{"id":5325,"date":"2013-03-04T15:11:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T15:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=5325"},"modified":"2026-08-25T16:50:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T16:50:29","slug":"multi-parliamentarians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/multi-parliamentarians\/","title":{"rendered":"Multi-parliamentarians"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p>The death of <a href=\"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/2013\/03\/vale-joan-child\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joan Child<\/a> reminded me of a fellow MP of hers who had served in both the British House of Commons and the Australian House of Representatives.&nbsp;&nbsp; I thus thought it interesting to list people who had been elected to two or more parliaments or assemblies (excluding those belonging to both national and regional assemblies from federations, such as the European Parliament, Australia, etc), and those elected to parliaments of successor states upon independence (such as Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, or the decolonization of the former states of the USSR, such as Estonia and Georgia).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Gerry Adams<\/strong> (born 1948), Member of the British House of Commons 1997-2011 and Member of the Dail Eireann (the Lower House of the Parliament of Eire) 2011-2018.  Adams was also a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998-2010.  Because of his refusal to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, Adams, like his fellow Sinn Fein MPs, was unable to take his seat in the House of Commons.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Richard Bennett<\/strong>, 1st Viscount Bennett (1870-194), elected member of the Canadian House of Commons 1911-1917 and 1925-1939, including Prime Minister of Canada 1930-1935, and member of the British House of Lords, 1941-1947. Earlier in his political career, Bennett had been an elected member of the Legislative Assembly of the North West Territories (1898-1905) and of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta province (1909-1911).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Adolf Berman<\/strong> (1906-1978), Polish Sejm (Polish Workers Party, c. 1945-1950) and the Israeli Knesset (Mapam &#8211; United Workers Party and later Maki &#8211; Communist Party of Israel, 1951-1955).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stanley Melbourne Bruce<\/strong>,&nbsp;1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne (1883-1967), Australian House of Representatives (Nationalist Party and United Australia Party, 1918-1929 and 1931-1933) and British House of Lords (Life Peerage, 1947-1967). Bruce was the 8th Prime Minister of Australia from 1923-1929, until losing his own seat at the 1929 election.  He was the first of only two Australian PMs (thus far) to lose their own seat, and both were conservatives. He was also the first Australian member of the House of Lords.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Richard Casey<\/strong>, Baron Casey (1890-1976), elected member of the Australian House of Representatives (1931-1940 and 1949-1960), including Minister for External Affairs, 1951-1960, and Member of the British House of Lords from 1960-1976.  Casey was Governor of Bengal between 1944-1946 and Governor-General of Australia between 1965-1969. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Hugh Childers<\/strong> (1827-1896), appointed member of the Legislative Council of the colony of Victoria (1852-1856) and elected member of the inaugural Victorian Legislative Assembly (November 1856-February 1857), then elected member of the British House of Commons (1860-1892, peripatetically). In Britain, Childers held various senior ministerial positions in administrations of William Gladstone, including Secretary of State for War, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. Childers was the great-grandson of Sir Sampson Gideon, later Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley (1744-1824), the first British MP of Jewish descent (an MP from 1770-1802).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mathias Corman<\/strong> (born in Belgium, 1970), Senator for Western Australia (2007-2020) and Commonwealth Minister for Finance (2013-2020), who was briefly a member of the municipal council of German-speaking Raeran, Leige, Belgium, before migrating to Australia in 1994.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Austin Currie<\/strong> (1939-2021), Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1964-1972 and 1982-1986 and Member of the Dail Eireann (the Lower House of the Parliament of Eire) 1989-2002.  Both the Northern Ireland Assemblies of which he was a member were abolished (in 1973, after suspension in 1972, and 1986 respectively).  Currie was the Minister for Children&#8217;s Rights in a Fine Gael Government in Eire between 1994-1997.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sir Charles Gavan Duffy<\/strong> (1816-1903), Member of the UK House of Commons for the Irish seat of New Ross (1852-1855) and Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Nation of Victoria (1856-1880).&nbsp; Duffy, a Roman Catholic, was Premier of Victoria (1871-1872) and Speaker of the House of Assembly (1877-1880).&nbsp; One of his sons, Sir Frank Gavan Duffy (1852-1936) became Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (1931-1935), while another son, George Gavan Duffy (1882-1951) became Minister of Foreign Affairs of Eire (1922) and President of the High Court of Eire (1946-1951).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Albert Hawke<\/strong> (1900-1986), member of the South Australian House of Assembly (1924-1927) and of the Western Australian House of Assembly (1933-1968). Premier of Western Australia (1953-1959). Uncle of Australian Prime Minister Robert James Lee Hawke (1983-1991).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Godfrey Huggins<\/strong>, 1st Viscount Malvern (1883-1971), elected member of the House of Assembly of Southern Rhodesia 1924-1953, Prime Minister 1933-1953, elected member of the Federal Parliament and Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953-1956, appointed member of the British House of Lords 1955-1971. As he remained in Rhodesia following his retirement in 1956, it is not clear if Malvern ever sat in the Lords.<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Andrew Jenner<\/strong>, elected councillor in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, UK, 2000-2016 (including Mayor, 2013-2014) and elected Member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Australia, 2024-2025.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Siim Kallas<\/strong> (1948-2026), Member of the Congress of People&#8217;s Deputies of the USSR (1989-1991) and European Commissioner (2004-2014) (Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs 2004, for Administrative Affairs 2004-2010, and for Transport 2010-2014).  Although EC Commissioner roles are Ministerial posts not directly elected, they are usually awarded to former elected politicians from their home countries.  Kallas had been Prime Minister of Estonia from 2002-2003. He was an elected member of the Riigikogu (the Estonian Parliament) between 1995-2004 and 2019-2024.  Although other members of the 1989 USSR Congress of People&#8217;s Deputies who were citizens of countries in the Russian Empire became elected politicians in their home countries after 1991, I believe Kallas is the only such one to have later become a Minister in the EU.  His daughter Kaja Kallas also became a Prime Minister of Estonia (2021-2024) and also an EU Commissioner (the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, since 2024). <\/li>\n<li><strong>Seamus Mallon<\/strong>, (1936-2020), Senator in Eire 1982-1983 and Member of the British House of Commons 1986-2005.  Mallon was also a Member of the Northern Ireland House of Assembly from 1998-2003 and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland 1998-2001. When Mallon was first elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 he was disqualified from taking his seat due to his concurrent position as a Senator in Eire.  At that time, elected UK parliamentarians were not able to simultaneously hold elected office in other countries.  In 2000, the UK law changed to allow this for the Irish Parliament. <\/li>\n<li> <strong>Sir Newton Moore<\/strong> (1870-1936), elected member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly 1904-1911, including Premier of Western Australia 1906-1910, and elected Member of the British House of Commons from 1918-1932.  Moore initially held the seat previously held by Sir George Reid in the House of Commons. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Marthinus Pretorius<\/strong> (1819-1901), President of the South African Republic (aka&nbsp;the Transvaal, 1857-September 1860, 1864-1871, 1880-1883)&nbsp;and for a period in 1860 simultaneously President of the Orange Free State (January 1860-1863).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sir George Reid<\/strong> (1845-1918), twelfth Premier of New South Wales (1894-1899) and fourth Prime Minister of Australia (1904-1905), was a member of the Australian Commonwealth House of Representatives (1901-1909) and a member of the British House of Commons (1916-1918).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Chaudhry Sarwar<\/strong>, (born 1950), Member of the British House of Commons 1997-2010 and a Senator in Pakistan in 2018.  Sarwar was also twice appointed to the mostly ceremonial role of Governor of the Punjab in Pakistan between 2013-2015 and 2018-2022. Between 2010-2015, his successor as MP for his former House of Commons seat of Glasgow Central was his son, Anas Sarwar.  In 2010, Sarwar was apparently nominated by outgoing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for a life peerage in the British House of Lords, but his appointment was vetoed by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, on advice from the UK HMRC.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sir Robert Richard Torrens<\/strong> (1814-1884), third Premier of South Australia (1857), was a member of the South Australian House of Assembly from 1851-1863 (initially appointed, then elected) and an elected member of the British House of Commons for Cambridge from 1868-1874. He created the land registration system known as <em>Torrens Title.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>Philibert Tsiranawa<\/strong> (18 October 1912-1978), Member of the French National Assembly from 1956-1959, and elected to what became the National Assembly of Madagascar in 1958 (with Independence achieved on 26 June 1960).  Tsiranawa was Prime Minister of (pre-Independence) Madagascar from 1958-1959, and First President of Madagascar from 1959-1972. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Manuel Valls<\/strong> (born 1962), Member of the French National Assembly 2002-2018, including Prime Minister of France 2014-2016, and member of the City Council of Barcelona, Catalonia Spain 2019-2021.  Earlier in his political career, Valls had been a member of the Regional Council of the Ile-de-France region between 1986-2002. <\/li>\n<li><strong>William Yates<\/strong> (1921-2010), British House of Commons (Conservative and Unionist Party, 1955-1966) and the Australian House of Representatives (Liberal Party, 1975-1980).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<p>Others who almost make this list are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Daniel Cohn-Bendit<\/strong> (born 1945), Member of the European Parliament (1994-2014).&nbsp; From 1994-1999 and again from 2004-2009, Cohn-Bendit was elected an MEP from Germany, while from 1999-2004 and again from 2009-2014, he was elected an MEP from France. He could readily have been elected to both the French and the German national parliaments. With a German father and a French mother, he qualified for citizenship from both countries, but opted as an adult for German citizenship, apparently to avoid French military service.  De Gaulle then had him deported.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Andrew Clarke<\/strong> (1824-1902), Appointed member of the Legislative Council of Victoria (1853-1856), elected Member of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria (1856-1858), contested the constituency of Chatham in the British House of Commons in 1886 and 1892, both times unsuccessfully.&nbsp; In between times, Clarke was Governor of Singapore and Governor of the Straits Settlements, 1873-1875.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gra\u00e7a Machel<\/strong> (born 17 October 1945), First Lady of two countries, Mozambique (as wife of Samora Machel) and South Africa (as wife of Nelson Mandela).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Thomas Paine<\/strong> (1737-1809), who was secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of (but not a delegate to) the Second Continental Congress (of the United States) and was a member of the French National Convention (1792-1793).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ian Paisley<\/strong> (1926-2014), who was an elected member variously of the British House of Commons, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the European Parliament, and could probably also have been elected, had he so wished, to the Scottish Parliament.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stefan Seidler<\/strong> (born 1979), member of the German Bundestag for Schleswig-Holstein since 2021. Seidler stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Danish Folketing in 2007 (and for the European Parliament in 2004 and 2009). <\/li>\n<li><strong>Sir Garfield Todd<\/strong> (1908-2002), elected member of the House of Assembly of Southern Rhodesia (1948-1958, including Prime Minister, 1953-1958), appointed a Senator in the Senate of Zimbabwe (1980-1985).&nbsp; Todd was born in New Zealand, whose Government arranged for his knighthood. &nbsp;In an act of spite of the Mugabe regime, his Zimbabwean citizenship was revoked in 2002. His PA at the time of his premiership, Susan Woodhouse, wrote an authorized biography of Todd that was published in 2018, 60 years after his term of office ended. (Susan Woodhouse: <i>Garfield Todd: The End of the Liberal Dream in Rhodesia.<\/i> Weaver Press, 2018.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The death of Joan Child reminded me of a fellow MP of hers who had served in both the British House of Commons and the Australian House of Representatives.&nbsp;&nbsp; I thus thought it interesting to list people who had been elected to two or more parliaments or assemblies (excluding those belonging to both national and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","p1","y2013","m03","d04","h15"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5325"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14309,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions\/14309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}