Реджинальд Коннор: Австралия саяхатшысы және «несие дауы»

Australian politician

Reginald Francis Xavier Connor (26 January 190722 August 1977) was an Australian politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1963 until he died in 1977, representing the Labor Party. He was the Minister for Minerals and Energy in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975. Connor was born in Wollongong, New South Wales. He served on the Wollongong City Council from 1938 to 1945, and then in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1950 to 1963. After entering federal politics, Connor became an ally of Gough Whitlam, who appointed him to cabinet when Labor won the 1972 election. As Minister for Minerals and Energy, he was noted for his strident economic nationalism. However, Connor is best known as the central figure in the "loans affair", which arose from his attempts to secure petrodollar loans from Middle Eastern financiers. His resignation from cabinet in October 1975 precipitated the constitutional crisis which resulted in Whitlam's dismissal a month later. Connor died as the sitting member for the Division of Cunningham, precipitating the 1977 Cunningham by election.

Connor was born in Wollongong, New South Wales, where he lived all his life and where he was represented in the New South Wales and Australian Parliaments. Descended from Irish Catholics, he was educated at state schools, including Wollongong High School, of which he graduated as dux, despite contracting pneumonia in his final year. Due to his father's death in 1925, he gave up his intention of becoming an analytical chemist and became an articled clerk. He qualified in law but was twice rejected for registration as a solicitor, the result of his dismissal by his former employer. Instead, he went into business as a car dealer and later took up farming. In 1931 he married Amelia Searl. From 1938 to 1945 he was an Alderman on the Wollongong City Council.

In 1940, when the NSW ALP was split into three factions, Connor unsuccessfully contested the federal seat of Werriwa for the so called "Hughes Evans Labor Party", the left wing faction which had split from the recently reunified ALP in NSW, led by William (Bill) McKell. Subsequently, some members of the State Labor Party joined the Communist Party of Australia, and some have been shown to have held "dual tickets" throughout the period. He remained in the ALP when most of the Hughes Evans faction were expelled in 1941. In 1950 Connor was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for the seat of Wollongong Kembla, where he served until 1963. He was partly responsible for the introduction of the state's Clean Air Act 1961. Connor remained a backbencher reportedly as he was not a supporter of the dominant Catholic right wing of the NSW ALP. The journalist Paul Kelly wrote in his book November 1975: "It was the national interest that drove Rex Connor. He can be criticised for his naivety and poor judgement. But there is no charge against Connor's integrity The Opposition implied in the lobbies that ministers were chasing personal gain. There is no evidence for this." Nevertheless, by the time Labor returned to office in 1983, Connor's economic nationalism and dreams of massive state investment in energy projects had been totally rejected.

Connor's wife died in April 1977 and he died suddenly in Canberra of a coronary occlusion in August of that year. He was survived by their three sons. One of his sons, Rex Connor junior, founded and led the Advance Australia Party.