All but one of Australia’s first 20 prime ministers have federal electoral divisions named after them. The first, Edmund Barton, a prime mover in federation, resigned after three years to become a high court judge.
His successor, Alfred Deakin, a spiritualist, served three separate terms, the collapse of his first administration leading to the country’s first Labor government, under Chris Watson, which lasted just four months. Three other PMs, Earle Page, Arthur Fadden and Francis Forde, served for less than a year, Forde for eight days after the death of the wartime Labor leader, John Curtin.
Page’s best man at his second marriage was the eighth PM, Stanley Melbourne Bruce. Joseph Cook (1913-14) has no seat in his memory, the Cook division in New South Wales having been named after Captain Cook.
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