Sir Arthur William Coles (7 August 1892 – 14 June 1982) was a prominent Australian businessman and philanthropist, a son of St James, Victoria shopkeeper George W. Coles (died 1932).
With his brothers (1885–1977), Kenneth Frank "K.F." (1896 –1985), Edgar Barton "E.B." (1899–1981), and Norman Cameron "N.C." Coles (1907–1989), A. W. Coles founded Coles Variety Stores in the 1920s, which was to become Coles Group, one of the two largest supermarket chains in Australia.
He served as Lord Mayor of Melbourne from 1938 to 1940.
In 1940 he was elected to the federal parliament as an Independent from Henty. With Alexander Wilson), he held the balance of power, at first keeping the UAP-National government in office, but in 1941 switching sides to install a new Australian Labor Party government.
In 1946 Coles was appointed chair of the Australian National Airways Commission, which founded TAA or Trans Australian Airlines (later known as Australian Airlines, which became the domestic arm of Qantas).
Early life
Arthur Coles was born in Geelong, Victoria and educated at the elite private school The Geelong College. When World War I began, Coles enlisted as a private, fighting at Gallipoli and on the Western Front in France, and was wounded on three occasions before being commissioned as a lieutenant.
Coles Variety Stores
Coles returned to Australia in 1919 and married Lillian Knight. He joined with two brothers and an uncle to open a variety store in Collingwood, a working-class suburb of Melbourne. Working on the slogan "Nothing over 2/6", the business grew rapidly. The family opened a series of new Coles Variety Stores around the country, Arthur moving to Sydney in 1928 to open and manage the first one in New South Wales. In 1931, at the height of the Great Depression, he returned to Melbourne to become Managing Director, a post he held until 1944. G. J. Coles & Co became the largest retailer in Australia.
Lord Mayor and federal politics
Coles became Lord Mayor of Melbourne in 1938, remaining in that position until 1940 when he resigned to stand for the federal seat of Henty as an independent candidate. Coles was one of the two independents (the other was Alexander Wilson) who held the balance of power through the early years of
This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.
Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.