SENATOR’S DEATH

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23748, 21 September 1942, Page 6

SENATOR’S DEATH

£91,939 INCOME TAX NOT PAID

(0.C.) SYDNEY, September 9. Worried by a judgment against him for non-payment of £91,939 income tax, and a bankruptcy notice which had been served on him, Senator Edward Bertram Johnston, aged 62, of Western Australia, committed suicide. His body was found washed up on a beach in Port Phillip, near Melbourne, on Sunday. Senator Johnston had been sick from the time proceedings were first taken against him by the taxation authorities. Last week he was obviously ill and suffering from severe nervous strain. He,had until September 23 to answer the bankruptcy notice. If he had been declared bankrupt he would have been forced to resign from the Senate The vacancy in the Senate caused by Senator Johnston’s death will be filled almost immediately. Electoral procedure is to appoint a successor by vote of the joint Houses of Parliament in the state represented, but a move was begun by Mr T. J. Hughes, an Independent member of the Western Australia Legislative Assembly, to elect the new senator by postal vote. Mr Hughes said he was actuated by the critical state of public affairs in the Commonwealth and in Western Australia.

Although the Government in Western Australia is Labour, it has a minority in the joint Houses, and if the usual procedure is adopted an Opposition candidate is certain of election. Such a result will not alter the party balance in the Senate, where the Opposition has a majority of 19 to 17, but the Government party will miss Senator Johnston, who, though a Country Party man, almost invariably supported the Government.