Graeme Campbell (politician)

Graeme Campbell (born 13 August 1939) is an Australian politician. He represented the vast seat of Kalgoorlie in the Australian House of Representatives from 1980 to 1998.^[1]

He was born in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England,^[1] came to Australia as a child and was educated at Urrbrae Agricultural High School in South Australia. He worked in a range of occupations before entering federal parliament in October 1980 as a Labor member.

Considered a maverick, he was an ardent supporter of the mining industry,^[2] and crossed the floor on gold tax in 1988,^[3] and was also a vocal critic of the Mabo decision^[4] and sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa, and a proponent of uranium mining. In October 1993, and again in May 1995, he delivered a speech at the national seminar of the Australian League of Rights, a far-right group for which he was believed to hold sympathies,^[5] and in by-elections in Mackellar and Warringah (safe Liberal seats on the Northern Beaches of Sydney) in 1994, he urged electors to vote for Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI).^[6]

After numerous run-ins with the Labor leadership and considerable media attention to his exploits, he was finally expelled from the party on 30 November 1995^[7] after addressing an AAFI meeting where he criticised Labor's immigration policies. He continued to sit in parliament as an independent, and was reelected as an independent in 1996 election.^[8] Although he only tallied 35 percent of the primary vote, he defeated his replacement as Labor candidate, former Deputy Premier of Western Australia Ian Taylor, on Liberal preferences.

In June 1996, Campbell founded the Australia First Party,^[9] but was officially reckoned as an independent. He was defeated for reelection in 1998^[8] after being eliminated on the seventh count.^[10] Campbell blamed his loss on Australia First being eclipsed by One Nation. In 2009, he claimed that if not for the presence of a One Nation candidate, he'd have picked up an additional 8.5 percent of the vote, which would have been enough to keep him in the race.^[11] He remained Australia First's leader until June 2001, when he left the party to stand (unsuccessfully) as a One Nation Senate candidate in Western Australia. In 2004, he attempted unsuccessfully to regain his old federal seat as an independent.^[8] In 2007, he stood for the Senate in Western Australia in the federal election but only achieved 0.13% of the vote.^[12]

References

Bibliography

• Graeme Campbell and Mark Uhlmann. Australia Betrayed: How Australian democracy has been undermined and our naive trust betrayed, Foundation Press, Perth, 1995. ISBN 1-875778-02-0