Political Career
Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as MP for the coalfields seat of Hartley in 1891, in Labor's first big breakthrough in Australian politics. It was the first time Labor had won a seat in any parliament in Australia.
In 1894, however, Cook was the leader of those parliamentarians who refused to accept the Labor Party's decision to make all members sign a "pledge" to be bound by decisions of the Parliamentary Labor Party (Caucus). He left the party and became a follower of George Reid's Free Trade Party. He was a minister in Reid's government from 1894 to 1899.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Cook
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)