Alfred Billson (Australian politician)

Alfred Arthur Billson (11 January 1858 – 31 October 1930) was an Australian politician.

He was born at Wooragee to brewer George Billson and Isabella Blades. He attended Beechworth Grammar School and Scotch College before succeeding his father as a brewer. On 28 June 1881 he married Laura Annie Fielder, with whom he had five children. The family brewery eventually became the Anglo-Australian Brewing Company around 1904, which absorbed an Albury firm in 1912. Billson sold out in 1914. He served on Beechworth Shire Council from 1884 to 1893 and from 1895 to 1910, with three terms as president (1888–89, 1899–1901, 1908–09). In 1901 he won a by-election for the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Bogong as a ministerial liberal, but he was defeated in 1902. He returned to the Assembly in 1904 as the member for Ovens. He voted against the Bent government, but was part of the Liberal grouping until 1917, when he joined the Economy Party faction of the Nationalists. From 1909 to 1912 he was Minister of Railways; he held the position again from February to December 1913. He was also Minister of Public Instruction from 1909 to 1913, and MInister of Mines and Forests in 1913. From 1921 to 1926 he was Chairman of Committees. Billson retired in 1927, and died in Toorak in 1930.^[1]

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