Cornelius "Con" Wallace (19 January 1881 – 20 September 1921) was an Australian politician. Born in Sydney, he received a primary education before becoming a seaman and an organiser of the Seamen's Union of Australia. In 1917, he was elected to the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Australian Senate, Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Austra ...

as the

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

member for West Sydney, succeeding Prime Minister

Billy Hughes William Morris Hughes (25 September 1862 – 28 October 1952) was an Australian politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Australia, in office from 1915 to 1923. He is best known for leading the country Military history of Austra ...

(elected as a member of the Labor Party but now a

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

), who contested

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, mak ...

instead. In 1919, Wallace contested Nepean to make way for former

Queensland Premier The premier of Queensland is the head of government in the Australian state of Queensland. By convention the premier is the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority in the unicameral Legislative Assembly of Queensland. The premier is ap ...

T. J. Ryan, but was defeated. After Wallace's defeat in the 1919 election, Ryan's successor

Ted Theodore Edward Granville Theodore (29 December 1884 – 9 February 1950) was an Australian politician who served as Premier of Queensland from 1919 to 1925, as leader of the state Labor Party. He later entered federal politics, serving as Treasurer in ...

appointed him to a position in the Queensland Navigation Department. He found the salary too small and returned to Sydney. After Ryan's death on 1 August 1921, he stood for Labor preselection in the 1921 West Sydney by-election; he lost to William Lambert. Wallace suffered a heart attack on 19 September and died the following day at St. Joseph's Hospital, Auburn, aged 40. His wife, the former Bridget Gallagher, was left destitute with four young children but was supported by his parliamentary colleagues. Their son Cornelius Carr Wallace was an ALP member of the Sydney City Council from 1967 to 1972.

References

Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Members of the Australian House of Representatives for West Sydney Members of the Australian House of Representatives 1881 births 1921 deaths 20th-century Australian politicians {{Australia-Labor-representative-stub