John Henry Lister was an 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. Born in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, he was educated there at Wesley School. Having migrated to Australia in 1889, he farmed at Wutul, South Australia, before serving in the military 1914-16. He had been a member of 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...

, but left it in 1916 over the issue of conscription

Conscription

Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...

, and, together with many other Labor members and MPs, ended up in the Nationalist Party of Australia

Nationalist Party of Australia

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...

. In 1917, Lister was elected as a Nationalist to 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....

 as the member for 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...

, defeating Labor MP Alfred Ozanne

Alfred Ozanne

Alfred Thomas Montgomery Madden Ozanne was an Australian politician. Born in Melbourne, he was the son of Marcel Charles Ozanne a frenchman and his wife Emilia Josephine Reinhardt. Ozanne has four siblings, a brother and three sisters. Ozanne married Edith Stewart Moody in 1900 and they had four...

. He held the seat until his defeat in 1929; an attempt to regain Corio in 1931 as an independent United Australia

United Australia Party

The United Australia Party was an Australian political party that was founded in 1931 and dissolved in 1945. It was the political successor to the Nationalist Party of Australia and predecessor to the Liberal Party of Australia...

 candidate was unsuccessful. He moved to Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

and returned to farming, where he died in 1935.