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 fo ...

, the son of Rowley James, a future Labor 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. Albert was educated at state schools in Kurri Kurri, New South Wales. He was a policeman from 1940 to 1960, when he contested the by-election 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 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