‘Misuse of power’: Labor MPs to once again push for justice for Hugh Mahon

Labor MPs Graham Perrett and Josh Wilson are preparing to once again move that the 1920 expulsion of former Labor MP Hugh Mahon — the only time in Australian history such an event has occurred — be recognised as a misuse of parliamentary power.

Mahon was a founding member of Australia’s first parliament. An activist and journalist prior to politics, he was increasingly radicalised by the events of the Irish War of Independence of 1919-21. Soon after the October 1920 death of Irish nationalist Terence MacSwiney following a 74-day hunger strike while imprisoned by the British for sedition, Mahon told an open-air meeting that he hoped the sobs of MacSwiney’s widow would “reach round the world, and one day would shake the foundations of this bloody and accursed empire”.

Then-prime minister Billy Hughes, sensing a chance to steal a seat from Labor, the party he’d been expelled from three years earlier, successfully moved to have Mahon expelled from Parliament for “seditious and disloyal utterances”. Mahon stayed away in protest, surmising correctly that he was being stitched up. He was unable to regain his seat at the byelection that followed.

In 2016, Moreton MP Perrett put forward a private member’s motion that the House recognise Mahon’s expulsion as “unjust” and a “misuse of power then invested by the House”. This was seconded by Fremantle MP Wilson and received support from Liberal Russell Broadbent before the motion expired. Another push by Perrett and Wilson, timed to coincide with the centenary of Mahon’s expulsion in November 2020, suffered the same fate despite supportive coverage.

Perrett has already made it clear that the issue is still on his mind, using his member’s statement to bring Mahon’s case up within the first few days of the new Parliament last year. The motion, seen by Crikey, will ask Parliament to recognise, among other things, that “for over a century the Mahon family has endured this injustice and it is time that the Parliament revisit the matter of the honourable member for Kalgoorlie, Hugh Mahon’s expulsion”.

Wilson told Crikey: “The expulsion of Hugh Mahon was a misuse of power. Thankfully it can’t occur again because of reforms made in the 1980s. But I completely agree with my good friend, the member for Moreton, that the treatment of Hugh Mahon was a serious and anti-democratic injustice that Parliament should reflect on and properly acknowledge.”

“As a West Australian, I’m very happy to second Graham’s motion and I look forward to again participating in the debate.”