Lawyer politicians John Downer, 'Paddy' Glynn, John Hannah Gordon give South Australian shape to Constitution
John Downer, Edmund Barton and R.E. O'Connor who were the committee writing the final draft of the Australian constitution. Other South Australian delegates Patrick Glynn (top right) and John Hannah Gordon (bottom right) also made contribitions to the wording.
Images by State Library of South Australia
John Downer, a former South Australian premier, was on the committee of three who made the final draft of the Australian constitution, adopted in 1899. The committee, led by Downer’s friend (and first Australian prime minister-to-be) Edmund Barton, worked at Downer’s Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide, home – later part of St Mark’s university college.
Downer, a clever scholarship winner to St Peter’s College in Adelaide, became a lawyer and conservative politician but a reformer on some issues like women's rights. In 1883, he passed a law allowing married women the right to own property. He supported votes for women. In the South Australian delegation to federal conventions in 1891 and 1897-98, he supported a strong Senate to protect the smaller states.
In 1901, Downer was elected to the first Senate and supported Barton's government. He was disappointed not to be appointed to the first high court.
Among novel contributions by South Australians to the federation were American-born premier (1901-05) John Jenkins’s knowledge of the United States constitution and advice against a confederacy.
Future South Australian supreme court justice John Hannah Gordon is credited, with lawyer and politician Patrick “Paddy” Glynn, of winning the case for South Australia's equal access to River Murray water.
Glynn’s better-known contribution was to have the reference to “God” in the preamble of the constitution. At the first convention in Adelaide, he made a reputation for knowing constitutional law, thorough research into topics, rapid delivery, broad brogue and general learning. Alfred Deakin believed that “if not the best-read man of the convention”, Glynn “certainly carried more English prose and poetry in his memory than any three or four of his associates”.
With H.B. Higgins and Josiah Symon, Glynn led the judiciary committee that, with the constitutional and finance committees, prepared a draft commonwealth bill. During a Sydney session of the convention, he brightened proceedings by what The Bulletin called his “meteor-like rush into matrimony”. Within a week, he wrote a letter of proposal, was accepted by telegram, married Abigail Dynon in Melbourne and returned to Sydney. King O’Malley was his best man.
Elected to the House of Representatives as a free trader in 1901, Glynn served as attorney-general in Deakin's fusion government, minister for external affairs in the Joseph Cook (Liberal) administration (1913-14), and home and territories minister in Bill Hughes's Nationalist government from 1917. He was the last of the federal founding fathers to sit in the commonwealth parliament.
John Hannah Gordon’s contribution to the conventions had most significance in the 21st Century when a group of federal politicians, including deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, were disqualified under Section 44 of the constitution because of dual citizenship.
At the convention in Melbourne in 1898, Gordon wanted to add the words “or who has not since been naturalised” to Section 44 – allowing people to be elected if they had become British subjects. But he was shut down by others, including Glynn (“You cannot have two allegiances.”), Barton (“No; a man might have to go out of our parliament to serve against us.”) and George Turner (“He may be minister of defence.”) At the time the constitution was written, there were no Australian citizens – something not created until 1949.
