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Part extract from the Australian Dictionary of Biography - FULL ARTICLE HERE (adb.anu.edu.au)

Harold Edward Holt (1908-1967), prime minister, was born on 5 August 1908 at Stanmore, Sydney, elder son of Thomas James Holt, schoolteacher, and his wife Olive May, née Williams, both Australian born. Harold began his education at Randwick Public School and boarded briefly at Abbotsholme, Killara, where he met (Sir) William McMahon, a future colleague and prime minister. Tom Holt left teaching and tried the hotel trade in Adelaide before becoming a travelling theatrical manager. Harold's unsettled years ended when, aged 11, he was sent with his brother Cliff to board at Wesley Preparatory School, Melbourne.

Harold completed his matriculation at Wesley College, excelling more as a sportsman and in theatricals than as a student, although the scholarship he took to Queen's College, University of Melbourne (LL.B., 1930), placed half the weighting on academic attainment and the other half on force of character and athleticism. The undergraduate continued his sporting career, captaining the college in cricket and representing it in football and tennis. He won a college medal for oratory (1930) and was elected president of the sports and social club (1931); he was president of the University Law Students' Society and a member of the university's debating team. Admitted to the Bar on 10 November 1932, he read with (Sir) Thomas Clyne and discovered that there was no future for young barristers during the Depression. In 1933 Holt began a sole practice as a solicitor.

His father's career, meanwhile, was flourishing. Widowed about 1925, Tom joined the entrepreneur Frank Thring in 1930 to make feature films, then managed radio 3XY in Melbourne when Thring bought the operating rights in 1935. Cliff took a job as publicity director for Hoyts Theatres Ltd. With an aunt playing comedy in Britain, Harold thus had connexions and interests in film and stage, and in 1935 was appointed secretary of the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association. A modest income and a widening circle of companions gave the young man the security and sense of belonging his bon vivant father could not provide.

Harold found political as well as theatrical friends, including (Dame) Mabel Brookes and (Sir) Robert Menzies. Holt joined the Young Nationalists and in the 1934 Federal elections stood for the United Australia Party against James Scullin in the Labor stronghold of Yarra. After contesting another Labor seat in the State elections, he won, at 27 years of age in 1935, a by-election for the secure U.A.P. seat of Fawkner in the House of Representatives. Holt was to retain Fawkner until 1949 when, following a redistribution and the enlargement of the House, he moved to the new seat of Higgins which he was to hold with absolute majorities until his death.

The new member for Fawkner was a dashing figure: of middle height, fit and handsome, with thick black hair swept back, well-tailored clothes, a ready smile and a natural charm. Shortly after his first election, Holt entered an arrangement with Jack Graham, another young Melbourne solicitor and an Old Geelong Grammarian, to whom he paid a retainer to look after his work. They opened an office at 178 Collins Street, employed a typist and took on industrial work, gaining some business through Holt's cinema and theatre connexions, and from the name he was making in politics. The partnership expanded after World War II into Holt, Graham & Newman, and lasted until 1963 by which time Holt, understandably, was making little contribution.

Following the 1937 elections Holt used parliament as a forum to advocate national physical fitness. On 26 April 1939 he joined the first Menzies government as minister without portfolio, assisting the minister for supply and (from 23 February 1940) the minister for trade and customs. In addition, Holt was briefly acting-minister for air and civil aviation. At 30, he had become the youngest man to hold ministerial office in Federal parliament. His front-bench career was interrupted when Country Party members rejoined the ministry in March 1940. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 22 May and trained as a gunner, his previous military experience consisting of five years compulsory membership of the Wesley College cadets, three years in the Melbourne University Rifles and fourteen months in the artillery (Militia).

Menzies recalled Holt to Canberra as a result of the deaths of three senior ministers in an air accident on 13 August 1940 and he was discharged from the A.I.F. After the elections in September, he was given a full cabinet post and the new portfolio of labour and national service—in recognition of his tact and easy-going disposition—though his major contribution was to introduce child endowment, earning him the epithet, 'godfather of a million children'.

Holt agonized over but eventually supported the ousting of his mentor Menzies in August 1941. The fallen hero forgave this first and last act of disloyalty. Holt retained his portfolio in the short-lived ministry of (Sir) Arthur Fadden, and, when John Curtin took office in October, sat on the Opposition front-bench as spokesman on industrial relations. He attended an abortive unity meeting of non-Labor leaders in Melbourne in February 1943, but was not a prime mover in the discussions which followed the electoral annihilation of the U.A.P. in August and which led to the formation of the Liberal Party. He did, however, support the decision of the parliamentary party in February 1945 to adopt the name 'Liberal', and he was to be a principal and outspoken champion of the anti-socialist cause in the late 1940s.

Two important events affected Holt at the end of the war. His father died in October 1945 and, on 8 October 1946, ten days after the Liberal Party was heavily defeated at the polls, he married with Congregational forms Zara Kate Fell, née Dickins, in her parents' home at Toorak. The two had courted when he was a law student, but, tired of their quarrelling and his general tardiness, she went abroad, and married a British Army officer stationed in India. Holt later claimed that he had kept away because of his Depression-induced poverty, and was devastated by her decision. After Zara's marriage failed, they restored their relationship, by which time she had three sons, of whom the twins—aged 7 in 1946—were possibly conceived during an earlier reunion with Harold.

Eight frustrating years in Opposition ended with the Liberal victory in December 1949. With the support of Albert Monk, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Menzies reappointed Holt minister for labour and national service, and gave him the additional portfolio of immigration which he was to hold until October 1956. Acknowledging Arthur Calwell's role in developing the immigration programme, Holt added his human touch and flexibility to hardship cases and significantly extended the assisted-passage scheme to non-British migrants. Under pressure from his own party, and conforming to his own beliefs, he maintained a preference for British settlers, but their numbers, as a proportion of the intake, fell in the 1950s. He was also committed to the White Australia policy and, ignoring the evidence he encountered at Commonwealth ministerial meetings, expressed his confidence that it did not cause resentment, in part because of tactful administration.

Holt held the labour portfolio until December 1958. An instinctive conciliator, he established such a good relationship with Monk and moderate trade-union leaders that members of his party accused him of excessive fraternization and damned him as an appeaser. Holt's methods contributed to the trend in which, despite an increase in the number of industrial disputes in the 1950s, there was a substantial decline in the number of working days lost. He also introduced important legislation—most notably, to make secret ballots in union elections mandatory (1951), and to separate the conciliation and arbitration processes from the exercise of judicial functions (1956), thus establishing the modern form of the Federal arbitration system.

His middle years were perhaps his happiest, for the successful minister discovered a liking for overseas travel. He had first ventured abroad in 1948 when he attended a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in London, contrived a visit to Paris and stayed up until dawn. In the 1950s he took part in four meetings of the C.P.A. and was chairman (1952-55) of its general council. He was a guest at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, sat at 'my master's elbow' at a Commonwealth prime ministers' conference in London in 1957 and that year presided over the fortieth session of the International Labour Conference at Geneva. Zara accompanied him on almost all of these trips, with their many stopovers, new political and social contacts, opportunities to swim, dine and party, and even to make the Savoy Hotel in London 'a second home'.

On his travels Holt kept diaries which he circulated among officials and 'chums'. In them, for the most part, he eschewed politics, preferring to recommend restaurants, hotels and countries, and to comment—generously and warmly—on the appearance and attributes of those he met. The diary of his 'Coronation Odyssey' described a C.P.A. luncheon for seven hundred parliamentarians at Westminster Hall where, after gulping 'a couple of quickies', he sat between the Queen and Lady Churchill, listened in admiration to Sir Winston and enjoyed 'an unforgettable experience', not least for finding the Queen 'very easy to talk to, completely natural, charming'. The diarist had an eye for the comic, telling friends back home about the complicated toilet arrangements inside Westminster Abbey to assist elderly peers and their grand wives during a long day.

Holt was an inquisitive and patriotic tourist. On his Geneva visit in 1957 he espied Charlie (Sir Charles) Chaplin at the airport and had a good 'look-see'. Moving on to London, the Holts saw Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and both were 'proud of the Australian author, proud of the all-Australian cast, and proud of the country which had produced the types in the play and the types who played them'.

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