1902 - 1989

Abraham ‘Abe’ Landa was a long way from his birthplace in Belfast when he became the MP for the Bondi in 1930.

Landa was born in 1902 in Northern Ireland, the eldest of four children. His parents were Russian Jews who had fled persecution. In 1910 Landa migrated to Sydney with his widowed mother.

He was educated at Christian Brothers College, Waverley, and won a scholarship to study law at the University of Sydney. Admitted as a solicitor in 1927, Landa specialised in industrial law and workers’ compensation, which brought him into close association with the union movement. He joined the Australian Labor Party and became president of the Paddington branch.

At the 1930 state election, Landa won the previously safe conservative seat of Bondi in a landslide to Labor, just days before his 28th birthday. He lost the seat in 1932, before winning it back in 1941 and retaining it for the next eight elections.

Landa held ministerial positions in the governments of Joseph Cahill, Robert Heffron and John Renshaw. He served as the minister for labour and industry and for social welfare (1953-56), minister for housing (1956-65) and the mnister for co-operative societies (1959-65).

After Labor’s defeat in 1965, Landa was controversially offered an appointment as the Agent-General for NSW in London by the new Liberal premier, Sir Robert Askin. The ALP expelled Landa because he had resigned his seat without the party’s permission to accept the appointment. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1968 and retired from his London role in 1970.

Landa was a prominent member of Sydney’s Jewish community and a founder of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He was a strong supporter of Zionism and played an important role in persuading then attorney-general, H.V. Evatt, to support a Jewish state. Landa became an official observer at the United Nations General Assembly in 1949.

He was the father of David Landa, who was state ombudsman from 1988-95, and the uncle of Paul Landa, a government minister from 1976-84.

Abe Landa died in 1989, aged 86.

Images courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.