Drake's progress: the political somersaults of J.G. Drake

James George Drake is one of the least remembered Founding Fathers of Federation. A prominent Queensland senator (1901-06), Drake was a key minister in the first two federal cabinets. But unlike many of his Commonwealth colleagues, no Canberra suburb bears Drake's name, no electorate is named after him, and most historians of the Federation era mention him in passing, if at all. His neglect is surprising, because J. G. Drake was one of the most divisive and controversial Queensland politicians of his era. In both the Queensland and Commonwealth parliaments, he earned himself the somewhat undeserved reputation as a political somersaulter with highly flexible principles. This article chiefly examines the political career of Drake, and finds that despite changing the colour of his political flag from time to time, Drake remained true to the philosophy of liberalism that had sustained him from the 1880s onwards