Dear Anon,
I found a website for you...and if Didge comes he can give you more direct experience. But Billy Hughes (1862-1952) sounds like one of those superb characters of world history...an Australian prime minister, he seems to have helped establish that the common people were capable of governing themselves:
"A controversial figure all his life, he remains so still. To some a great statesman and patriot, to others he was a renegade and mountebank. ...Flexible as to means, his broad objectives were remarkably consistent. These were 'to fight for the under-dog' and to defend the right of Australia to develop its own form of democratic society, combining the best of British traditions and institutions with the maximum of freedom and equality. ...With all his faults, his place in Australian history is secure, no less for his contribution to the early labour movement than for his achievements as a national wartime leader and on the world stage."
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hughes-william-morris-billy-6761
