Томас Джозеф Байрнс: Квинсленд премьері және саяхатшы саясаткер

Australian politician

Thomas Joseph Byrnes (11 November 1860 – 27 September 1898) was an Australian politician and barrister. He was Premier of Queensland from April 1898 until his death in September of the same year, having previously served in several ministerial positions in his parliamentary career. He was the first Roman Catholic Premier of Queensland and the first to die in office.

Byrnes was born in Spring Hill, Queensland, to Irish immigrants Patrick Byrnes and his wife Anna, née Tighe. he studied at Brisbane Grammar School and then studied arts and law at the University of Melbourne, graduating with honours in both. During his time at the University of Melbourne he became Prelector of the Dialectic Society of Trinity College (University of Melbourne), although he was a non residential student, winning the Society's inaugural Wigram Allen Prize in 1883, only months after it had been established by Sir George Wigram Allen. In 1882 83 Byrnes taught at Xavier College. Byrnes continued his private law practice and participated in two major Supreme Court of Queensland cases. In the Queensland Investment Co. v. Grimley case, Byrnes successful conduct of the defence was praised widely. In the John Robb arbitration case of 1892, praise for Byrnes skill was accompanied by public objection to the high fees paid to Samuel Griffith as leading counsel and to Byrnes as one of his assistants. Instead of the Federation that came to pass, Byrnes favoured political integration by means of the Federal Council of Australasia, an appointed body which had met biennially since 1885. At its 1897 meeting he proposed that the council's legitimacy be enhanced by the direct election, by voters, of delegates to the council. This proposal was opposed by leading Federationist members of the council, and was defeated, with 9 delegates in favour and 9 against. This effectively spelt the end of the council. On becoming premier in April 1898, Byrnes adopted a more circumspect position on Federation. On a tour of the pro Federation Queensland north his earlier fighting words were replaced by diffuse professions of federalism in the abstract. In July 1898 Byrnes accepted an invitation by the leader of the NSW No campaign, Jack Want, to confer with the NSW premier George Reid. What passed between the two premiers at their Sydney conference remains one of the tantalizing unknowns of the federation story. The outcome of this excursion to Sydney was catastrophic to Byrnes on another account entirely.

Byrnes' possibly brilliant future was cut short by contracting measles on his visit to Sydney in July 1898, which developed into pneumonia. He died on 27 September 1898. Byrnes was accorded a state funeral which proceeded from St Stephen's Cathedral to the Toowong Cemetery. Never married, he was survived by several brothers and sisters.

Byrnes is commemorated by two statues, one in Centenary Place in Brisbane and the heritage listed T J Byrnes Monument in Warwick, both funded by public subscriptions. Then there was an argument of whether Byrnes should be depicted in a university gown or in an ordinary frock coat, deciding on a frock coat in order to depict Byrnes as the premier rather than as a lawyer. Then as Simonetti was tendering to provide a 9 foot tall bronze statue for £1,800, a local sculptor James Laurence Watts offered to provide the statue for only £1,000, dividing the committee. However, after Byrnes' sisters indicated their strong preference for Simonetti's work and Simonetti offered a revised tender of £1400, the committee went ahead and commissioned the statue from Simonetti. Early in 1900, the argument about the clothing erupted once more when Simonetti expressed an artistic preference for robes rather than a frock coat, and the committee reversed its decision in favour of robes. During this argument, Simonetti took ill and died. It was then announced in the newspaper that it had been Simonetti's wish that his former pupil, James White, should complete his unfinished commissions. The committee negotiated with White, but finally gave the commission to sculptor Bertram Mackennal. The township of Byrnestown in Queensland is named after him, as is its main street Byrnes Parade and its railway station. St Thomas's Catholic Church in Camp Hill, Brisbane (then known as East Coorparoo) built in 1923 is another memorial to Byrnes. He had owned the land on which the church was built, but it had passed to his sister Matilda Margaret Maloney after his death. In 1916 she agreed to sell the land to the Catholic Church and then, on her death in 1922, bequeathed £300 towards the cost of erecting a church in memory of her brother.