Sir Joseph Cook (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the sixth prime minister of Australia from 1913 to 1914.

Cook replaced Deakin as leader of the Liberals in January 1913, and a few months later won a one-seat majority over Andrew Fisher's Labor Party at the 1913 election.

His party failed to secure a majority in the Australian Senate, making governing difficult, and as a result he engineered the first double dissolution.

Cook was unable to pass much legislation during his time in office, but did oversee the early stages of Australia's involvement in World War I.

He was a delegate to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he was a member of the committee that determined the borders of Czechoslovakia, and along with Hughes was one of two Australians to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

Shortly after their marriage, the couple emigrated to New South Wales and settled in Lithgow, joining Cook's brother-in-law and a number of other former miners from Silverdale.

He was also active in the Land Nationalisation League, which was influenced by the ideas of Henry George and strongly supported free trade,[6] and was a founding member of the Labor Party in 1891.

[7] Cook was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as MP for the coalfields seat of Hartley in 1891, in Labor's first big breakthrough in Australian politics.

He chaired two intercolonial post and telegraph (P&T) conferences in 1896, at which the Australian colonies agreed to fund a Pacific Cable linking Australia to North America.

[13] According to Kevin Livingston, who wrote a history of pre-Federation telecommunications in Australia, he "deserves to be recognised as having played an influential, mediating role in leading the Australian colonies towards technological federalism in the mid-1890s".

[19] In the first term of federal parliament, Cook developed a reputation as a master of parliamentary procedure and tactics, "always ready to speak, as often and as long as required".

[20] He spoke in favour of nationalising the iron industry and introducing compulsory conciliation and arbitration, views in line with his previous political affiliation.

[21] Opposing tariffs because they increased the price of goods needed for working families, in 1902 he would suggest that "no man ought be in the position of Minister for Trade and Customs unless he had at least ten children".

[23] He stood for the deputy leadership of the opposition when parliament resumed, but was defeated by Dugald Thomson, and was overlooked for ministerial office when Reid formed a government in August 1904.

He instead came to espouse liberalism, regarding its views about personal freedom as closely aligned with Methodism's understanding of the role of the individual in developing morality.

[26] In 1905 he accepted the position of deputy chairman of the Australian Liberal League, an organisation formed to support the anti-socialists in the lead-up to the next election.

At the 1913 election, Cook championed private enterprise and attacked Labor's "socialist objective" as the "principle that the state must become more and more omnipotent, until it eventually takes over all the actions of the individual, shaping and determining all our production, distribution and exchange".

Unable to govern effectively due to the hostile Senate, Cook decided to trigger a double dissolution under section 57 of the Constitution of Australia, the first time that provision had been used.

Cook was also greatly hindered by the fact that he had to cut short his campaign to focus on war matters, at a time when there were few alternatives to in-person political rallies.

In determining who should be prime minister, Governor-General Ronald Munro Ferguson spoke first with Opposition Leader Frank Tudor, who declined to form a government, and then with senior members of the Nationalist Party.

Cook's advice that "only Hughes" was suitable proved decisive in Munro Ferguson recommissioning him as prime minister, rather than another Nationalist like John Forrest.

[45] Cook participated in all fifteen sessions of the conference, but found that the most important work was being undertaken by Hughes behind closed doors; he was generally not consulted.

[46] After the conference concluded he paid an extended visit to the Western Front, accompanied by his adviser John Latham, author Arthur Conan Doyle, and war correspondent Charles Bean.

Although Australia and the other Dominions signed the Treaty of Versailles separately and became individual members of the League of Nations, for the preceding negotiations their representatives (and those of the United Kingdom) were considered to form one single British Empire delegation.

[47] Cook was chosen as the lead British delegate on the Commission on Czechoslovak Affairs, which was tasked with determining the final borders of Czechoslovakia.

In November 1921, it was announced that he would be appointed as Australia's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in place of Andrew Fisher, whose term had ended earlier that year.

[61] He hosted regular social functions at Australia House, and mixed more easily in high society than his predecessor, whose partial deafness tended to make him withdrawn.

Leaving England ten days later, he and his wife were serenaded at the Port of Tilbury by the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba, who had become a close friend of theirs.

[71] Cook died at the age of 86, surpassing George Reid as Australia's longest-lived prime minister; his record was broken by Hughes a few years later.

In 2006, the Australian Electoral Commission's Redistribution Committee for New South Wales proposed that the division be jointly named for Joseph and James Cook, but this did not eventuate at the time.