Edmond John "Ned" Hogan (12 December 1883 – 23 August 1964) was an Australian politician who was the 30th Premier of Victoria. He was born in Wallace, Victoria, where his Irish-born parents were small farmers. After attending a Roman Catholic primary school, he became a farm worker and then a timber worker, and spent some time on the goldfields of Western Australia.
Hogan became active in trade union and Labor Party politics in Kalgoorlie. In 1912, he contracted typhoid. To recuperate, he returned to Victoria and took up farming at Ballan.
Labor politics
In 1913, Hogan was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for Warrenheip, an electorate near Ballarat, which was renamed Warrenheip and Grenville in 1927. Although it was not a natural Labor seat, it was heavily Irish-Catholic, which helped Hogan, an active Catholic, retain it for 30 years. In 1914, he was elected to the Labor Party's state executive, becoming state president in 1922.
Hogan was a fine speaker and soon became a leading figure in a parliamentary party which was thin on talent. Victoria was Labor's weakest state and in the 1920s there seemed little chance that it would ever win a state election in its own right; minority government status was as much as it could hope for at the time. This status it achieved in 1924, when Hogan became Minister for Agriculture and Railways in the short-lived minority government of George Prendergast. Two years later Prendergast resigned as leader, and Hogan was the obvious choice to succeed him. His main drawback was his close association with the Melbourne horse-racing, boxing and gambling identity John Wren, who was widely suspected of corruption. The Wren connection alienated many middle-class voters from Labor through the 1920s and 1930s.
Nevertheless, at the 1927 state election, Hogan was able to capitalise on resentment against rural over-representation in the state parliament, and the consequent domination by the Country Party. Labor won 28 seats to the Nationalists 15 and the Country Party's 10.
Hogan was able to form a government with the support of the four Country Progressive Party and two Liberal members. However, the alliance broke down in 1928 in the face of a prolonged and violent industrial dispute on the Melbourne waterfront, and in November his government was defeated in a confidence vote and he resigned, being succeeded by the Nationalist William Murray McPherson, who had the support of the Victorian Country Party.
In 1929, the Country Party withdrew its support from McPherson's administration and there was another election, fought just as the Great Depression was breaking over Australia. Hogan led Labor to its best result yet, winning 30 seats to the Nationalists' 17 and the Country Party's 11. A collection of Country Progressives, Liberals and independents held the balance of power, and they agreed to support a second Hogan government. Tom Tunnecliffe was Chief Secretary, John Cain was Minister for Railways and William Slater was Attorney-General.
The Depression had a particularly devastating effect on Victoria's economy and society, because the state was still more heavily dependent than the rest of Australia on agricultural exports, mainly wheat and wool, for its income; those industries collapsed almost completely as demand in Britain dried up. By 1931, most Victorian farmers were bankrupt and about 25 percent of the state's workforce was unemployed.
Hogan's government, in common with all other Australian state governments at the time, had no solution to the disaster. Even if it had been innately inclined to attempt radical solutions (which it was not), it depended on Country Progressive support in the Assembly, and had only six members in the Legislative Council.
Unlike New South Wales ALP Premier Jack Lang, Hogan adopted the orthodox economic view that governments must balance their budgets. Since the Legislative Council would not permit any increases in taxation, and since the ALP had no hope of controlling the Council, the only way to balance budgets (in the face of falling government revenue) was to cut governmental expenditure. That increased the burdens on the poor and unemployed, while providing no stimulus to the economy. There was little possibility of effective unemployment relief, although there were some government works to soak up unemployment, such as the building of the Shrine of Remembrance and the Great Ocean Road.