Election sticker for one of Neville Bonner’s election campaigns

Neville Thomas Bonner AO was an Australian politician, and the first Indigenous Australian to become a member of the Parliament of Australia. Neville Bonner first became politicized when he lived on Palm Island with his first wife, Mona, whom he married in 1943. The couple moved to the island in 1945 and Bonner became involved in the Palm Island Social Welfare Association, working his way to the fairly senior position of settlement overseer. Becoming involved in Aboriginal politics at that stage, Bonner came to the conclusion that the only way to change unjust laws was to get into the system and change them from within. Although Bonner entered parliament in the middle of a Senate term in 1971, he successfully contested elections in 1974, 1975, 1978 and 1981. His political career ended in 1983 when he was placed in an unwinnable position on the Liberal’s Senate ticket and he resigned from the party to stand as an Independent. He felt very betrayed by the Party, and he was not re-elected to the Senate at that election.