Neville Thomas Bonner (28 March 1922 – 5 February 1999) was an Australian politician, and the first Aboriginal Australian to become a member of the Parliament of Australia. He was appointed by the Queensland Parliament to fill a casual vacancy in the representation of Queensland in the Senate in 1971, and in 1972 became the first Indigenous Australian to be elected to the parliament by popular vote. Bonner was an elder of the Jagera people.
Bonner was born on 28 March 1922 on Ukerebagh Island, a small island in the Tweed River of New South Wales close to the border with Queensland. He was the son of Julia Bell, an Indigenous Australian, and Henry Kenneth Bonner, an English immigrant. His maternal grandmother Ida Sandy was a member of the Ugarapul people of the Logan and Albert Rivers, while his maternal grandfather Roger Bell (or Jung Jung) was a fully initiated member of the Jagera people of the Brisbane River. According to Bonner, his grandfather was "sort of captured ... out of the tribe" as a young boy and given an English name.
Bonner's parents met and married in Murwillumbah, New South Wales. His father abandoned his mother when she was pregnant with him, leaving her destitute. She subsequently moved to the Aboriginal reserve on Ukerebagh Island, where she had another son. After about five years, the family moved near Lismore, New South Wales, to be closer to Bonner's grandparents, living on the banks of the Richmond River under a lantana bush. His mother subsequently had three children with Frank Randell, an Aboriginal man who was employed by the local police. One of his half-brothers died as a child and he "witnessed frequent acts of violence by Randell against his mother".
Bonner's mother died in July 1932, when he was ten years old, and his grandmother subsequently became his main caregiver. She moved the family to Beaudesert, Queensland, where in 1935 he completed his only year of formal education at Beaudesert State Rural School. His grandmother died in June 1935 and he moved back to New South Wales after finishing the school year. Bonner worked as a ring barker, cane cutter and stockman before settling on Palm Island, near Townsville in 1946, where he rose to the position of Assistant Settlement Overseer.
Early activism and political involvement
While living in Ipswich, Queensland, Bonner joined the Coloured Welfare Council, which later merged into the One People of Australia League (OPAL). He was elected to OPAL's state committee in 1965 and served as president from 1968 to 1974. Bonner was considered a moderate within the Indigenous community, with OPAL having a reputation for cooperation with the Queensland state government. He publicly came into conflict with Aboriginal pastor Don Brady on a number of occasions regarding the government's policy on Palm Island, which Brady had described as a "police state" but Bonner said had put residents "head and shoulders in front of other Aborigines". In 1970 he criticised the Black Power movement as divisive and likely to provoke racial conflict.
Bonner joined the One Mile branch of the Liberal Party in 1967, having attended meetings for several years at the invitation of his future stepdaughter Robyn Kunde. He campaigned for the "Yes" vote on behalf of the Liberal Party at the 1967 referendum on Indigenous Australians. He had previously voted for the Australian Labor Party (ALP), but was "annoyed that Labor should presume the automatic support of Aboriginal people" after an incident where the local Labor MP Bill Hayden challenged his decision to hand out Liberal-branded how-to-vote cards. Bonner was chosen as a branch delegate in 1968 and was elected to the Queensland Liberals' state executive in 1969.
Appointment and electoral record
In March 1970, Bonner won Liberal preselection as the party's second-ranked candidate in Queensland at the 1970 half-Senate election, behind incumbent senator Ian Wood. His candidacy was reported by The Canberra Times as "the first time that a major party has endorsed an Aboriginal candidate for the Senate". He was placed in third position on the joint ticket with the Country Party, losing to Vince Gair of the Democratic Labor Party for the final vacancy.
In 1971, Liberal senator Annabelle Rankin resigned and Bonner was chosen by the party as its candidate for the casual vacancy. He was formally appointed to fill the vacancy on 11 June 1971. He was the first Indigenous Australian to sit in federal parliament.
Bonner was re-elected to the remainder of Rankin's term at the 1972 federal election, in line with the constitutional provisions for casual vacancies at the time. He was re-elected to six-year terms at the 1974 and 1975 elections, both of which followed double dissolutions. He was elected to a further six-year term at the 1980 election as the Liberal Party's lead candidate in Queensland, although this was cut short by another double dissolution.
During the Fraser government, Bonner served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in 1976 and as chairman of the Joint Select Committee on Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory from 1976 to 1977. He supported the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and in 1979 introduced government legislation to create the Aboriginal Development Commission, a responsibility usually held by government ministers. In 1982, the National Aboriginal Council called for Bonner to replace Ian Wilson as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, with Bonner agreeing that the minister should be an Aboriginal person. However, he was "never seriously considered for a federal ministerial position". Fred Chaney believed that appointment as a minister would have interfered with his activism, while others believed that his lack of formal education and administrative experience counted against him.
Bonner regularly crossed the floor to vote against his party. According to a 2019 study, he crossed the floor on 34 occasions during his Senate term, the fourth-most of any member of parliament since 1950 behind only his Liberal colleagues Reg Wright, Ian Wood and Alan Missen.
The reaction to Bonner's election among the Indigenous community was mixed. He received death threats and on a visit to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy received "a steady stream of racial taunts from protestors during an outdoor interview". At the 1971 FCAATSI conference, Harold Blair denounced Bonner as a "black Judas" and stated "we do not regard him as a member of our race any longer". He received some support from Aboriginal university students who distributed how-to-vote cards urging voters to "put some colour in Canberra". In 1982, Bonner stated that he had "played the white man's game" and had to "consolidate myself within the party structure" to extend his time in parliament, allowing him to accomplish more as a result.
Independent candidacy and defeat
In February 1983, Fraser requested a double dissolution and called an early election. Bonner was relegated to the third position on the Liberals' Senate ticket behind fellow incumbent senators Kathy Martin and David MacGibbon. His re-election was widely regarded as unlikely and Fraser publicly expressed his disappointment at the outcome. Bonner attributed his demotion to his "stand on Aboriginal issues".
Bonner resigned from the Liberal Party on 11 February 1983 and announced he would recontest his seat as an independent. He rejected an invitation from Kath Walker to stand on a joint ticket. Bonner self-funded his campaign, driving around Queensland, and accordingly to The Canberra Times was "given more time on regional radio, television or newspapers than any other Independent, the Democrats, and, in many places, the Liberals". He was narrowly defeated by Democrats candidate Michael Macklin for the final vacancy in Queensland, polling 6.7 percent of the statewide vote.
Bonner's primary interest in the Senate was Aboriginal affairs. In his maiden speech he emphasised the importance of education and "wished to see Aboriginal Australians retain their cultural identity, while acquiring the economic, educational and social opportunities that white Australians took for granted". In September 1974 he moved a motion in the Senate calling for Indigenous Australians to receive compensation for the dispossession of their land.