Everything about Duncan Gillies totally explained
Duncan Gillies (January
1834 –
12 September 1903),
Australian colonial
politician, was the 14th
Premier of Victoria.
Gillies was born at Overnewton near
Glasgow,
Scotland, where his father had a market garden. He was sent to the high school until he was about 14, when he entered an office in Glasgow. In
1852 he arrived in
Melbourne and travelled to the goldfields at
Ballarat, where he worked first as a miner and later as a businessman and company director.
Gillies was elected to the
Victorian Legislative Assembly for Ballarat West in
1861, holding this seat until
1868. A conservative, he was President of the Board of Lands and Works in the short-lived government of
Charles Sladen in
1868, which cost him his seat at Ballarat, a strongly liberal constituency. He was elected for
Maryborough 1870-
1877, Rodney
1877-
1889, Eastern Suburbs
1889-
1894 and
Toorak 1897-
1903. He was Commissioner for Railways and Roads in the ministries of
James Francis and
George Kerferd from
1872 to
1875 and Agriculture Minister in the third government of Sir
James McCulloch in
1875-
1877.
In both the first (
1880) and second (
1883-
1886)
Service governments Gillies was Commissioner for Railways and Vice-President of the Board of Lands and Works. He was also Minister for Public Instruction
1884-
1886. When Service retired at the time of the
1886 elections, Gillies succeeded him as Premier, forming a coalition government with the liberal leader
Alfred Deakin, and winning a comfortable majority over a divided opposition at the elections.
The Gillies ministry presided over the climax of the long economic boom which Victoria had enjoyed since the gold rushes of the 1850s. There was at this time no regulation of the banking and finance industries, and no expectation that governments could or should protect investors against unsound or unscrupulous financial schemes. The result was the great Victorian Land Boom, which took off in
1887 and reached a climax in
1890. More than 50 million pounds of speculative capital from Britain flowed into the colony, much of which was spent buying land in suburban Melbourne at hugely inflated prices. Gillies wasn't really responsible for this, although his government did nothing to prevent it.
The Gillies government was easily re-elected in
1889, but in
1890 the Boom toppled over and a sharp recession followed. In October Gillies was defeated in a confidence motion when a section of his own followers led by
James Munro turned against him. In
1891 the recession turned into a depression, and Gillies was among the many speculators and shareholders who were wiped out in the crash.
Gillies withdrew from active politics for several years while his finances recovered. In
1902 he was elected
Speaker, a post he held until his death the following year. He had always been considered to be a bachelor, but after his death it was disclosed that in 1897 he'd married in London Mrs Turquand Fillan who survived him without issue. He declined the honour of
K.C.M.G. in 1887.
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