SIR MAX BINGHAM

(Tasmania & Lincoln 1950) (18 March 1927 – 30 November 2021)

Sir Eardley Max Bingham QC was educated in New South Wales and Tasmania, and at the age of 18 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy and served as an able seaman at shore stations until 1946.

He was selected as the 1950 Tasmanian Rhodes Scholar and received a Bachelor of Civil Law at Lincoln College, Oxford. He later returned to Hobart in 1953, where he practised alongside Reg Wright, to whom he was articled at the University of Tasmania.

Bingham entered the Tasmanian Parliament when he was elected as a member for Denison at the 1969 state election on 10 May. On 26 May, he was made a minister in Angus Bethune's cabinet, becoming Attorney-General and Minister Administering the Police Department and the Licensing Act. On 4 May 1972, he was elected leader of the Liberal Party in Tasmania.

He contested two elections as opposition leader (1976 and 1979), but stood down in 1979 and was later appointed as Deputy Premier and Attorney-General in Gray's cabinet (as well as Minister for Education, Industrial Relations, and Police and Emergency Services).

After his time in the Tasmanian Parliament, Bingham joined the National Crime Authority, a federal law enforcement body focussing on organised crime. A distinguished lawyer and politician, Bingham was a corruption fighter on the national stage and was knighted for Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his "service to the law, crime prevention, parliament and the community" in 1988.