Percy Joske

Sir Percy Ernest Joske, CMG (5 October 1895 – 25 April 1981) was an Australian politician. Born in Melbourne, youngest of three children of Ernest Joske, a German-born solicitor, and his Victorian-born wife Evalyne, née Richards. Evalyne died giving birth to him and Ernest remarried in 1898. He attended Wesley College and then the University of Melbourne before being called to the bar in 1917. He served in the military 1943–45, and returned to become a law lecturer at the University of Melbourne, a position he held from 1949 to 1952. He was also an author. In 1951, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives as the Liberal member for the blue-ribbon seat of Balaclava, being elected in the by-election following the resignation of Thomas White. Joske resigned in 1960 to become Judge of the Commonwealth Industrial Court. He was subsequently appointed to the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory (1960–77) and the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory (1961–77). He was knighted in 1967, and died in 1981; a year before his death, he published a biography of Sir Robert Menzies.