King of the o' Malley

King O'Malley is the grand legend of Australian political history- not so much for his eccentric buffoonery but for his strength of character and dogged determination in seeing through the motions he presented to the House of Parliament as the longest-serving minister to the very end. He was a visionary frustrated by many of his ideas being unacceptable in his time. He was a flamboyant self-publicist whose exploits brought him much ridicule. A fanatically Australian foreigner who...
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King O'Malley is the grand legend of Australian political history- not so much for his eccentric buffoonery but for his strength of character and dogged determination in seeing through the motions he presented to the House of Parliament as the longest-serving minister to the very end. He was a visionary frustrated by many of his ideas being unacceptable in his time. He was a flamboyant self-publicist whose exploits brought him much ridicule. A fanatically Australian foreigner who proposed all things American for the colony in its political infancy. As a socialist with capitalist views on the day's economy, he amassed a fortune through slum property ownership. O'Malley came to Australia as a young man and was soon successful as a roving super insurance salesman in Tasmania and South Australia. His bombast manner and Irish charm took him into the South Australian parliament, where his weird campaigns for lavatories and cushions for seats for women on railway trains and the Married Women's Protection League won him notoriety. Legends and mystery surround his name and are unravelled in this account of his life. He professed that he was born in Canada but lived his youth in America; he insisted he founded the waterlily Rockchurch of the wild West of Kansas and, on arrival in Australia, lived in a cave in Queensland for two years, being nursed back to health by an Aboriginal. He was a born raconteur whose political career, aided by the style of his ' spread eagle rhetoric, carried him into the first government Federal government, where he continued to be characterised by wild proposals, strong reformist policies and fervent industry know-how. He became Minister for Home Affairs and was instrumental in founding the Commonwealth Bank, the transcontinental railway, and establishing Canberra as the Federal government's centre. His many clashes with colleagues and the public service, not forgetting his public oratory and press criticism over the decades of his working life, kept him in the limelight of politics. He outlived his political enemies, press critics and colleagues and proved to be our most colourful and enigmatic of politicians.