Edmund Drake-Brockman

Major General Edmund Alfred Drake-Brockman, (21 February 1884 – 1 June 1949) was an Australian soldier, politician, and judge. He served in both the First and Second World Wars. He was a senator for Western Australia from 1920 to 1926, representing the Nationalist Party, and later served as a judge of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration from 1927 until his death in 1949.

Early life Drake-Brockman was born on 21 February 1884 in Busselton, Western Australia.

Drake-Brockman was educated in Perth at Guildford Grammar School. He subsequently read law as an articled clerk with Walter Hartwell James's firm of James and Derbyshire, and was admitted to practise law in Western Australia in 1909.

Military service Drake-Brockman joined the Citizen Military Forces at the age of 19. In 1908 he was selected to undergo officer training with the British Indian Army at the Army Staff College in Quetta (present-day Pakistan). He was promoted to major in 1911. Drake-Brockman became a "loyal government supporter". In 1923, when parliament reconvened after the 1922 election, he was appointed as government whip.

In parliament, Drake-Brockman spoke frequently on defence issues. He supported the government's Defence Bill 1921 which would have applied the United Kingdom's Army Act to the Australian military, and warned of Japanese aggression in the Pacific in the context of "the preservation of a White Australia". On trade policy, he "argued that the protective tariff disadvantaged the primary producing Western Australians" and opposed the government's establishment of the Tariff Board. Drake-Brockman was a member of several select committees, including that which recommended that the government commission AWA to develop an overseas radio communication service. At the annual convention later in the year, he "urged the employers to strenuously resist the rising tide of socialism" and advocated a return to piece work rather than wages.

Drake-Brockman did not recontest the 1925 federal election, in order to allow the Nationalists to put forward a joint ticket with their coalition partners the Country Party. He was the most junior of the three Nationalist senators in Western Australia up for re-election. and suffered from arteriosclerosis in his final years.