Talk:Political families of Australia

Additions to be made
To be added--Golden Wattle talk 07:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Crean family: Simon Crean and father, Frank Crean, plus another of Frank's sons, David Crean
 * Wentworth family: there were a succession of William Wentworths in politics: William Wentworth, plus his great-grandson William Wentworth IV = William Wentworth (Australian politician) - The journalist Mungo MacCallum is his nephew.
 * Cain family: John Cain (senior) and John Cain II. Probably something else too, but I know next to nothing about Victorian politics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.170.19.152 (talk) 02:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Anthonys: Larry Anthony, Doug Anthony, Hubert Lawrence Anthony - as per project page--Golden Wattle talk 09:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Clean up + tabular format
I've spent a bit of time cleaning this page up. I've got rid of a lot of over-linking, made terminology consistent, removed needless postnominal letters, added some facts (eg. Joseph Lyons was Premier and Leader of the Opposition in Tasmania before he was federal Opposition Leader and Prime Minister; Ray Groom was an MHR and Fraser govt Minister before his first retirement, and before resurrecting his career to become Premier of Tasmania; Justin O'Byrne was the first and by far the most prominent of the O'Byrnes, viz. President and Father of the Senate, but he wasn't mentioned at all), and some other tweaks.

I've also given some thought to formatting, and I'm trying out a tabular format on the Hodgman family. Any comments would be appreciated before I extend this idea any further. --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   09:58, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Peter and Michael Baume
I've long believed Peter Baume is related to Michael Baume but my searches have failed to confirm this adequately. Here, John Button calls them "cousin"s, but that could just be a generic reference to some shared ancestry. Anything better on the record? --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:15, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like they are cousins. Their grandparents Frederick Ehrenfield Baume and wife Rosetta had a number of children in Auckland, NZ including Frederick Ehrenfield Baume (junior, born 1900) and Sidney Erne Baume (born 1905). Michael appears to be the son of Frederick and Peter the son of Sidney, but I note that NSW births of that period are private so I cannot confirm Michael and Peter's parentage, but factors like middle names, occupations, living at the same address in the electoral roll, pretty much confirms it. I note that the granfather Frederick Ehrenfield Baume (senior) was an MP for East Auckland, so politics does indeed run in the family. Kerry (talk) 20:29, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * ADB has an entry for Frederick Ehrenfield Baume (junior). Kerry (talk) 20:32, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The world of journalism, and Wikipedia, know him as Eric Baume. I well remember his daily radio programs, from which he always signed off with "This, I believe".  I think he also had a regular newspaper column.  He was also the first Beast on the TV show "Beauty and the Beast".
 * And here, any connection between Peter and Michael Baume is explicitly denied, by someone who should probably know one way or the other. Curious.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:24, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The Eric Baume article mentions the connection with Peter and Michael but no source is provided. Kerry (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

A few questions before I add some more ...
How should we represent families with different surnames, e.g. Jack Melloy, Elaine Darling and Vicky Darling (3 generations)? Once - if so which surname do you pick? Under as many surnames as it takes?

Also how closely related do they need to be? Walter Russell Crampton is a cousin or cousin-once-removed from Jack Melloy.

Thanks Kerry (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Perhaps "Melloy-Darling family" for your first example (or "Darling-Melloy")? As for the relations, I think it can definitely be relevant (the similar family relationship between Alex Douglas and Bob Katter was brought up a bunch of times in the last parliament) and have no problem being included, but maybe stick it underneath any immediate family relationships. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 01:05, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Article format questions
What is the benchmark for getting a section in the article for a family, rather than the "other" section? What does the bold represent? What do the italics represent? Some additions from Tas politics that I will update at some stage: -- Chuq (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Hodgman (add Peter)
 * Bacon (Jim - Scott)
 * Groom (Ray - Matthew)
 * O'Byrne (Michelle - David - and I think a grandfather or uncle in there somewhere)
 * How's this for a benchmark? A family gets its own section when two or more members reach ministerial (or Opposition Leader) status in either State or Federal parliament. That includes the Wriedts, for example, but not the Wooldridges. StAnselm (talk) 02:15, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me.. any rule is as good as any other so long as it is consistent! -- Chuq (talk) 03:51, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Bump this old one. Scott Bacon was a state government minister from 2010-2014 and Matthew Groom is one now, so their sections need to be "promoted". The Ogilvies could have been promoted from the start, since Eric was a minister in Albert's government.
 * Also how's this for an interesting one. On a genealogy site I use, I noticed that Will Hodgman's mother's maiden name was "St Hill".  An unusual name I thought.  Then I found that there was a Windle St Hill in the House of Assembly from 1886 to 1893.  My curiosity got the better of me, and thanks to Trove's newspaper archives, I found Windle St Hill is Will Hodgman's great-great-grandfather.  Now, this is kind of original research on my part, but it is also a fact that is verifiable by combining multiple independent sources. Also - no-one ever talks about Thomas Hodgman !  So that makes it a total of six members of the Hodgman dynasty. -- Chuq (talk) 22:36, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I think the distinction between the separate categories and the "others" would be less weird if StAnselm's suggestion from 2010 had been applied. That would take care of the Albanese-Tebbutt, Bacon, Berry, Groom, Jenkins, Lavarch, O'Byrne, Ogilvie, Page, Purick, Thomson, Willis, Wooldridge and Wright families.

However, that also removes about half the "Others" section, which makes me wonder what its purpose is. It also leaves out a number of families that are still pretty significant - i.e. both generations of the Lawrie family in the NT have been significant players in politics in the NT, are one of the only mother-daughter combinations in the list, and they're in "Others". If they and equivalent others were taken out too, is it worth having a separate section for the handful of families like the Vennings, significant mainly for their contribution to spending decades on the backbenches? The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 03:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Wow, I'd forgotten all about this... StAnselm (talk) 05:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

'needs additional citations for verification'
Since the details of each person is presumably properly referenced in his/her's own entry, I fail to understand what kind of citations needs to be added. Trahelliven (talk) 23:49, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Citations that support the claimed relationship between them. I don't think we need citations that support that the individuals exist or that they are politicians (that should be in their own articles). Kerry (talk) 05:17, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Political families
The lede definition states:
 * A political family of Australia (also called a political dynasty) is a family in which multiple members are involved in Australian politics, particularly electoral politics. Members may be related by blood or marriage; often several generations or multiple siblings may be involved.

but the recent mass deletion by begs the definition of "political family" and there can be no clear definition, but just two members is clearly sufficient if they are both distinguished and close relatives, e.g. the two South Australian Premiers, Thomas Playford II and his grandson Thomas Playford IV. Doug butler (talk) 21:05, 4 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I neglected to mention the main reason I made the edit in the summary, which was to reduce the massive size of the page and clean up some of the very inconsistent formatting. I think a good compromise would be to only include two-member political families if both were close relatives and distinguished (aka Premiers, Cabinet Ministers or Prime Ministers). JML1148 ( talk &#124; contribs ) 07:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)