Neville Bonner - Biography

Biography

He was born at Ukerebagh Island, a small settlement on the Tweed River in northern New South Wales. He never knew his father and had almost no formal education. He worked as a farm labourer before settling on Palm Island, near Townsville, Queensland in 1946, where he rose to the position of Assistant Settlement Overseer.

In 1960 he moved to Ipswich, where he joined the board of directors of the One People of Australia League (OPAL), a moderate indigenous rights organisation. He became its Queensland president in 1970. He joined the Liberal Party in 1967 and held local office in the party. Following the resignation of Liberal Senator Dame Annabelle Rankin in 1971, Bonner was chosen to fill the casual vacancy. He thus became the first indigenous Australian to sit in the Australian Parliament. He was elected in his own right in 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1980.

While in the Senate he served on a number of committees but was never a serious candidate for promotion to the ministry. He rebelled against the Liberal Party line on some issues. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to pressure from younger candidates, he was dropped from the Liberal Senate ticket at the 1983 election. He stood as an independent and was nearly successful. The Hawke government then appointed him to the board of directors of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bonner was almost unique in being an indigenous activist and a political conservative: in fact he owed his political career to this combination. In the face of often savage personal criticism from radical left-wing indigenous activists, he often denied being a "token" in the Liberal Party.

In 1979 Bonner was jointly named Australian of the Year along with naturalist Harry Butler. In 1984 Bonner was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia. From 1992 to 1996 he was member of the Griffith University Council. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1993. In 1998 he was elected to the Constitutional Convention as a candidate of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy.

He died at Ipswich in 1999, aged 76.