John Plunkett - Parliamentary Career

Parliamentary Career

In the same year he was elected as the member for both Bathurst (County) and Argyle in the Legislative Assembly at the first election under the new constitution. After first attempting to represent both electorates and claiming two votes in a parliamentary division, he resigned from Argyle and continued to represent Bathurst (County) Plunkett resigned from the Assembly in January 1857, was nominated to the Legislative Council, and elected its president. In February 1858, on account of the Board of Education having issued regulations which Charles Cowper, then Premier, disapproved of, Plunkett was dismissed from his position as chairman and he thereupon resigned from the council. There was much public sympathy with Plunkett, and the government offered to reinstate him if he would withdraw statements he had made in letters which were considered offensive. Plunkett declined to do so. Plunkett was again a member of the Legislative Assembly for Cumberland (North Riding) from September 1858 to April 1859 and for West Sydney from June 1859 to November 1860. In June 1861 he was nominated to the council, and from October 1863 to February 1865 was Vice-President of the Executive Council in the first James Martin ministry. In 1863 Plunkett became a QC. Plunkett was then reconciled with Cowper, and from August 1865 to January 1866 was Attorney-General in the fourth Cowper ministry.

Plunkett was also vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney in 1865-67. For the last two years of his life he lived much at Melbourne on account of his wife's health, and he made his last public appearance there in 1869 as secretary to the provincial council of the Roman Catholic Church. He died on 9 May 1869 at East Melbourne leaving a widow but no children. Plunkett's remains were taken to Sydney and buried in the old Devonshire Street cemetery, beside those of Archpriest John Joseph Therry and Archdeacon McEncroe. Plunkett was the author of The Australian Magistrate; a Guide to the Duties of a Justice of the Peace, first published in 1835 and reissued in at least three subsequent editions; The Magistrate's Pocket Book (1859), and On the Evidence of Accomplices (1863).

Plunkett was dignified and somewhat austere in manner, though he could relax on occasions such as the annual St Patrick's Day dinner which he chaired. Plunkett had much ability and exercised great influence in the early days of education in New South Wales and in the anti-transportation movement. John Fairfax said he was "the greatest friend of civil and religious liberty in the colony", and he was in advance of his time in his attitude to the land question, and in his advocacy of manhood suffrage.