Researching Ron Loveday

Loveday was born to a jeweller in Essex, England in 1900. After serving in the Naval Air Service from March 1918 to March 1919, he migrated to South Australia in October 1919 and took employment on William Mills's property, Millbrae, in the Adelaide Hills. In 1922 he acquired a 15-acre (6 ha) horticultural block at Renmark and became engaged to Mills's youngest child, Lizzie Hilliary. They married at Chalmers Presbyterian Church, Adelaide, on 27 August 1924. The farm soon proved to be not economically viable, and Loveday had to relocate. He carried out bulk haulage work in the north regions, mainly around Clare. He was entitled to a soldier settler block and bought land at Cungena. On 566 hectares of land, he began to grow wheat. Struggling through the low grain prices caused by The Great Depression, he became President of the South Australian Wheat Growers’ Protection Association and secretary of its Eyre Peninsula branch.

In February 1936 the Lovedays moved to Kernilla, Port Lincoln. His wife ran the farm while he began labouring jobs in the local area. He served as secretary (1940–56) of the local AEU and helped to form a branch of the Australian Labor Party at Whyalla. Active in local politics, he sat on several wartime committees and was a founding member (1945–65) of the Whyalla Town Commission. He was an ALP candidate for the Legislative Council Northern electorate in the 1947 and 1950 elections and in a 1949 by-election. When the electoral redistribution of 1955 gave Whyalla its own House of Assembly seat, he secured the Labor nomination and won it at the election next year.

Once in the House, Loveday was always an advocate for the expansion of education services in Whyalla. He was also known for his wishes for the broadening of the horizon for children in rural areas. He was a founding member of the movement for BHP to establish a steelworks at Whyalla, which was opened in 1965.

When Labor won the 1965 election, Loveday was appointed and sworn as Minister for Education in the Walsh Government. He was the founding member of the bill introduced on 26 January 1966 that established the Flinders University of South Australia as a separate entity from the University of Adelaide. He overhauled the grading system for Intermediate and Leaving certificate examinations (1966) and for abolishing the externally examined Intermediate (1968). The divide between the single-sex technical schools and the more academic high schools, a problem which was slowly building and increasing class division under Loveday's predecessor, ended.

Loveday, as a staunch advocate of equality, started a staged process towards pay equity for women teachers, including 'accouchement leave' and other means of reducing discrimination were begun. Loveday approved a pioneering experiment in which Pitjantjatjara children received their first formal schooling in their own language. However, his inept handling in 1966-67 of the (John) Murrie case—involving a Darwin primary-school headmaster who publicly complained about the lack of experienced teachers at his school—angered many in the teaching profession.

After Walsh retired and Don Dunstan took office in June 1967, Loveday was also sworn in as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. He was to the left of many in the Labor party and many men of his age on emerging social issues. In 1968 he supported the case for abortion law reform. Loveday retired from parliament at the 1970 election, in which the Playmander was taken apart and the Labor government again gained office after Dunstan.

Loveday and his family had moved to Glenelg in 1965. When he died in January 1987, Dunstan described him as a man of admirable 'intellect, integrity and forthrightness'.