Forgotten Local Leader
Daniel James Curtin (14 February 1898 - 4 December 1980) was an Australian politician who represented the local area in federal politics from 1949 to 1969. Despite this long tenue as a local federal representative, little has been written about him and so we set out to discover some more about this past local leader.

Who was Dan Curtin?
Curtin was born in working-class inner-city suburb of Redfern and was educated at a local Catholic primary school. After a stint at a technical college and as an apprentice, he became a boilermaker. Redfern was a strong base for Labor party activity, and Curtin joined the ALP, where he would have met some the early prominent figures of the Labor movement, including William McKell who would go onto become Premier of NSW and later Governor-General of Australia. Curtin an active member of the Party.

Curtin also became a union activist and an organiser of the Boilermakers' Society. He and his brother were leading members of that union. According to the Communist Party's newspaper The Tribune in 1947, during their time with the Boilermaker's Union, Dan Curtin was as "right-winger" and his brother Bill, a "left-winger". They may well have called him a "right-winger", but this did not make any less a vocal supporter of worker's rights. Supporting the labour movement became the primary focus of his political life.

He worked at Cockatoo Island Dockyard during World War Two, contributing to warship construction, including that of the Tribal class destroyer HMAS Warramunga.

Daniel Curtin, 1962 (NAA 30451913)

In February 1947, the Premier and state member for Redfern, William McKell, resigned to take up the position of Governor-General. Dan Curtin threw his hat into the ring for preselection for the Labor nomination for McKell's safe Labor state seat of Redfern. Curtin was defeated in the preselection by George Noble (1891 - 1947) who then won the seat at the general election of May 1947. However, Noble died suddenly in July 1949, 26 months after his election, opening a race for the seat of Redfern again, but by then Curtin had set his sights on a federal seat.

Dan Curtin defeats Max Falstein for Federal Seat
In 1949, the Australian Labor Party preselected Curtin to contest the federal seat of Watson, displacing the sitting member, Max Falstein. Being a safe Labor seat, Curtin would have ordinarily not have had any trouble winning it at the general ballot. However, as fate would have it, his Labor predecessor did not accept his dis-endorsement by the ALP and was determined to win it again as an "independent" Labor member. (see Note 1)

Max Falstein (1914 - 1967) was well-educated, intellectually brilliant, handsome, and energetic. He was at first seen to have the prospect a promising political career and as a future Labor leader. Yet, his blunt, impetuous personality led him to reckless unproductive clashes with authority and the holding angry grudges. He won the seat of Watson in the House of Representatives for Labor in 1940. As an ally of Arthur Calwell and his supporters, he became a bitter opponent of the leadership of Prime Minister John Curtin (no relation to Dan Curtin). Despite being a member of Parliament, Falstein enlisted in the Air Force as a pilot during the World War 2, but clashed with superior officers. His career was also marred by dubious business ventures such as being convicted of understating the value watches he imported in 1948. By 1949 the Labor Party had had enough, and rescinded his endorsement as the Labor candidate for Watson, opening the way for Daniel Curtin to nominate and gain the Labor Party's endorsement. (see note 2)

Falstein contested the seat in the 1949 election as an "independent Labor". In a bitterly contested campaign Curtin won the seat, beating both the conservative Liberal candidate and Falstein. Curtin held Watson until 1955.

Transfer to Electorate of Kingsford-Smith
At the 1955 redistributions of federal seats, the boundaries of Watson had shifted to the west and further away from Curtin's home in Maroubra. The sitting Labor member for Kingsford-Smith was Gordon Anderson (1897 - 1958). He was a diminutive, mild-mannered former officer of the Railways Salaried Officers Union who had served four terms as the first Labor Mayor of Waverley Council (he was an alderman on Waverley Council from 1941-1953). He was the inaugural member for Kingsford-Smith, entering federal Parliament at the same time as Curtin in 1949. But Anderson was ill and had decided to retire. This allowed Curtin to transfer to Kingsford-Smith which was centred on his home suburb of Maroubra and nearby south-eastern suburbs of Sydney where his political interests lay.

Curtin the firebrand, was a vastly different personality than Gordon Anderson.

Dan Curtin's Personal Life
Dan Curtin married Alice Marion Jones, the daughter of Thomas and Annie Jones of Redfern in 1922. They had a daughter Joyce Margaret (born 1923) who married Reginald White at Redfern in 1944. Alice died at Prince Henry Hospital at Little Bay on 19 December, 1947 of illness aged only 53.

Curtin met Ruby Dalton, a widow and mother of a daughter and two sons, who worked as a social welfare officer for the New South Wales Labor Council. She helped Curtin during his 1949 election campaign and after the election, became his secretary. They married on Saturday 1st November 1952, at the City Registry Office. She was forty-four and he was fifty-four. Curtin was described as a widower and grandfather.

The only guests at the wedding ceremony were Mr. Curtin's daughter and son-in-law Mr. and Mrs. Reg White, and two old friends, Mr. and Mrs. H. Sawyer, of Maroubra. They later met friends other relatives for a reception at their new home, an apartment in a block of flats at Little Street in Maroubra. Several hundred people attended a public reception organised by Maroubra Bay A.L.P. Branch Kingsford in early November 1952 and presented Mr. and Mrs. Curtin with gifts of a clock and utility set.

She said, "We've been engaged for a long time, but only recently managed to get somewhere to live for when we get married. I first met Dan when he was a union official. We've both been interested in politics and industrial matters for years. I don't expect any diamonds and furs out of this marriage. Dan's so generous he gives half his salary to needy people and to good causes."

Forceful Debater
On his maiden speech to Parliament on the 2nd March 1950, Curtin dispensed with the pleasantries and well-wishing most present when giving an inaugural Parliamentary speech and went straight onto the attack against his conservative opponents, leaving no doubt that his sympathies lay with the "working" people. He told how he had "sprung" from a working-class family of Redfern, his family supporting his training at technical college to become a skilled tradesman. But he had to suffer seven long years of unemployment, on the dole. He blamed what he described as the indolent, selfish, and treasonous (conservative) opponents, who for example supported a "subversive organization called the New Guard to overthrow" an elected government. The Liberal and Country parties, he asserted, only worked in the interests of the wealthy classes of Australia.

And so, Curtin maintained this combative style of politics throughout his political career. There was no doubt that he saw politics through a class-warfare, pro-Working-Class lens.

One dramatic example of Curtin's assertive style was in 1953 when Curtin managed to raise the ire the conservative Liberal Party speaker of the House of Representatives, Archie Cameron, when he interjected during a debate on Communist Party Dissolution Bill in March 1953. Cameron suspended Curtin, ordering him to leave the House and the Parliament building. Curtin left the House, but took the view that the Speaker had no authority over the portion of old Parliament House controlled by the Senate and theatrically stationed himself on a halfway marker on the Senate side of King's Hall. When the House adjourned and members left the chamber, Curtin took great delight in ceremoniously bowing deeply to Cameron as he passed by. Cameron was enraged and later in the House threatened to begin proceedings to charge Curtin with contempt of the House. Curtin soon returned to the House, but it took many apologetic words from the opposition leader Bert Evatt to smooth things over with Cameron. Curtin had a knack of getting under Cameron's skin and in April 1954 received a rebuke from the Speaker for attempting to surreptitiously hum a farewell song at the closing of the 1954 session.

The conservative press frankly did not like Curtin or his brand of politics. It mocked his voice and style of debate. The noted political pundit, Alan Reid, said of him in an opinion piece in the Sun Herald in December 1953:

DAN CURTIN, Labour member for Watson, who possesses a shrill voice, a modest talent for low-brow comedy and a gift for rendering those parrot-like catchcries that have kept generations of politicians in well-paid jobs, recently told the Parliament with great force and no originality ...

Last of the Soap Box Orators
In March 1950, Curtin raised in Parliament what he said was the poor quality of the sound system in the chamber, and often complained about audio "dead spots". By the late 1950's, Curtin was asking members of the House of Representatives to speak up, as he was hard of hearing because of working as a boilermaker. Curtin's hearing seems to have been diminished and this, perhaps, accounted for his very loud voice.

Because of Curtin's liking for the traditional style of political campaigning of giving speeches on street corners from portable platforms to whoever may have been passing by, he gained the reputation of being the "the last of the soap-box orators". He sometimes complemented his booming voice with loudspeakers. On one occasion in April 1951, he was giving a speech on Anzac Parade at Maroubra Junction when police arrived. He was, they informed him, parked on the wrong side of the road and was less than the required distance from a street corner and he would have to move on. Curtin took this as a major attempt to censor him and angrily lodged complaints with the Police commissioner.

Last of the Soap Box Orators

Aboriginal Affairs
The few, potted, biographies that have been attempted of Curtin, claim that he was a supporter of the rights of the Indigenous community. Curtin's electorate included the Aboriginal community at La Perouse. Malabar resident and noted Aboriginal rights campaigner Monica McGowen (1925-1974) worked on Curtin's 1949 campaign which included contacting Aboriginal families at La Perouse and enrolling them for voting in support of Curtin's re-election. On one occasion the well-known Simms family made representations to Curtin, and it was noted that he was the one representative to pass on their requests. It is likely that Curtin took the then not universally popular view of supporting Indigenous rights.

Attempting to Judge the Man
With so many of his contemporaries having passed on, and little research done into his life, it is difficult to judge what type of person Curtin really was, and beyond his obvious support for workers' and union rights, what was the depth and extant of his other political views. A few of his ideas that can be gleaned from sources include that he saw enmity everywhere against the labour movement in the media and was even critical of the ABC's "bias" against the ALP. He was called a disciple of another firebrand, Eddie Ward (who, by the way, is buried at Randwick General Cemetery at South Coogee). Being with Ward perhaps thwarted his leadership aspirations - he was defeated by Fred Daly for Labor Whip. He was a supporter of Dr. Evatt's leadership in the late 1950s.

Curtin supported federal funding for surf life-saving equipment; he advocated for federal assistance to local governments for rat infestations; and he promoted upgrading anchorages in Botany Bay so that it could become a deep-water port. In April 1963, he was campaigning for better conditions and food service at the Bunnerong Migrant Hostel, Maroubra, but his attempts were stymied by a refusal of the Hostel's manager to allow him to inspect, something that he raised in Parliament.

In 1956 Curtin was liaising with a committee from the Maroubra Surf Life Saving club for a campaign to prevent the mining of rutile on Maroubra beach. This would be unthinkable now, but it was a very real possibility then, particularly as the argument of the day was that rutile was important for defence. It was an early foray into environmentalism.

Curtin was keen to see large swaths of federally owned land in his electorate put to community use. He thought that the ANZAC rifle range on Malabar Headland should be subdivided for housing - he estimated it could accommodate 1200 house blocks. He wanted the Defence Department to vacate stores buildings that had be constructed during World War 2 in what became Heffron, so that the land could be converted to recreational use. And he wanted Commonwealth to transfer vacant bushland behind Conwong Bay to be used for public recreation.

Ironically, it was a former opponent, Liberal MHR Jim Killen, who was the one to acknowledge Curtin's death most fully in 1980, saying that he was a tough but generous opponent. His wife, he said, likely wrote all his speeches. Though he had a boisterous character, Curtin did not take part in debates for the sake of it: "Jimmy, slug it out, but always give a point of view". He was also extraordinarily generous; Killen knew of a colleague to whom Curtin handed a bundle of cash when that person was in urgent need, even though he also was a political opponent.

Retirement
Like many of his generation in federal Labor, Curtin had to endure many years in political opposition due to the Menzies government long tenue in office and so never had the opportunity to show his leadership and administrative abilities as a Minister or parliamentary officer. We will never know if he could have met the challenge. He held Kingsford-Smith until 1969, when he retired from politics, replaced by the then young former Mayor of Randwick and future Deputy Prime Minister, Lionel Bowen. One retirement pastime was fishing on Maroubra Beach. In his valedictory speech, he said that he was looking forward to having the time to follow horse racing, "punting", and visiting racecourses at Rosehill and Randwick. Curtin died on the 4th December 1980. Curtin Crescent (originally Dan Curtin Crescent), Maroubra which runs off Broome Street was named after him. He was always a supporter of the underdog and a good local member who kept an eye on parish pump issues.

Paul Convy

Dan Curtin's Signature

References