Episode 2041
Bill Denny
Tue, 2022-Dec-06 00:36 UTC
Length - 3:17
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Tuesday, 6 December 2022 is Bill Denny.
William Joseph Denny, (6 December 1872 – 2 May 1946) was a South Australian journalist, lawyer, politician and decorated soldier who held the South Australian House of Assembly seats of West Adelaide from 1900 to 1902 and then Adelaide from 1902 to 1905 and again from 1906 to 1933. After an unsuccessful candidacy as a United Labor Party (ULP) member in 1899, he was elected as an "independent liberal" in a by-election in 1900. He was re-elected in 1902, but defeated in 1905. The following year, he was elected as a ULP candidate, and retained his seat for that party (the Australian Labor Party from 1917) until 1931. Along with the rest of the cabinet, he was ejected from the Australian Labor Party in 1931, and was a member of the Parliamentary Labor Party until his electoral defeat at the hands of a Lang Labor Party candidate in 1933.
Denny was the Attorney-General of South Australia and Minister for the Northern Territory in the government led by John Verran (1910–12), during which he drafted and led several important legislative reforms, including housing reforms assisting workers to purchase homes, and a law enabling women to practice law in South Australia for the first time. In August 1915, Denny enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force to serve in World War I, initially as a trooper in the 9th Light Horse Regiment. After being commissioned in 1916, he served in the 5th Division Artillery and 1st Divisional Artillery on the Western Front. He was awarded the Military Cross in September 1917 when he was wounded while leading a convoy into forward areas near Ypres, and ended the war as a captain.
He was again Attorney-General in the Labor governments led by John Gunn (1924–26), Lionel Hill (1930–33) and Robert Richards (1933), and held other portfolios in those governments, including housing, irrigation and repatriation. He continued his reform of the housing sector, being a key proponent of the Thousand Homes Scheme which aimed to provide affordable housing, particularly for returned soldiers and their families, and lower income groups. Denny published two memoirs of his military service, and when he died in 1946 aged 73, he was accorded a state funeral.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:36 UTC on Tuesday, 6 December 2022.
For the full current version of the article, see Bill Denny on Wikipedia.
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This has been Justin Standard. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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