Albert William James (22 September 1914 – 30 September 2006) was an Australian politician. He was born in

Collie, Western Australia Collie is a town in the South West region of Western Australia, south of the state capital, Perth, and inland from the regional city and port of Bunbury. It is near the junction of the Collie and Harris Rivers, in the middle of dense jarrah ...

, the son of

Rowley James Rowland "Rowley" James (14 June 1885 – 4 July 1962) was an Australian politician and coalminer. He was a member of the Australian House of Representatives, House of Representatives from 1928 to 1958, representing the New South Wales seat ...

, a future

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

member for

Hunter Hunting is the human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to harvest food (i.e. meat) and useful animal products (fur/hide (skin), hide, ...

in the

Australian House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the upper house being the Senate. Its composition and powers are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. The term of members of the ...

. Albert was educated at state schools in

Kurri Kurri, New South Wales Kurri Kurri is a small town in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, in the Cessnock LGA. At the , its population was 6,044. Kurri Kurri is the largest town in a group of towns and hamlets, including Stanford Merthyr, Pelaw Main, ...

. He was a policeman from 1940 to 1960, when he contested the

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

for his father's old seat of Hunter that followed

H. V. Evatt Herbert Vere Evatt, (30 April 1894 – 2 November 1965) was an Australian politician and judge. He served as a judge of the High Court of Australia from 1930 to 1940, Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs from 1941 to 1949, and l ...

's resignation. He held Hunter until his retirement in 1980. James died in 2006.

Links with the KGB

In 2014 newly released

Russian intelligence The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation ( rus, Служба внешней разведки Российской Федерации, r=Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii , p=ˈsluʐbə ˈvnʲɛʂnʲɪj rɐˈzvʲɛ ...

archives revealed that James had been in regular contact with the Soviet embassy in Canberra in the early 1970s, although it was unclear what information he had passed on.

ASIO ''Asio'' is a genus of typical owls, or true owls, in the family Strigidae. This group has representatives over most of the planet, and the short-eared owl is one of the most widespread of all bird species, breeding in Europe, Asia, North and S ...

files have confirmed the KGB connection.

References

Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Hunter Members of the Australian House of Representatives 1914 births 2006 deaths People from Collie, Western Australia People from Kurri Kurri 20th-century Australian politicians {{Australia-Labor-representative-stub