Australia's Foreign Minister who led the small and medium powers' fight against the great-power veto at San Francisco
On the emergency subcommittee with Stettinius and Gromyko, Evatt displayed 'an attitude of conciliation' and proposed the draft that on 20 June broke the deadlock over the General Assembly's powers of discussion.
An Australian Labor politician and jurist, Evatt was appointed the youngest-ever High Court justice at 36 and later served as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs under the Curtin and Chifley governments. At the 1945 San Francisco Conference he led the small and medium powers' resistance to the Security Council veto, submitting 38 amendments, and sat on the emergency subcommittee with Stettinius and Gromyko that resolved the deadlock over the General Assembly's powers of discussion. As President of the UN General Assembly in 1948 he guided the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine that paved the way for the partition plan. He became Labor leader in 1951 but the party split over communism and three successive election defeats drove him from politics in 1960.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1925–1930MLA for Balmain, New South Wales Legislative Assembly
- 1930–1940Justice of the High Court of Australia
- 1941–1949Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs
- 1948–1949President of the UN General Assembly
- 1951–1960ALP Leader and Leader of the Opposition
- 1960–1962Chief Justice of New South Wales
Related historical events
The Egon Kisch Exclusion Case, 1934–1935
While serving on the High Court (1930–1940), Evatt twice struck down government measures in the 1934–1935 attempt to exclude Egon Kisch. Kisch, a Prague-born journalist and anti-war activist who denied membership of the Communist Party of Germany, reached Fremantle on 6 November 1934, but the Lyons government declared him an undesirable immigrant and kept him in the custody of the ship's captain as the Strathaird passed Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. On 12 November supporters in Melbourne began a habeas corpus action; the court there deferred its decision and Kisch remained aboard. When the ship reached Sydney on 16 November, Kisch's supporters took his case to Evatt, sitting alone, who held that the Commonwealth had wrongly excluded him because the order omitted the advice the government had received from Britain, released him and ordered that he be free to visit Australia while respecting its laws.
The government then sought to exclude him under the dictation test of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 as amended in 1905; Kisch failed a test in Scottish Gaelic and was convicted as a prohibited immigrant. On 19 December 1934 the full bench of the High Court quashed the conviction, holding that Scottish Gaelic was not a European language within the meaning of the Act. When the government made a second declaration and obtained a fresh conviction on 21 January 1935, Evatt again ordered Kisch freed, reasoning that the minister had no power to rule on immigration matters once a person had entered Australia, and set a full bench hearing for March. The rulings exposed the legal mechanics of the dictation test, a principal instrument of the White Australia Policy; rather than continue, the government remitted the sentence, dropped the proceedings and paid Kisch AU£450 for his costs in exchange for an agreed exit on 11 March 1935.