Michael Caltabiano is 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. He was a Liberal Party

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...

 member of the Brisbane City Council from 1996 to 2005, and a Liberal member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly

Queensland Legislative Assembly

The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting form of the Alternative Vote system...

 from 2005 to 2006.

Caltabiano studied engineering at James Cook University and a Master of Philosophy at Nottingham University (UK) and completed a Graduate Diploma of Business at Queensland University of Technology. He worked as a civil engineer and company director.

In 1995 he had his first daughter Elysia and then in 1997 he had his second of two daughters Rihan.

He was appointed as a replacement Liberal Party Councillor for Chandler Ward of the Brisbane City Council in 1996. Caltabiano replaced Liberal Graeme MacDougall

Graeme Macdougall

Graeme Donald Macdougall is a former Australian Rugby Union player who represented for the Wallabies twice.-Early life:...

, who was elected to the Commonwealth seat of Griffith

Division of Griffith

The Division of Griffith is anAustralian Electoral Division in Queensland.The division was created in 1934, when the old seat of Oxley was abolished, and is named for Sir Samuel Griffith, 9th Premier of Queensland and principal author of the Australian Constitution...

 and had to resign his Council seat. Caltabiano subsequently won the 1997, 2000 and 2004 elections.

Caltabiano served as Leader of the Opposition

Opposition (parliamentary)

Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. Note that this article uses the term government as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning the administration or the cabinet rather than the state...

 in Brisbane City Council from 2000 until 2002, when he was ousted during a factional deal involving a dispute over representation on the State Liberal Council. He was replaced by Margaret De Wit in 2002, who was in turn replaced by Graham Quirk

Graham Quirk

Graham Quirk is an Australian politician and was the councillor for the ward of MacGregor, and is currently the Lord Mayor of the City of Brisbane, succeding former Lord Mayor Campbell Newman....

 in 2003. He was responsible for writing many of the policies for candidate Campbell Newman

Campbell Newman

Campbell Kevin Thomas Newman is the leader of the Liberal National Party of Queensland. He was the 15th Lord Mayor of Brisbane from 2004 to 2011....

 and was directly responsible for writing the 2004-05 Budget as presented to Council (normally this is the Lord Mayor's duty, however Campbell Newman prefers to leave this responsibility to other Liberal councillors.).

He was also actively involved in party politics, serving as Queensland state president of the Liberal Party from 2003 to 2006.

In mid-2005, Labor Deputy Premier Terry Mackenroth

Terry Mackenroth

Terence Michael "Terry" Mackenroth is a former Queensland Australian Labor Party politician, serving almost 28 years with a notable parliamentary service history and a number of ministerial roles including Treasurer and Deputy Premier....

 resigned from politics, sparking a by-election

Chatsworth state by-election, 2005

A by-election was held for the Queensland Legislative Assembly district of Chatsworth on 20 August 2005. It was triggered by the resignation of sitting Labor member and Deputy Premier Terry Mackenroth....

 in the seat of Chatsworth

Electoral district of Chatsworth

The district of Chatsworth is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland. The electorate is centred on the south-eastern suburbs of Brisbane and stretches north to Tingalpa, west to Carina Heights, east to Tingalpa Creek and south to Bulimba...

, which included Caltabiano's council ward. Caltabiano was preselected as the Liberal candidate, and faced Labor candidate Chris Forrester, who he had defeated in the previous council election. The Labor government was struggling in the polls at the time, and Caltabiano won the seat with 52.35% of the vote.

Caltabiano was appointed to the shadow ministry upon his election, taking on the role of Shadow Minister for Transport. He was widely viewed as a rising star in the party, and had been tipped as a future Liberal leader. In August 2006, following the accession of Bruce Flegg

Bruce Flegg

Dr Bruce Flegg is the Queensland Shadow Ministerfor Education, Training and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Partnerships and the Member for Moggill having been elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2006 and 2009....

 to the Liberal leadership, Caltabiano was promoted to Shadow Treasurer.

Premier Peter Beattie

Peter Beattie

Peter Douglas Beattie , Australian politician, was the 36th Premier of the Australian state of Queensland for nine years and leader of the Australian Labor Party in that state for eleven and a half years...

 called an election for 9 September 2006 and Labor

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...

 preselected Chris Bombolas

Chris Bombolas

Chris Bombolas is a former Australian politician and television presenter. A former sports reporter for the Nine Network in Brisbane, he served as the Labor member for Chatsworth in the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 2006 to 2009.Bombolas was born in Newcastle, New South Wales...

, a high-profile sports presenter, as its candidate. The Liberals struggled with a series of early gaffes. After a close race, Bombolas succeeded in taking the seat by several hundred votes. Caltabiano is now involved with a political consultancy firm, Entree Vous. His wife Andrea was defeated as the Liberal National Party

Liberal National Party

The Liberal National Party is a political party in Queensland, Australia. It was formed on 26 July 2008 by the merger of the Queensland divisions of the Liberal and National parties.-History:...

candidate in Chatsworth for the 2009 state election.