Sir Thomas Bent was Minister of the Railways in the State of Victoria when Bert sketched him in late 1902. He went onto become the 22nd Premier of Victoria. He was so conservative he was kicked out of the Conservatives !!

I have a sneaking suspicion that Bert wrote these political profiles as well as doing the sketches. The writing is very Bert as seen in Bendigo the two years earlier. One quote in the article about Bent reads…

“His motto, therefore, is appropriately enough, ‘Nil Desperandum’. It might still more appropriately be, “Bent, not Broken.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bent