Andrew Bent is described as ‘Australia’s first fighter for press freedom’. Transported for burglary, he arrived in Hobart in 1812. He was initially assigned as an assistant, then in 1816 became the government printer when he published The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter.
In 1818, Bent published Michael Howe, the Last and Worst of the Bushrangers in Van Diemen’s Land by Thomas E. Wells and in 1821 published the Van Diemen’s Land Pocket Almanac, praised as superior to anything printed at that time in the colony.
Bent was dismissed as government printer in 1825, and Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur established a rival publication so two Hobart Town Gazettes were issued simultaneously until Bent renamed his publication The Colonial Times. When Bent called Arthur the ‘Gideonite of tyranny’ he was imprisoned twice for criminal libel. Upon release, he continued printing The Colonial Times without a licence and was imprisoned again. Facing financial pressures and a defamation trial, Bent soldThe Colonial Times to Henry Melville in 1830. Bent and his family eventually moved to Sydney but unwell, poor and bereft, he died in the Sydney Benevolent Asylum on 27 August 1851.
