country Party in Parliament. However, Nicklin broke them off at the suggestion of federal Country Party leader Arthur Fadden (himself a Queenslander), who believed that given the ructions in Labor, Nicklin had a good chance to become Premier himself.

On 12 June 1957, Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice of Queensland Alan Mansfield (Governor John Lavarack was indisposed) ordered Parliament to reassemble. Shortly after 10:30 pm that night, Treasurer Ted Walsh moved that supply be granted to the Gair QLP government. The remnants of the ALP, now led by Jack Duggan, crossed the floor and voted against the Government. Sensing his long-denied chance had come, Nicklin instructed the Coalition to block supply as well, bringing the Gair government down. It had been the shortest session of Parliament in Queensland's history.