Harold Edward Holt, CH ( 5 August 190817 December 1967 ) was an Australian politician and the 17th Prime Minister of Australia.

Holt spent 32 years in Parliament, including many years as a senior Cabinet Minister, but was Prime Minister for only 22 months.

As Minister for Immigration ( 1949 – 1956 ), Holt was responsible for the relaxation of the White Australia policy and as Treasurer under Menzies he initiated major fiscal reforms including the establishment of the Reserve Bank of Australia and launched and guided the process to convert Australia to decimal currency.

Harold Holt was the elder of Thomas and Olive ( Williams ) Holt's two children.

Tom Frame's biography reveals that Holt was the twins ' biological father.

In October 1940 Holt was elevated to Cabinet, becoming Minister for Labour and National Service, and one of his most significant achievements in this portfolio was the introduction of the Child Endowment Act, passed in April 1941.

Holt was among those who withdrew their support, although he never revealed his reasons for doing so.

Holt was one of the first members to join the Liberal Party's Prahran branch.

The seat was created as a safe Liberal seat, and Holt won it easily.

In December 1958, following the retirement of Arthur Fadden, Holt was appointed Treasurer.

Holt was roundly criticised, his public profile was damaged, and he later described 1960 – 61 as " my most difficult year in public life ".

With Menzies ' support, Holt was elected leader of the Liberal Party, thus becoming Prime Minister.

Holt was sworn in as Prime Minister on Australia Day, 26 January 1966.

The transfer of power from Menzies to Holt in February 1966 was smooth and unproblematic, and at the federal election later that year the electorate overwhelmingly endorsed Holt, giving the Holt-McEwen Coalition government a 41-seat majority, the largest in Australian history at the time.

Although all the preparatory work for the decimal changeover had been done while Menzies was Prime Minister, Holt had particular responsibility as Treasurer for currency matters, and he was centrally involved in both the decision to change and its implementation.

In 1967 the Holt government made the historic decision not to depreciate the Australian dollar in line with Britain's depreciation of the pound sterling, a custom that Australia had previously always followed, but this decision created considerable dissent within the Coalition ; Country Party leader John McEwen was particularly angered by the move — he saw it as a threat to Australia's balance of payments and feared that it would lead to increased production costs for primary industry.

Whilst Holt stated that his friendship with Johnson was reflected in the strong relationship between Australia and the US, former Australian diplomat and foreign affairs expert Alan Renouf was more cynical in his assessment of the situation.

In the chapter on Vietnam in The Frightened Country, his 1979 book on Australian foreign policy, Renouf bluntly suggested that Holt was in effect " seduced " by Johnson, and notes that the Johnson administration criticized the Holt government for not doing enough and repeatedly pressured Australia to increase its troop commitment in Vietnam.

It includes the oldest combine harvester on display in the United States ( a 1904 Haines-Houser harvester ) drawn by a circa-1918 Holt ' 75 ' Caterpillar track-type tractor.

In early 1955 a new recruiting agreement was drawn up protecting the union's right to recruit labour with Harold Holt, Minister for Labour and National Service.

From this point on Holt dedicated himself single-mindedly to a career in politics and he reportedly had few outside interests, apart from his well-known passion for sport and the sea.

The Holt family subsequently built scores of mills across the state, as well as becoming involved in banking, railroads, politics and other ventures.

Unfortunately, the show is also burdened with a silly script by Will Holt, which consists mostly of having Miss Hopkins disavow the fact that she's Bessie Smith with all the fervor of a Kennedy disavowing politics.

* La Follette, Philip Fox, Adventure in politics: the memoirs of Philip La Follette edited by Donald Young, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

He and his brother Cliff ( Clifford Thomas Holt, born 1910 ) spent their early life in Sydney and attended three different schools in Sydney and Adelaide between 1913 and 1919.

A lack of parental affection, his parents ' divorce and his mother's early death instilled deep feelings of loneliness and insecurity in the young Holt.

These types, and the DH. 9A, a developed version that served for many years with the postwar Royal Air Force, formed the basis of early de Havilland designed airliners, including the company's DH. 16 and DH. 18 types which were operated by Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited, the first airline established in the United Kingdom, also owned by George Holt Thomas.

Caterpillar Tractor Company began in 1925 from a forced reorganization of the Holt Manufacturing Company ; an early successful manufacturer of crawler tractors.

In an early essay, Holt contrasts the two terms:

Briefly engaged to novelist Louis L ' Amour in the early 1950s, Newmar married J. Holt Smith, a lawyer, on August 5, 1977 and moved with him to Fort Worth, Texas where she lived until her divorce from Smith in 1984.

Thomas Michael Holt was a descendant of Michael Holt or Holdt, one of the earliest settlers of the Germanna Colony in Virginia in the early 18th century.

* Holt Cemetery in New Orleans contains the remains of known and unknown early jazz musicians, including Charles " Buddy " Bolden.

In the early days of bulldozers, Holt tractors had tricycle steering, owing to engineering difficulties with the tracks.

Laurents was not a fan of drag or camp entertainment and thought Holt and Brown never would find enough investors to finance a gay-themed project at a time when, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, homophobia was more intense than ever.

Built in the early 19th century for Liverpool Mayor Nicholas Robinson, Sudley became the house of Victorian ship owner and merchant George Holt in 1883.

Ashton semi detached houses in Holt Park, Leeds, built in the early 1970s.

Three plays later, he threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Holt to give the Rams an early 7 – 0 lead.

After Gresham's School, Holt, Oxford Polytechnic and Cranfield University where he studied for a Masters, Symonds worked in the lower motor sport categories and joined the Toleman team in the early 1980s.

Several early luminaries of the Bay Area scene borrowed heavily from the NWOBHM and early punk rock: Exodus guitarist Gary Wayne Holt mentioned discovering Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, Angel Witch, Venom and Budgie on a KUSF radio show hosted by Ian Kallen and Ron Quintana.

The two main evening news anchors, Bob Mueller and Anne Holt, have been associated with WKRN since the early 1980s.

Harold Holt in the 1930s

* Gary Werskey, The Visible College: The Collective Biography of British Scientific Socialists During the 1930s ( New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978 ).