In search of Frank Keating

I first came across Keating in an article by Bernie Schedvin, whose surname may be familiar because her husband was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne. Schedvin wrote about a remarkable conflict in the early 1920s between a Queensland Labor government and a group of British-registered companies that had invested heavily in the state’s pastoral industry. After winning an election outright for the first time in 1915, Labor wanted to abolish the statutory limit on how far pastoral rents could be raised. The companies regarded the proposals as a breach of contract. Labor finally forced the issue in early 1920 by swamping the Legislative Council with its own nominees. The uproar poisoned Queensland’s credit in London, making it impossible for the Government to borrow more British money to finance the State’s economic development. As chairman of the Australian Pastoral Company, Frank Keating was in the thick of it. [Opening Paragraph]