Federal Politics
In 1963 Connor quit state politics and was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the Wollongong-based seat of Cunningham at the 1963 election. In Canberra, Connor developed a reputation as an eccentric. A large, shabbily dressed man who always wore a hat long after hats had gone out of fashion, Connor seldom spoke in the House and never spoke to journalists. He kept his real age a secret (several obituarists assumed that he had actually been born no earlier than 1908). Sometimes he would reveal an ungovernable temper, and after an incident in which he ripped a clock off a wall in Parliament House and threw it across the room in a rage, he was unofficially known as "The Strangler". His earlier socialism had evolved into a fierce economic nationalism, directed mainly at foreign-owned banks and mining companies.
Read more about this topic: Rex Connor
Famous quotes containing the words federal and/or politics:
“It is odd that the NCAA would place a school on probation for driving an athlete to class, or providing a loan, but would have no penalty for a school that violates Title IX, a federal law.”
—Cardiss L. Collins (b. 1931)
“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)