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Ted Theodore

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Ted Theodore

Edward Granville Theodore (29 December 1884 – 9 February 1950) was an Australian politician who served as Premier of Queensland from 1919 to 1925, as leader of the state Labor Party. He later entered federal politics, serving as Treasurer in the Scullin Labor government.

Theodore was born in Adelaide, the son of a Romanian immigrant. He left school at the age of 12, and spent the next decade working his way around the country. He arrived in Queensland in 1906, and soon became involved in the labour movement. Theodore was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1909, aged just 24. He was also elected state president of the Australian Workers' Union in 1913. Theodore became Treasurer of Queensland following Labor's victory at the 1915 state election.

In 1919, Theodore succeeded T. J. Ryan as premier. His government pursued various interventionist economic policies, establishing a number of state-run enterprises and introducing new competition and labour market regulations. These perceived steps towards socialism led to Theodore being nicknamed "Red Ted". A notable constitutional reform was the abolition of the Queensland Legislative Council in 1922; Queensland remains the only Australian state with no upper house in its parliament. Theodore was popular among the general public, and won two state elections (1920 and 1923) before resigning in 1925 to enter federal politics. He was defeated at his first attempt, but two years later won a by-election for the Sydney seat of Dalley.

In 1929, Theodore was elected deputy leader to James Scullin. He became Treasurer and de facto Deputy Prime Minister after the 1929 election, but resigned after less than a year amid accusations of corruption. Theodore returned as a Treasurer in early 1931, and served until the government's landslide defeat at the 1931 election, where he lost his own seat. He had little success in combating the Great Depression, and disputes over economic policy led to a party split and several defections to Lang Labor and the United Australia Party. Theodore was only 47 when he left politics, and went on to have a successful business career as a partner of Frank Packer.

Theodore was born on 29 December 1884 in Port Adelaide, Province of South Australia, the second of six children born to Annie (née Tanner) and Basil Stephen Theodore (Romanian: Vasile Ștefan Teodorescu). His parents had met in 1882, on the passage from England to Australia. After arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia, they initially went their separate ways; they kept in touch by letter, however, and by the end of the year had married in Perth. They subsequently moved to Adelaide, where their first son Stephen was born the following year.

Theodore's father, originally named Vasile Teodorescu, was born in Galați, Moldavia, into a well-to-do family connected with the Romanian nobility. He and his brother travelled to London in their youth, where they learned English. His parents had intended that he follow his father into the Romanian Orthodox priesthood, but he quit divinity school to join the British Merchant Navy. Theodore's mother was born in Manchester, England, and descended from Irish immigrants. Her father died when she was an infant, and she was sent to work in the Lancashire cotton mills. When her mother died, she accepted an invitation to join her step-brother Tom Harrison (an ex-convict) at his farm in Greenough, Western Australia; however, she stayed there only a few months before returning to Perth to marry.

Theodore was educated at Lefevre Peninsula Catholic and Aldgate State schools in Adelaide, but left school at 12 to work on the Adelaide docks. In 1900, aged 16, he left for the goldfields of Western Australia, working as a labourer at Lennonville and Peak Hill. He then joined a guano mining crew on the Houtman Abrolhos, where he acquired his lifelong love of fishing. After a while, Theodore returned to the mainland and worked as a gold miner at Day Dawn and Kalgoorlie. He went back to Adelaide for Christmas 1902, and then joined his father on an unsuccessful prospecting expedition to Leigh Creek and Bundaleer, where they had hoped to find copper. Later in 1903, Theodore got his first experience in industrial relations, helping negotiate a wage increase for miners at Arltunga. He then decided to try his luck at Broken Hill, New South Wales. In 1906 he left for Cairns, Queensland where he prospected for tin in the Chillagoe area and worked in the Vulcan Mine in Irvinebank. It was among the unorganised workers of Stannary Hills and Irvinebank that the Amalgamated Workers' Association of North Queensland was born.

Theodore founded the Amalgamated Workers' Association with Bill McCormack. This union used the process and principle of amalgamation to unify with other unions until it became Australia's largest union, the Australian Workers' Union (AWU). Theodore became Queensland state president of the AWU in 1913. Meanwhile, he had been elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in Woothakata from 1909 to 1912 for the Australian Labor Party and subsequently from 1912 to 1925 in Chillagoe (the seat of Woothakata renamed). His position in the AWU made him a power in the Parliamentary Labor Party, and when Labor won a majority in the Assembly for the first time in 1915, he became Treasurer and Secretary for Public Works in the government of T. J. Ryan.

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