Patrick Conlon (politician)
Encyclopedia : P : PA : PAT : Patrick Conlon (politician)
Patrick Conlon (born 1959) is an Australian politician. Since 1997 he has represented Elder in the South Australian House of Assembly as a member of the Australian Labor Party. He is Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, and Minister for Energy.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the seven-year-old Conlon was brought to South Australia by his family in 1966. They lived initially in Elizabeth before settling in Port Adelaide. Conlon was educated at LeFevre Boys Technical High School.
His early jobs included being a roof tiler, storeperson, timberhand, deckhand, and signalperson. In 1983 he became a union organiser and five years later he took part-time Arts and Law classes at the University of Adelaide, which he funded through part-time work as an office cleaner, industrial officer, project officer and workers compensation employee advocate. He graduated with an Arts degree and with first class honours in Law. He won the Howard Zelling prize for Constitutional Law, the Stow Prize, and the David Murray Scholarship for his honours dissertation on employment law.
Conlon was first elected as the Member for the south-western Adelaide seat of Elder in 1997. He was last elected in March 2006 and his term runs until 2010. In addition to his responsibilities as Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, and Minister for Energy, Conlon is the Leader of Government Business in South Australia’s House of Assembly.
Until early 2005, Conlon was also Emergency Services Minister and took part in the government's response to the Black Tuesday bushfires on the Eyre Peninsula in January 2005.
In mid-2006, Conlon denied abusing fellow MP Nick Xenophon, stating that a different, unnamed MP was later seen apologising to Xenophon.[link]
Conlon and his wife Tania have a daughter Sadie born in December 2004. His hobbies include supporting Port Adelaide Magpies, fishing, fine wine, and cooking.
References
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.