Abstract

Peter Loveday, political scientist, historian and philosophy student, was distinguished not only by his own outstanding achievements as a political scientist but by the many high-achieving protégés whom he encouraged and mentored. His own research and publications covered the full range of representative democracy and politics in Australia, from 19th century colonial self-government in NSW, the largest colony, to contemporary politics in Australia’s smallest jurisdiction, the Northern Territory. They involved grass-roots empirical research, quantitative analysis and theoretical reflections that stretched conceptual boundaries as well as more traditional documentary research.
 

He always had an outstanding intellect, topping the state in chemistry in the South Australian Leaving Certificate in 1941 and then 15 years later, in 1956, graduating with first class honours and university medals in history and philosophy at the University of Sydney. Born in Renmark, South Australia, he had grown up in rural South Australia and worked in the industrial towns of Newcastle, NSW, and Port Pirie, South Australia.
 

His background meant that he was no ivory tower academic. He had seen industry from the inside and had worked with his hands. He returned to this interest in government-industry relations years later in one of his major works, Promoting Industry. He was also a frequent and selfless collaborator who always enjoyed working with others. He worked in a variety of settings and made some brave, somewhat unconventional career choices
 

Peter’s English-born father, Ron Loveday, became involved in trade union and Labor party politics during the depression. He  was a Labor Member of Parliament in SA  from 1956 to 1970 and Minister for Education in the  Walsh and Dunstan Labor governments. Peter’s mother Lizzie Mills came from a pioneering SA family; her father had been a Liberal Country Party MLC.
 

He was brought up first in testing circumstances on a soldier settlers block at Cungena, Eyre Peninsula; then in 1936 the family moved to a farm at Kernella, near Port Lincoln; later again the family moved to Whyalla, but Peter, who was already boarding in Port Lincoln to attend the high school there, stayed behind to complete his schooling in 1941.
 

Peter began his working life as a trainee metallurgist with BHP, in Newcastle, from 1942 to 1948. While there he attended the local technical college and graduated with a Diploma of Metallurgy from Sydney Technical College in 1947. While in Newcastle he attended several WEA courses and became interested in attending university to study humanities. Lack of the necessary financial resources led him to return to SA as a Metallurgist with Broken Hill Associated Smelters in Port Pirie from 1949 to 1951.
 

Peter married Ruth Laing in 1953 and they had two children, Nicholas and Kate. That marriage was dissolved in 1986, and in 1988 he married archivist, historian and former Mitchell Librarian, Baiba Berzins.
Peter undertook his undergraduate studies, 1952-56, at Sydney University and then a PhD thesis, which was the first ever in Australian history at Sydney University, graduating in 1962, when the discipline of political science was still quite new. His thesis title, reflecting his life-long Australian interests, was Parliamentary Government in New South Wales 1856-1870. This research was supported by a General Motors Holden Research Fellowship in 1957 and 1958 and culminated in a major work, Parliament, Factions and Parties, the First Thirty Years of Responsible Government in New South Wales, 1856-1889 (1966), co-authored with his great friend and colleague, Allan Martin. Later still he drew on this continuing historical expertise and wrote the definitive survey of “Political History and Biography” in D. Aitkin ,ed, Surveys of Australian Political Science, (1985) for the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
 

He was on the staff at Sydney University as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Government from 1957 until 1965 and then, for a short time at Adelaide University as Reader in Politics, 1966-68. Characteristically he left Adelaide on a point of principle. During this early period most of his publications were in history journals, such as Historical Studies and the Australian Journal of Politics and History. He also co-authored a path-breaking article called “Images of Politics”, 1960, with his Sydney political science colleagues, Henry Mayer and Peter Westerway.
 

Peter then joined the Australian National University in Canberra as a Senior Fellow, 1968-80. His major publication during this time was (ed, with Martin and RS Parker) The Emergence of the Australian Party System (1977). He also developed new public policy interests that led to Promoting Industry, Recent Australian Political Experience (1982). His diversity of interests included political theory , which produced important articles including “Group Theory and its Critics” and “Corporatist Trends in Australia”, Australian political thought and contemporary party politics.
 

His collaborators included Patrick Troy, his former student Patrick Weller, and Dean Jaensch from Flinders University (see Under One Flag: The 1980 Northern Territory Election (1981). In the late 1970s Peter developed interests in the NT and in Aboriginal politics that led eventually to a move to Darwin as Field Director of the North Australia Research Uni, 1981-90. There he presided over what one younger colleague fondly called the “Narrows Road Home for Ageing and Wayward Academics”. His vigor and enterprise quickly transformed the unit; making it what David Carment and Malcolm Brown have called a “hive of intense intellectual activity”. His collaborators there included many colleagues and friends, young and old. The unit’s research program was extremely varied and his own personal contribution covered elections, service delivery, Aboriginal issues, public administration and statehood. The move generated a huge burst of productivity and lots of field research, which he greatly enjoyed. Notably his 1982 presidential address, “The Politics of Aboriginal Society”, to the Australasian Political Studies Association ,reflected on some of these new interests.
 

In the NT he was freed from the restrictions imposed by large, bureaucratic universities. He appreciated informality and disliked stuffiness in all its forms. He loved working on an intellectual and physical frontier, where he was able to lead from the front; he enjoyed getting his hands dirty and the new environment gave full rein to his skills in mentoring, editing and improving the work of others and in encouraging collaborative and innovative research. One young colleague from that time recalled that two of his great qualities were “clear analytic thinking and astute, careful observation”; another valued most his “conviviality and mentorship”.
After retirement he and Baiba returned to Sydney, but together they made a continuing contribution to Northern Territory history, including a commissioned history of the Northern Territory University and an account of the first territory election won by the Labor Party in 2001.
 

He was very much at home studying Australia, but he held numerous visiting international positions over the years, including Visiting Lecturer, Yale University 1964; Senior Fellow, Manchester University,1965; Visiting Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1975; and Visitor, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1979 and 1983. In the 1980s he visited Canada and New Zealand to study indigenous issues. Despite his extensive international connections and interests, most of his publications were on Australian topics and he rarely published outside of Australia.
 

His honours and awards included Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1977; and an Order of Australia Medal, for services to education in the Northern Territory, 1992.
Peter was a role model, mentor, and supervisor to many younger political scientists, whose lives and careers he often transformed, as he did mine. As a supervisor he set high standards but always helped students meet them; his comments were described by one former postgraduate student as “quick, focused, constructive ”; involving “more red ink than there was blue when the drafts came back”.
 

As a mentor that same postgraduate student recalled that “he was the person who made my career possible”; these words could be repeated many times over by others. Another young colleague recalled that “his skills as a mentor were unrivalled”; this included his role as “mentor in chief” of the big ANU public policy project that culminated in Hawker, Smith and Weller, Politics and Policy in Australia (1979). That same junior colleague’s opinion was that “His contributions were many, but the chief ones were interest and enthusiasm. He expected us to produce results and drove us along with enquiries and suggestions as well as well merited critique”. This was a common view. He made a lasting impression, and many junior colleagues continued to follow his path in their academic work.
 

Peter was a passionate man; that passion was normally bridled in academic settings, but, a colleague remembers, that at least in its immediate aftermath he was passionate about the unfair dismissal of the Whitlam government. Fairness was “always one of [his] trademarks”, remembered a young colleague. His relations with university bureaucracy could be strained; one protégé commented that he “taught me to be constantly at odds with university bureaucrats”.  But he was a skilled negotiator and, despite his known Labor sympathies, he got on well with and was respected by the CLP politicians and the bureaucrats in the Territory.
Carment and Brown have recorded that Peter “played tennis, enjoyed classical music, was a keen bushwalker, enjoyed sailing, body surfing and photography”. Above all he enjoyed convivial conversation and the company of friends over a glass of wine.
 

He died in Sydney, survived by his wife, Baiba, his former wife, his children, four of his six siblings and his granddaughter.

October 30 2011