H. B. Higgins

He was born in Newtownards, County Down, Ireland, the son of The Rev. John Higgins,[1] a Methodist minister, and Anne Bournes, daughter of Henry Bournes of Crossmolina. Ina Higgins, an early feminist, was his sister and Nettie Palmer, poet, essayist and literary critic, was a niece. The Rev. Higgins and his family emigrated to Australia in 1870.

H. B. Higgins was educated at Wesley College in central Dublin, Ireland, and at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated in law. He practised at the Melbourne bar from 1876, eventually becoming one of the city's leading barristers (a KC in 1903) and a wealthy man. He was active in liberal, radical, and Irish nationalist politics, as well as in many civic organisations. He was also a noted classical scholar.

In 1894, Higgins was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as MLA for Geelong. He was a supporter of George Turner's liberal government, but frequently criticised it from a left-wing point of view. He supported advanced liberal positions, such as greater protection for workers, government investment in industry, and votes for women. In 1897, he was elected as one of Victoria's delegates to the convention which drew up the Australian Constitution, coming tenth of the ten successful candidates. At the convention, he successfully argued that the constitution should forbid the establishment of any religion, or the imposition of religious tests for the holding of government office. After being defeated at the Sydney and Adelaide sessions, he successfully moved at the Melbourne session the federal government be given the power to make laws for the conciliation and arbitration of industrial disputes 'extending beyond the limits of any one State'.

Henry Bournes Higgins at the 1898 Australasian Federal Convention.

Despite these successes, he opposed the draft constitution produced by the convention as overly federalist, favouring instead unification, without a 'ridiculous' Senate. He also disdained the protectionist motive which he detected in the agitation for federation: the Victorian 'manufacturing classes', he wrote 'expected to exploit the markets of New South Wales, protected against the formidable competition of English and European goods'.[2] He campaigned, unsuccessfully, to have the draft federal constitution defeated at the 1898 and 1899 Australian constitutional referendums. In November 1899 he supported the successful leadership challenge of Allan Maclean, a staunch anti-Federationist, to the premier, George Turner. These stances alienated him from most of his liberal colleagues, and also from the influential Melbourne newspaper, The Age. Higgins also opposed Australian involvement in the Second Boer War, a very unpopular stand at the time, and as a result, he lost his seat at the 1900 Victorian election.

In 1901, when federation under the new constitution came into effect, Higgins was elected to the first House of Representatives for the working-class electorate of Northern Melbourne. He stood as a Protectionist, but the Labor Party did not oppose him, regarding him as a supporter of the labour movement. The Labor Party's confidence in him was shown in 1904, when Chris Watson formed the first federal Labor government. Since the party did not have a suitably qualified lawyer, Watson offered the post of Attorney-General to Higgins. He is the only person to have held office in a federal Labor government without being a member of the Labor Party.

Robert Garran, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, found Higgins difficult to work with, stating that "for the first week or two I could not induce him to sign even the most routine and trivial paper until after a full explanation [...] the slowing-up of the machine was often embarrassing".[3] Higgins also received criticism for his failure to regularly attend parliament, which left Watson and Billy Hughes having to explain his ministerial actions. The Melbourne Argus remarked that he "attends sometimes for prayers and retires spiritually refreshed".[4] He was also attacked by The Bulletin, which observed that he "has had an unparalleled opportunity to demonstrate his worth as legal ally of the Government, and all the demonstration that he has effected in the House could be contained in a paper bag".[5] According to Ross McMullin, Higgins "approved of the Labor Party and its objectives [...] but he remained outside the party and did not identify himself with it".[6] However, his contributions to cabinet discussions were appreciated by his colleagues, and Watson was happy to defend him against the attacks from the media.[7]

Henry Bournes Higgins

Higgins was an awkward colleague for the Protectionist leadership, and in 1906 Deakin appointed him as a Justice of the High Court of Australia as a means of getting him out of politics, although he was undoubtedly qualified for the post. In 1907, he was also appointed President of the newly created Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, created to arbitrate disputes between trades unions and employers, something Higgins had long advocated. In this role, he continued to support the labour movement, although he was strongly opposed to militant unions who abused the strike weapon and ignored his rulings.

Higgins was one of only eight justices of the High Court to have served in the Parliament of Australia prior to his appointment to the Court; the others were Edmund Barton, Richard O'Connor, Isaac Isaacs, Edward McTiernan, John Latham, Garfield Barwick, and Lionel Murphy. He was also one of two justices to have served in the Parliament of Victoria, along with Isaac Isaacs.

Higgins and his wife Mary (née Morrison)

On 19 December 1885, Higgins married Mary Alice Morrison, the daughter of George Morrison, headmaster of Geelong College, and the sister of the journalist George Ernest Morrison. Their only child, Mervyn Bournes Higgins, was born in 1887, and was killed in action in Egypt in 1916.[9]

After his son Mervyn's death, Higgins effectively adopted his nephew Esmonde Higgins,[10] and his niece Nettie Palmer,[11] paying for their education at universities in Europe. He was pained by Esmonde's conversion to Communism in 1920 and his rejection of the liberal values associated with the Higgins name.

Aside from politics, he was president of the Carlton Football Club in 1904.

Higgins was remembered for many years as a great friend of the labour movement, of the Irish-Australian community and of liberal and progressive causes generally. He was well-served by his first biographer, his niece Nettie Palmer, whose Henry Bournes Higgins: A Memoir (1931) created an enduring Higgins mythology. John Rickard's 1984 H. B. Higgins: The Rebel as Judge partly demolished this myth, but was a generally sympathetic biography.[12] The H.B. Higgins Chambers in Sydney, founded by radical industrial lawyers, is named for him.

Further, Higgins is commemorated by the federal electorate of Higgins in Melbourne, and by the Canberra suburb of Higgins, Australian Capital Territory.