page_title: William Watt (Australian politician)
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: William Watt (Australian politician) / Federal politics / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Australian politician William Alexander Watt with his wife Emily
context_page_description: William Alexander Watt was an Australian politician. He served two terms as Premier of Victoria before entering federal politics in 1914. He then served as a minister in the government of Billy Hughes from 1917 to 1920, including as acting prime minister during World War I, and finally as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1923 to 1926.
context_section_description: In April 1920 Hughes dispatched Watt to London on a financial mission. Watt was in poor health, and his suspicion that Hughes was trying to get him out of the way was aggravated by Hughes's habit of communicating directly with the British government over the head of Watt, who was supposedly his representative. Watt was appointed Australia's representative at the Spa Conference on War reparations, but when Hughes cabled that Watt was not to agree to anything without consulting him, Watt complained that he was being treated like "a telegraph messenger." After an acrimonious exchange of cables, Watt resigned as Treasurer and returned to Australia.
  Watt spent the next two years on the back bench. At the 1922 elections he supported rebel former Liberals in Victoria who opposed Hughes and stood against Nationalist candidates: one of these, John Latham, won the seat of Kooyong from the Nationalist member. After the elections, the newly formed Country Party held the balance of power, and used it to force Hughes's resignation. Watt was passed over for leadership of the new coalition government in favour of the Treasurer, Stanley Bruce. As a consolation prize Watt was elected Speaker, a position he held until 1926. Although was not happy about the demands on his time made by the move of the federal parliament from Melbourne to Canberra in 1927, he re-contested his seat at the 1928 federal election, but resigned from parliament nine months later, on medical advice.
caption: Watt later in his career
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