3 minute read
Many are called, few are chosen
Stephen Dawson Many are called, few are chosen!
It isn’t beyond the bounds of possiblity that a future Western Australia premier could be a son of Ireland. Indeed, it has happened before. Premier
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Mark McGowan
and several of his ministers have some Irish ancestry but one of the cabinet’s most senior members is a full blooded Irishman, Stephen Dawson. He was born in Dublin and first came to Australia in 1986 on a family holiday. Then in 1989 the Dawson family migrated to Australia to escape the struggling Irish economy. He joined the Labor party on his first day at Edith Cowan University and since then has worked his way up through the party as a Chief of Staff to various government ministers in WA (and Victoria) before first getting elected in 2013 as a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) for the WA electorate of Mining & Pastoral Region where he is the party’s biggest vote getter. He has held multiple shadow and cabinet positions since 2013 and is currently Minister for Emergency Services, Innovation and ICT, Medical Research and Volunteering. And in July last year Mr Dawson was made acting premier for something like four or five days while McGowan – affectionately called ‘State Daddy’ by many – took a break. A consistently strong performer with an easy going nature he is a popular figure amongst his labor party colleagues and in the Irish community. It may be some time before Mark McGowan’s popularity dwindles to the point it becomes a liability, they lose an election or there is a leadership coup and the party will need to pick a new leader. Even if a politican has no ambitions to grab the top job these things can be thrust upon them by their colleagues who need a capable candidate. The second premier of our state was one George Lionel Throssell who was born at Fermoy, Co. Cork in May 1840. At the age of ten his family left Ireland for Western Australia. He went on to become a successful merchant and to get involved in the local politics of Northam and then in the new Legislative Assembly. When his party leader and the premier of the day walked away from state parliament to join the new Federated parliament he was succeeded by Throssell on February 15, 1901. It was to be a short premiership. He was a very capable administrator but his extreme difficulty in hearing and inability to handle political factions and in-fighting meant he led the government into an election which they losed. On May 27 he resigned as leader and moved to the backbench where he retired three years later. If another Irishman ever gets into the position again hopefully they might last longer than a hundred days.
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