Happy New Year. Many readers won’t be here this week because they are holidaying at the coast. Although I won’t be there in person, my mind is there, looking at the history of State politics on the North Coast in the electorates of Byron, Lismore, Casino, Clarence and Raleigh. There was great excitement in Lismore in 1959. During October and November 2011 we looked at the memorable 1959 State election, but the series was interrupted by the need to publish stories about the Ursuline Convent. This week we’ll look at the final story in the 1959 State election saga, and then the headline above will make sense.
By 1950 things in the Lismore electorate were pretty crook. North Coast dairy farmers had remained dependent on butter-making rather than selling milk, because of their constant exclusion from the Sydney Milk Zone. But butter sales fell sharply as margarine gained consumer acceptance. At least 600 local dairy farms had been abandoned to rabbits, lantana and other undergrowth. On the plains around Casino larger producers switched to beef cattle. Many dairy farmers who switched to banana growing faced ruin because of the over production which glutted the market. After leaving school, only 10 per cent of students could find employment locally, so there was no future for them if they stayed.
Timber-getting, saw-milling, cane-growing, beef processing, sand mining and whaling (at Byron Bay, where 150 humpbacks were processed in 1959) increased, as did union labour, and it destabilised voting patterns. In 1953, two Country Party members at Lismore and Casino were evicted from office in “the greatest election surprise on the Far North Coast for 20 years”. Dissatisfaction was directed at the Members rather than the Party. Two Independent Country Party candidates were successful: Ian Robinson in Casino and Jack Easter in Lismore.
A former Mayor of Ballina, Easter was unable to win the support of Lismore’s business leaders. He was unsuccessfully opposed in 1956 by Cynthia Wilson, another Independent Country Party candidate. But the writing was on the wall.
On Monday, February 16, 1959 the NSW Cabinet decided a General Election would be held on March 21. Easter, the sitting Member, was endorsed by the Electorate Council but in the week before nomination day the Lismore Branch of the Country Party moved to have Clyde Campbell (the Mayor of Lismore) endorsed also. The Electorate Council held an emergency meeting, but decided not to endorse a second candidate. Campbell decided to proceed with his nomination. His policies called for the opening of a university and a technical college in Lismore.
No Labor candidate stood and thus the election on Saturday, March 21, 1959 was contested by just Easter and Campbell. The result of the primary count was too close to be definitive. A front page story in an Armidale newspaper on Wednesday, April 1, 1959 reported that a recount was being conducted and the final result should be known that night, and “unless any discrepancy is discovered Campbell will win the seat.” The recount started at 1pm on Tuesday, continued all day Wednesday and finished about 4pm on Thursday. Two prominent Lismore men were scrutineers for the two candidates.
Final figures released by the oddly named Returning Officer, J.K. Greedy, were: Easter 7996; Campbell 7994; Informal 270, so the result at Easter 1959 was that Easter retained the seat by a majority of just two votes. Some votes which had previously been declared Informal were admitted by the Returning Officer, who was quoted as saying “I didn’t know there were so many ways to vote for two candidates.”
The Court of Disputed Returns soon declared the result void and a new election was set for Spring, on September 12, 1959. Easter and Campbell again nominated, but sensing an opportunity because of the Country Party disunity, the Labor Party ran a candidate, Keith Clive Compton, a local engineer, aged 59. Labor made the most strenuous efforts to ensure the success of its candidate. Throughout the campaign Compton pushed a simple message, that Lismore had been left in the wilderness by the Country Party, and only Labor could provide industry assistance and Government services.
Compton was unofficially supported by Campbell who denounced Easter for having “displayed a total lack of appreciation of the district’s urgent needs.” Compton polled well and also secured a quarter of Campbell’s preferences. Compton won. It was the first time since the Country Party’s formation in the 1920s that it had failed to win Lismore.
An editorial in the heavily biased Armidale Express on Wednesday, September 16, 1959, declared: “If commonsense returns to Country Party candidates and their committees in the next campaign, Lismore will return to the fold. There is nothing surer!” But this prediction was well wide of the mark. Compton became Minister for Lands in 1961 and won Lismore again in 1962. He lost his seat at the landslide in 1965 when the Labor Government was thrown out, after 24 years, having held office from 1941.
The 1959 State election in Lismore is memorable because the winning margin was just two votes, and then, after the election was declared void, the second election resulted in the Country Party losing the seat for the first time. Up in the mountains, the 1959 election in Armidale is memorable because (1) the winning candidate (Davis Hughes), did not take part in the campaign; and (2) the Democratic Labor Party ran a candidate (Jack Stanley) against the Labor candidate (Percy Love), to split the Labor vote, and Labor’s Love lost.
