Don Dunstan

Donald "Don" Allan Dunstan AC QC (born 21 September 1926 in Suva, Fiji; † February 6, 1999 in Adelaide, South Australia ) was an Australian politician of the Labour Party and twice Prime Minister of South Australia.

Life

Don Dunstan began his political career in 1943 as campaign workers of the conservative Country Party while he was still a student, but soon changed his politics and later justified this with the following words:

In 1953 he was first elected as a candidate of the Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly of South Australia and reached twelve years later at the federal party of the Labor Party in 1965 in Sydney, that the words " White Australia " ( White Australia) were removed from the party program.

On 1 June 1967 he was the first Prime Minister of South Australia, but had to suffer a defeat in the following year, which meant that he had to cede the premiership to Steele Hall of the Liberal and Country League on 17 April 1968. During his first term, it was amending the so-called Six o'clock swill, the rush to hotel bars in Australia and New Zealand to drink alcoholic beverages before the bar closed already at an early hour. South Australia was the last state who abolished the closure with a tabled by Don Dunstan law. About five months after the end of his tenure, the first legal beer was consumed after 18 clock on 28 September 1968's.

After another victory for the Labor Party, he was on June 2, 1970 Halls successor as Prime Minister and was subsequently able to win the party four victories in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of the State.

His lasting until February 15, 1979 term of office was marked by social reforms such as the decriminalization of homosexuality and becoming the first Australian state that carried out this. To underscore his personal attitude towards such reforms he once appeared in 1972 in pink shorts in parliament building rather than in a traditional gray suit, and commented that he wanted to bring some reform will in the conservative corridors of Parliament with this action. He was also known as a patron of art and culture such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts. He also sat as the first Prime Minister of the State by land rights for Aboriginal people.

The term of office Dunstan led by the reforms to a change in the decades 1933-1965 conservative dominated South Australia and one of the most progressive states of Australia in the 1970s.

External links and sources

Biography ( rulers.org )

Prime Minister ( South Australia )
Member of the Australian Labor Party
Companion of the Order of Australia
Australian
Born in 1926
Died in 1999
Man

September 21 Premier of South Australia George Marsden Waterhouse Henry Ayers Thomas Playford IV Jay Weatherill

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