NEW LABOUR PREMIER

Southland Times, Issue 20200, 10 June 1927, Page 3

NEW LABOUR PREMIER

MR. HOGAN, OF VICTORIA. SIX FEET FIVE AND A HALF INCHES IN HEIGHT. Sydney, May 27. The leader of the Labour Party in Victoria, Mr. Edward Hogan, known to his friends as Ned, became the southern State’s third Labour Premier a few days ago in consequence of the people returning his party in the largest numbers to the Legislative Assembly, though not with an absolute majority. The non-Labour parties have failed to arrive at a coalition, and with three or four independents promising him support, Mr. Hogan is hoping that his Government, in office but not in power, will nevertheless last longer than those of his two party predecessors, Mr Elmslie and Mr Prendergast. These lasted thirteen days and six months respectively. What sort of a man is this newcomer among Australian Premiers? Like most Labour Premiers in this country, Ned Hogan worked his way up from the lower rung. Born at Wallace, near Ballarat, in the State he now governs, the future Premier left school at twelve years of age and worked on his father’s farm. He drove a team of horses at that age, and did a man’s work in the fields even before that. In 1908, being then in his early twenties—Mr Hogan is not yet 45 —he went to Western Australia and engaged in timber-getting and prospecting on the Kalgoorlie goldfields. His public career may be said to have begun when he was appointed in 1908 one of the firewood workers’ delegates in a dispute. That and a subsequent dispute were settled in the men’s favour. On the goldfields- he identified himself with political and athletic matters. After a bout of typhoid he returned to Victoria, soon became a union official, and a couple of years later was returned to the State Legislative Assembly for a rural constituency, which he has represented ever since. On the goldfields, Mr. Hogan was a big figure, literally and figuratively, at athletics. He stands 6ft. s|in. in his socks, and his thin build disguises his great strength. But on the goldfields, where men lived by their brawn, he beat all-comers at tossing the caber, throwing the hammer, and putting the weight. At one athletic meeting he created an Australian record by putting a 561 b. weight 21ft. 7Ain. On his watch chain to this day he wears a medal won for putting the weight at a Kalgoorlie meeting in 1911. “If ‘Ned’ can put through laws as well as put the weight,” said one of his old friends, “he’ll make a record business of his job.” Mr Hogan’s height seems the greater because of an unruly thatch of hair with an intriguing snow white patch just above the forehead. An abundant moustache is an added characteristic which will make Mr. Hogan popular with the political cartoonists.