Gordon Neil Bilney (21 June 193928 October 2012) was an Australian politician. He was an

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms ...

member of the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Australian Senate, Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Austra ...

for the seat of

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

from 1983 to 1996. Bilney was born in Renmark,

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. Prior to entering politics, Bilney was a diplomat, and his first chosen occupation, prior to that, was dentistry. He served as Deputy Permanent Representative of Australia to the OECD from 1975 to 1978 and as the Australian High Commissioner to the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Great ...

from 1980 to 1982, in Jamaica. He was first elected to federal parliament at the 1983 federal election when the Labor Party, under the leadership of Bob Hawke, defeated the Liberal-National Party government which had held government under prime minister

Malcolm Fraser John Malcolm Fraser (; 21 May 1930 – 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Fraser was raised on hi ...

. He won the seat of

, based in the southern suburbs of

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

, defeating incumbent Liberal MP Grant Chapman. Bilney was subsequently re-elected to the same seat at the

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airpor ...

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

and

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

elections. Between 1990 and 1996, Bilney was a minister in the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and

Paul Keating Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is an Australian former politician and unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He previously ser ...

. He was the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel from 1990 to 1993 and the Minister for Development Cooperation and Pacific Island Affairs from 1993 to 1996. Bilney was defeated by Liberal candidate Susan Jeanes at the 1996 federal election. Bilney died on 28 October 2012 at the age of 73.

References

External links

Parlinfo: Biography for BILNEY, the Hon. Gordon Neil
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bilney, Gordon Neil 1939 births 2012 deaths Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Members of the Australian House of Representatives Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Kingston People from Renmark, South Australia Australian dentists University of Adelaide alumni High Commissioners of Australia to Barbados High Commissioners of Australia to Jamaica High Commissioners of Australia to Trinidad and Tobago 20th-century Australian politicians 20th-century dentists