Gavan Michael O'Connor Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician, was an Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

 (ALP) member of the Australian House of Representatives

Australian House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....

 from March 1993 to November 2007, representing the Division of Corio

Division of Corio

The Division of Corio is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria. The division one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It is named for Corio Bay. It has always been based on the city of Geelong, although in the past it has also included parts of the western...

, Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

.

Education

He was born in Colac

Colac, Victoria

Colac is a small city located in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, situated approximately 150 kilometres south-west of Melbourne on the southern shore of Lake Colac and the surrounding volcanic plains, approximately 40 km inland from Bass Strait. Colac is the largest city in and...

, Victoria, and was educated at St Patrick's College, Ballarat

St Patrick's College, Ballarat

St Patrick's College was founded by the Christian Brothers in 1893. It is a Roman Catholic day and boarding school, located in Ballarat, Australia. It provides education for boys from Year 7 to Year 12, with an emphasis on sporting and academic programmes...

, Monash University

Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

 and the University of New England

University of New England, Australia

The University of New England is an Australian public university with approximately 18,000 higher education students. Its original and main campus is located in the city of Armidale in northern New South Wales....

. He was a farmer, high school teacher, and member of the Colac City Council before entering Parliament.

Politics

He contested the 1984 Corangamite by-election

Corangamite by-election, 1984

A by-election was held for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Corangamite on 18 February 1984. This was triggered by the resignation of Liberal Party MP Tony Street...

. He became Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Kim Beazley

Kim Beazley

In the October 1998 election, Labor polled a majority of the two-party vote and received the largest swing to a first-term opposition since 1934. However, due to the uneven nature of the swing, Labor came up eight seats short of making Beazley Prime Minister....

) from 1996 to 1998 and Member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry from October 1998. He was Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries from December 2003 until 2007 when he was dropped in a cabinet reshuffle by incoming leader Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd

Kevin Michael Rudd is an Australian politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010. He has been Minister for Foreign Affairs since 2010...

.

O'Connor lost his endorsement as the ALP candidate for Corio to Richard Marles

Richard Marles

Richard Donald Marles is the Australian Labor Party member for the Victorian federal seat of Corio, based on Geelong. Marles is the son of Donald Marles, a former headmaster of Trinity Grammar School, and Faye Marles, Victoria's first Equal Opportunity Commissioner and later Chancellor of the...

 in March 2007. On the 18th of October the same year, he announced he would run as an independent at the 2007 Federal Election, and achieved 12.7 percent of the vote, but lost to Marles.