Graham Berry

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Graham Berry bigraphy, stories - Australian politician

Graham Berry : biography

28 August 1822 – 25 January 1904

Sir Graham Berry KCMG (28 August 1822 – 25 January 1904),

Australian colonial politician, was the 11th Premier of Victoria. He was one of the most Radical and colourful figures in the politics of colonial Victoria, and made the most determined efforts to break the power of the Victorian Legislative Council, the stronghold of the landowning class.

Political career

Berry was elected to the Legislative Assembly for East Melbourne at a by-election in 1861, as what The Argus called "an extreme liberal." At the general election later in the same year he switched to Collingwood, then famously the most radical electorate in the colony. He was re-elected in 1864, but his criticism of James McCulloch’s government during the tariff crisis of 1865 led to his defeat in that year’s snap election.

In 1866 Berry moved to Geelong, where he started a newspaper [he bought the newspaper from James Harrison who started it in 1865], the Geelong Register, as a rival to the established Geelong Advertiser. Using the paper as a platform, he was elected for Geelong West in February 1869. In 1877 he switched to Geelong, which he represented until February 1886. He was briefly Treasurer in John MacPherson’s government in 1870. When Charles Gavan Duffy formed a strong liberal government in June 1871, Berry again became Treasurer. He was a convinced protectionist, and steered a bill for increased tariffs through the Parliament.

First stint as Premier

After the conservative interlude of the Francis and Kerferd governments, Berry assumed leadership of the liberals and became Premier and Treasurer in August 1875. But the liberal majority in the Assembly was unreliable, and in October the government’s budget was defeated and Berry resigned. He asked the Governor, Sir George Bowen, for a dissolution, but was refused. He then campaigned across the colony in opposition to the third McCulloch government.

Second stint as Premier

At the May 1877 election, with the powerful backing of the Melbourne Age under David Syme, he won a huge liberal majority in the Assembly and returned to office at the head of a radical ministry.

Berry’s election manifesto proposed a punitive land tax designed to break up the squatter class’s great pastoral properties – about 800 men at this time owned most of Victoria’s grazing lands. He also advocated a high tariff to foster local manufacturing, which threatened to harm the importing and banking interests. He promised that if the Council, which was elected on a limited property-based franchise, blocked his program, it would be "dealt with according to its deserts." He described the Council as "a chamber which robs the people of the gold in the soil and the land God gave them." Given that there was no mechanism in the Victorian Constitution to override the Council, this was taken by conservatives to be a threat of revolutionary violence.

Berry was a devoted constitutional liberal and had no plans for illegal measures. But the Councillors were sufficiently alarmed to pass a modified version of Berry’s land tax bill, despite the urgings of the ultra-conservative former Premier Sir Charles Sladen to reject it outright. Berry, emboldened, next introduced a bill for the payment of members of the Assembly, which the trade unions were demanding so that working class candidates could be elected. Berry "tacked" the bill to the Appropriations Bill so that Council could not reject it without paralysing the Colony’s finances. The Council resented this blackmail and at Sladen’s urging rejected the bill.

With the two Houses deadlocked, Berry embarked on a public campaign of "coercion" against the Council. "We coerce madmen," he said, "We put them into lunatic asylums, and never was anything more the act of madmen than the rejection of the Appropriation Bill." To bring matters to a head, on 8 January 1878 ("Black Wednesday") Berry’s government began to dismiss public servants, starting with police and judges, arguing that without an Appropriations Bill they could not be paid. Berry next brought in a bill to strip the Council of its powers, which the Council of course rejected.