Joshua Arthur

Joshua George Arthur (27 January 1906 – 20 May 1974) was an Australian schoolteacher and politician who represented the Hamilton and Kahibah districts for the Labor Party.

Early life Born to Joshua Arthur, a blacksmith, and Ethel May Embleton in Adamstown, New South Wales. He was educated at Adamstown Public School, Newcastle High School and Sydney Teachers College, graduating in 1924. He taught for the New South Wales Department of Education from 1925 until 1935, in the Wellington, Sydney and Newcastle districts.

He served in the second Australian Imperial Forces. Enlisted in 1940, served in North Africa and on the staff of the Minister for the Army, Frank Forde, from 1943 until 1945. Arthur voluntarily stood down as a minister while declaring he would fight to clear his name, and the state government set up a Royal Commission into the allegations, to be conducted by Judge George Amsberg of the District Court. Amsberg's report, handed down in August after several months of hearings, found that Arthur had acted improperly but not corruptly in his dealings with Doyle. The report concluded:Mr Arthur knew very early in 1952, that Mr Doyle had bought a vehicle from Constructions services Ltd., through the Australian Guarantee Corporation on hire purchase, and that he was quite unable to pay his gambling debts. By reason of these matters, the veneer of wealth and respectability assumed by Mr Doyle must have worn thin almost if not entirely, to vanishing point, and Mr Arthur must have realised this, and it must have been driven home to Mr Arthur’s mind that Mr Doyle was a completely worthless individual, void of rectitude and undeserving of any kind of trust or confidence which might be reposed in him. Mr Arthur’s subsequent acts of commission and of omission in this regard ….. I find, pass the bounds of mere indiscretion, unwisdom or foolishness, and were discreditable or seriously reprehensible in a person occupying the position of a Minister of the Crown, and constituted a substantial breach of the recognised standards of right dealing to be expected of a Minister of the Crown.

Death Arthur died on . He was buried at Northern Suburbs Crematorium following a service at St Stephen's Uniting Church, Macquarie Street.