Australian Dictionary of Biography

Ian McLachlan

IMVS Annual Report 1972-73

Ian McLachlan (1908–1998), pastoralist, businessman, and political organiser, was born on 13 January 1908 at Largs Bay, South Australia, youngest of four sons of Victorian-born Hugh Patterson McLachlan, pastoralist, and his South Australian-born wife Euleena Rose, née Sawers. Ian’s early life was spent between the family’s Partridge House at Glenelg, and Paratoo station near Yunta in the State’s north-east. Educated at the Queen’s School, North Adelaide, he completed his schooling at the Collegiate School of St Peter, Hackney (1923–26), where he was a School House boarder, and in his final year was a school prefect and house captain. He represented the school at tennis, athletics, and football, and particularly excelled at cricket. A leg-spin bowler, he set a college record by taking thirteen wickets in a game against Prince Alfred College in 1926. He was particularly influenced by his housemaster, John H. Hill, and headmaster, the Reverend Kenneth Bickersteth (later the dean of Canterbury), whom he regarded as ‘very fine personalities and … men of great common sense’ (McLachlan 1986).

On leaving school, McLachlan in 1927 travelled to England to study law at Trinity College, Cambridge, being attracted by the discipline’s ‘fairly straightforward distillation of common sense’ (McLachlan 1986, 4). However, he soon returned home, ill with what he described years later as a ‘tubercular collar bone’ (McLachlan 1986, 2), but recovered sufficiently to study at the University of Adelaide (LLB, 1932). Admitted as a legal practitioner of the Supreme Court of South Australia in December 1932, he practised in his uncle Alexander John McLachlan’s firm, McLachlan, Reed & Griffiths. In April 1934 Ian and his uncle merged their practice with Ian’s future father-in-law’s firm to become Symon, McLachlan, Murray & Cudmore. On 1 June he married South Australian-born Alison Melrose Murray at the chapel of St Peter’s College, the occasion lavishly reported in the Adelaide social pages. They spent their early married life between their pastoral properties and a home at Burnside, Adelaide.

McLachlan had served (1930–32) as a lieutenant in the Australian Field Artillery, Citizen Military Forces. In October 1939, immediately after World War II broke out, he obtained a commission with the same rank in the Royal Australian Artillery, but due to the ‘prior tuberculosis diagnosis and tuberculosis scars remaining’ (McLachlan 1986, 11), was retired in June 1940. He spent the war years instead as executive assistant to the general manager of the General Motors-Holden’s Ltd plant at Woodville which manufactured critical military equipment for the war effort. During this period he was also a member of the Constitutional Powers Committee, formed by South Australian businessmen in December 1942 to oppose a bill then before the Federal parliament which, if it had been successful, would have extended Commonwealth control over many major State functions for five years beyond the war’s end. The committee was concerned that such powers would be used to implement ‘an extreme policy of nationalisation and socialisation’ (Advertiser 1943, 2).

Rather than return to the law, after the war McLachlan concerned himself with his rural properties and pursued various business interests. In April 1962 the State government appointed him chairman of the council of the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science (1962–73), a research, training, and pathology facility to which he brought ‘the acumen of a lawyer combined with the good sense of an experienced business man’ (IMVS 1973, 13). Under his leadership, the institute introduced auto-analysers to its laboratories, adopted automated data processing, established a new division of nuclear medicine, and expanded regional pathology services. He retired from the position in April 1973, but remained prominent in business networks, including as a member of the South Australian boards of the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society Ltd, gun maker Sporting Arms Ltd, the Stock Owners’ Shearing Co., and the Mutual Hospital Association (chairman 1967–84), and as chairman of the Executor Trustee and Agency Co. of South Australia (1981–85).

Of his many pursuits and passions, it was McLachlan’s pastoral connections and a lifelong love of the bush that most energised him. In addition to Paratoo his family had long had joint holdings at Mulgathing, Balcanoona, Lake Everard, and Mount Wood stations in South Australia, and Ian and his own immediate family made further investments at Kingsgate and Jamberoo stations in northern New South Wales, and at Liewah and Tupra stations in the Riverina, before acquiring Nangwarry station near Mount Gambier in 1964.

McLachlan was involved with the Liberal and Country League (later the Liberal Party (South Australian Division)) as finance committee member and deputy president (1963-70), and as president (1970–73). Aligned with the party’s rural-dominated conservative faction, he arranged financial assistance for the Democratic Labor Party which preferenced Liberal candidates, thus helping to keep Labor out of power for many years. It was nonetheless a turbulent period within the LCL which was divided over whether to retain or reform the restricted franchise in the Legislative Council, and the malapportionment favouring rural electors. In March 1972 Steele Hall, the progressive former premier of South Australia (1968–70), resigned as parliamentary leader of the LCL, and with supporters formed the Liberal Movement, initially a faction within the party, with the intention of reforming the electoral system and party policy. The factional fallout was reported as ‘one of the most bitter political feuds the State has ever seen’ (Eltham 1972, 35). McLachlan presided over a meeting of the party’s State council in March 1973 at which a resolution was passed to declare the Movement an outside political party, prompting Hall immediately to resign from the LCL, or, as McLachlan preferred to recall it, ‘In the end, I had him booted out of the party altogether’ (McLachlan 1986, 22). As a habitual back-room operator, in the midst of this turmoil he told a journalist that ‘even if it is favourable publicity, I would rather be without it’ (Cudmore 1998, 18).

A lifelong sportsman and scratch golfer, McLachlan contributed greatly to the administration of the sport, including as a four-time chairman of the Australian Golf Union and president of Australian Senior Golf. He was twice the Australian representative on the rules committee of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrew’s, Scotland, president of the South Australian Golf Association, and captain and president of the Royal Adelaide Golf Club. He was also president of the Adelaide Club (1964–65).

McLachlan moved to Melbourne in 1976, Alison having died of cancer two years earlier. An avid reader, particularly of poetry and of English and Australian history, McLachlan was an intelligent wit, an excellent speechmaker, and a stickler for precision. He died at Malvern, Melbourne, on 22 November 1998. His funeral was conducted in Adelaide, and his remains interred in Saint John’s Anglican cemetery, Mount Pleasant. He was survived by daughters Joanna and Kirsty, and sons Angus and Ian, who had been chairman of the National Farmers’ Federation (1984-88) and served in the Federal parliament (1990-98), including as minister for defence (1996–98).