John William "Jack" Austin (9 December 1910 – 8 March 1983) was an Australian rules football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

 player for the South Melbourne Swans

Sydney Swans

The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...

 from 1930 to 1938, playing 140 games in the back-pocket and at full-back. Austin was judged one of the best players in South Melbourne's 1933 premiership win over the Richmond Football Club

Richmond Football Club

The Richmond Football Club, nicknamed The Tigers, is an Australian rules football club which competes in the Australian Football League. Richmond shares healthy rivalries with Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon. After winning five premierships between 1967 and 1980, the club hit the depths in 1990,...

.

Austin was born in Boort

Boort, Victoria

Boort is a town in Victoria, Australia, located next to Lake Boort, in the Shire of Loddon. At the 2006 census, Boort had a population of 773. The town is known for its native birdlife...

 in country 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....

, and grew up in Montague

South Melbourne, Victoria

South Melbourne is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area are the Cities of Port Phillip and Melbourne...

 in inner-south-suburban Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, where he excelled at various sports, including swimming and foot-running as well as winning trophies in the local district football competition. Recruited to South Melbourne from South Districts in 1930, Austin played for the Swans throughout their glory years as the "Foreign Legion", playing in all four grand finals for the Swans between 1933-1936.

Austin was a fast, hard-tackling, high-marking player, and stylish right-footed kicker, versatile in competing in both defence and around the ground play. Austin retired from the South Melbourne team in 1938. He married Clare Hanrahan in 1939 and had two sons. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he served for five years in the Australian Army

Australian Army

The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...

. After the war he worked in administrative positions in the transport, media, racing and brewing industries.

Austin joined the 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...

 in his youth and was an active member of the Federated Clerks Union (now part of the Australian Services Union

Australian Services Union

The Australian Municipal, Administrative, Clerical and Services Union, which operates under the trading name of the Australian Services Union or ASU, is a trade union that represents members in a variety of industries.-Union history:...

). He was also active in the Industrial Groups, which were set up by Labor in the Victorian trade unions to combat the Communist Party of Australia

Communist Party of Australia

The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...

, which then controlled the Clerks Union as well as many others. In 1954, when Labor split over the issue of communism, Austin sided with the anti-communist "Movement" forces led by B.A. Santamaria, and against the party's federal leader, Dr H.V. Evatt.

As a result, Austin was twice a candidate for the 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....

, contesting the seat of Flinders

Division of Flinders

The Division of Flinders is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria. The division was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election...

 in 1955 for the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)

Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)

The Australian Labor Party was the name initially used by the right-wing group which split away from the Australian Labor Party in 1955, and which later became the Democratic Labor Party in 1957....

, the breakaway group opposed to Evatt, and in 1961 for its successor, the Democratic Labor Party

Democratic Labor Party

The Democratic Labor Party is a political party in Australia that espouses social conservatism and opposes neo-liberalism. The first "DLP" Senator in decades, party vice-president John Madigan was elected to the Australian Senate with 2.3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria at the 2010 federal...

 (DLP). At both elections he polled 14.8 percent of the vote. In 1961 his preferences

Australian electoral system

The Australian electoral system has evolved over nearly 150 years of continuous democratic government, and has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting, preferential voting and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate.- Compulsory voting...

 were decisive in the Liberal

Liberal Party of Australia

The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...

 candidate retaining the seat. When the DLP was dissolved in the 1970s, Austin returned to supporting the ALP.

In retirement Austin lived a quiet life with his wife in the bayside Melbourne suburb of Chelsea

Chelsea, Victoria

Chelsea is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 30 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Kingston. At the 2006 Census, Chelsea had a population of 6694....

. Austin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...

in late 1982 and died in hospital on 8 March 1983.