page_title: Cornish Australians
section_title: Other politicians
hierarchical_section_title: Cornish Australians / Politics / Other politicians
context_page_description: Cornish Australians are citizens of Australia who are fully or partially of Cornish heritage or descent, an ethnic group native to Cornwall in the United Kingdom. They form part of the worldwide Cornish diaspora, which also includes large numbers of people in the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico and many Latin American countries. Cornish Australians are thought to make up around 4.3 per cent of the Australian population and are thus one of the largest ethnic groups in Australia and as such are greater than the native population in the UK of just 532,300.
  Cornish people first arrived in Australia with Captain Cook, most notably Zachary Hickes, and there were some Cornish convicts on the First Fleet, James Ruse, Mary Bryant, along with several of the early governors. The creation of South Australia, with its emphasis on being free of convicts and religious discrimination, was championed by many Cornish religious dissenting groups and Cornish people comprised a sizeable proportion of settlers to that colony. Large scale Cornish emigration to Australia did not begin until the 1840s, coinciding with the Cornish potato famine and slumps in the Cornish mining industry.
context_section_description: There have been many other Australian politicians of Cornish birth or descent. Some of these are listed below, starting with perhaps the most important, Sir John Quick, Founding Father of the Australian Federation.
  John Quick – Postmaster-General, 1909–1910. Federal Member of Parliament for Bendigo, 1901–1913. Victorian Legislative Assembly member for Bendigo, 1880–1889. He was a leading delegate to the constitutional conventions of the 1890s, proposing in August 1893 that a formal national convention should be established, with each of the six Australian colonies to be represented by ten elected delegates. The proposal was agreed on, and in November 1893 Quick drafted a bill which formed the basis of the deliberations at the formal convention held in Adelaide in 1897. He was born in Trevassa, Cornwall, in 1852. In 1913 Quick became the founding President of the first Bendigo Cornish Association.
  John Langdon Bonython – editor, newspaper proprietor, philanthropist, and journalist. Member of the First Australian Parliament. Member for South Australia, 1901–1903. Member for Barker, 1903–1906. Editor of the Adelaide daily morning broadsheet, The Advertiser, for 35 years.
  John Lavington Bonython – Mayor of Adelaide, 1911–1913. Lord Mayor of Adelaide, 1927–1930. Son of John Langdon Bonython.
  Herbert Angas Parsons – judge and politician, son of politician John Langdon Parsons. Member of the House of Assembly for Torrens, 1912–15, and for Murray 1918–21. He was briefly attorney-general and minister of education in 1915. Parsons was appointed K.C. in 1916, a judge of the Supreme Court in 1921, he was senior puisne judge in 1927, and acting chief justice in 1935. On occasions Parsons acted as deputy governor and, after his father's death, in 1904 he became consul for Japan. President of the Cornish Association of South Australia, warden of the University of Adelaide's senate, and vice-chancellor from 1942–1944. Son in law of John Langdon Bonython.
  Garfield Barwick – Attorney-General of Australia, 1958–64. Minister for External Affairs, 1961–64. Seventh and longest serving Chief Justice of Australia, 1964–81. He was appointed a judge of the International Court of Justice, 1973–74.
  John Pascoe Fawkner – Founder of Melbourne. Member of the Victorian Legislative Council. His mother, Hannah Pascoe, was of Cornish parentage.
  John Gale – Father of Canberra. Gale was the founder of the Queanbeyan Age newspaper. He is best remembered for his strong and successful advocacy of Queanbeyan-Canberra as the best site of a future Australian Capital. He was born in Bodmin in 1831.
  Ray Williams – Member for the Electoral district of Hawkesbury in the New South Wales Parliament since 2007.
  George Laffer – Member of the South Australian House of Assembly for Alexandra from 1913–1933. He was Speaker from 1927 until 1930.
  John Lutey – Member for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for Brownhill-Ivanhoe, 1917–1932.
  John Holman – Member for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for North Murchison, 1901–1904. For the Electoral district of Murchison, 1904–1921. For the Electoral district of Forrest, 1923–1925. His daughter, May, took over the Forrest seat after his death in 1925.
  May Holman – Member for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for Forrest, 1925–1939. The daughter of John Holman, she was the second woman to be elected to an Australian parliament and the first female Labour parliamentarian. Holman was a delegate to the League of Nations Assembly in 1930. She died in a car crash on the day of her fourth re-election. Her brother took over the seat after her death.
  Richard Buzacott – Member of the Australian Senate for Western Australia, 1910–1923.
  Frederick Vosper – Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for North-East Coolgardie, 1897–1900. Newspaper journalist and proprietor, he founded The Sunday Times (Western Australia). Born St. Dominic, Cornwall, in 1869.
  Henry Dangar – Pastoralist, surveyor and explorer of Australia. Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council for Northumberland, 1845–1851.  By 1
caption: John Pascoe Fawkner, Founder of Melbourne
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