George Black (Australian politician)

George Muir Black (15 February 1854 – 18 July 1936) was a Scottish-born Australian politician.

He was born in Edinburgh to messenger-at-arms George Stevenson Black and Isabella Muir. He was educated at Leith and attended the University of Edinburgh, studying arts and medicine but never graduating. He emigrated to Victoria in 1877, moving to New South Wales in 1878. From 1877 he lived with Georgina Duggan; they were never married but had twelve children. Black undertook a variety of jobs, eventually becoming a journalist with the Bulletin from 1889 to 1891 and editor of the Australian Workman from 1891 to 1892. In 1891 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for West Sydney, one of the first group of Labour MLAs. In 1894 he was elected to Sydney-Gipps as an independent Labour member, having fallen out with the party over the introduction of the pledge, but he had rejoined by 1895 after changes were made to the pledge. On 21 June 1894 he had married Rosielinn Clarkson. He was defeated in 1898 and returned to journalism, editing the Sydney Worker, the Radical and the Bathurst National Advocate. He returned to parliament in 1910 as the member for Namoi and was promoted to the front bench as Minister for Agriculture (February to March 1915), Colonial Secretary (1915–1916) and Minister for Public Health (1915–1916). Expelled from the Labor Party over conscription in 1916, he was defeated as an Independent Labor candidate in 1917. He was then appointed by the Nationalist Party to the New South Wales Legislative Council, where he served from 1917 to 1934. He married Priscilla Verne Kelly on 11 April 1928; they had four children. Black died at Lidcombe in 1936.

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