Eloquent in Speech: Joseph Hector McNeil Carruthers, NSW Minister of Public Instruction (1889-1891)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 23:31authored byOrr, K
This paper seeks to record the core beliefs, achievements and prodigious energy of the young Joseph Hector McNeil Carruthers (1856–1932), focusing on the almost three-year period that he was the New South Wales Minister of Public Instruction in Henry Parkes’s final ministry (8 March 1889–22 October 1891). It traces Carruthers’s public speeches to reveal his explicit alignment of the financial philosophy of free trade with the aims of public education and federation, and demonstrates a strong connection between his political rhetoric and his outstanding tangible achievements as Minister of Public Instruction. Seeking to equip a future workforce with the skills necessary to compete in a free market, Carruthers overhauled the Colony’s public education system, established a complete system of technical education, realised the construction of the Sydney Technical College and Sydney Technological Museum and developed other infrastructure. This paper analyses his political speeches and situates them in the temporal context of his ministerial achievements in technical education.