page_title: Davis Hughes
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Davis Hughes / Political career
caption_attribution_description: English: Sydney Opera House exterior view in Australia. Polski: Budynek Sydney Opera House. Sydney, Australia.
context_page_description: Sir William Davis Hughes was an Australian politician. He was notable for his involvement in the controversial resignation of architect Jørn Utzon from the Sydney Opera House project in 1966.
context_section_description: Hughes was elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Armidale from 1950 to 1953 and 1956 to 1973 for the Country Party. He was chosen to lead the party in 1958, but his term of office was brief because he was forced to resign in 1959 after it was revealed that he did not have the university degree which he claimed.
  With the election of the Askin government in 1965, Hughes became Minister for Public Works, with responsibility for, among other things, the completion of the Sydney Opera House. Hughes refused to accept Jørn Utzon's approach to managing the Opera House project and, specifically, the construction of plywood prototypes for its interiors. Hughes refused to pay a fee claim for £51,000, which meant that Utzon could not pay his staff. After a heated discussion about the claim, Utzon sent a letter of withdrawal to Hughes on 28 February 1966, stating: "You have forced me to the leave the job". In his media announcement made only hours after receiving the letter, Hughes stated it was Utzon's 'resignation'.
  The Opera House was completed by another architect, Peter Hall, an ex-government architect from Sydney. Taking on the project, Hall deemed Utzon's seating plan as unsafe, to improve this he subsequently made radical changes to the interior design, a decision that he would be largely criticised for.  Despite this, the Opera House was completed under his watch and it eventually opened in 1973.
  Upon his resignation from parliament in January 1973, Hughes was appointed NSW Agent-General in London. He died at Erina, New South Wales.
caption: Hughes criticized Sydney Opera House construction management
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