Graeme Campbell (politician)

Campbell was born in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England,[1] and came to Australia as a child. He was educated at Urrbrae Agricultural High School in South Australia. In 1972, Campbell met his future wife, French-Australian Michele Lelievre, at a sheep station in the Nullarbor Plain.[2] Campbell worked in a range of occupations before entering federal parliament in October 1980 as the Labor member for Kalgoorlie.

Considered a maverick, he was an ardent supporter of the mining industry,[3] and crossed the floor on gold tax in 1988,[4] and was also a vocal critic of the Mabo decision[5] 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,[6] 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).[7]

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[8] 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 the 1996 election,[9] when he only received 35% of the primary vote, but defeated the Labor candidate, former Deputy Premier of Western Australia Ian Taylor, on Liberal preferences.

In June 1996, Campbell founded the Australia First Party,[10] but was officially reckoned as an independent. He was defeated for reelection at the 1998 federal election[9] after being eliminated on the seventh count.[11] 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 would have picked up an additional 8.5% of the vote, which would have been enough to keep him in the race.[12]

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.[9] He stood for the Senate in Western Australia at the 2007 federal election as an independent, but only achieved 0.13% of the vote.[13]

• 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