Leslie John "Les" Yewdale (30 April 1928 – 1 January 1999) was an Australian politician. He was a Member of the

Queensland Legislative Assembly The Legislative Assembly of Queensland is the sole chamber of the unicameral Parliament of Queensland established under the Constitution of Queensland. Elections are held every four years and are done by full preferential voting. The Assembly ...

. Yewdale was born in

Rockhampton Rockhampton is a city in the Rockhampton Region of Central Queensland, Australia. The population of Rockhampton in June 2021 was 79,967, Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. making it the fourth-largest city in the state outside of the ...

to Arthur Edward Yewdale and Maude Anne, ''née'' Walsh. He attended state schools in

Berserker In the Old Norse written corpus, berserker were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word '' berserk'' (meaning "furiously violent or out of control"). Berserkers ...

and Rockhampton before graduating from Christian Brothers College. Working variously as a meatworker, station hand, tradesman's assistant, builder's labourer and waterside worker, he became secretary of the Rockhampton Trades and Labour Council in 1959, holding the position until 1972. In 1972 he was also elected to the

as the

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 labour ...

member for Rockhampton North, although he had to contend with the sitting Labor MP,

Merv Thackeray Mervyn Herbert (Merv) Thackeray (20 October 1925 – 7 June 2014) was an Australian politician. He was a Labor Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1957 until 1972, representing Keppel (1957–1960) and Rockhampton ...

, who ran as an independent. In 1975 he was promoted to the front bench as Opposition Spokesman on Industrial Development, Labour Relations and Consumer Affairs and Sport, a portfolio simplified to Labour Relations in 1977. From 1982 he held the portfolios of Manpower, Technology and Industrial Relations (1982), Police and Main Roads (1982–83), Police, Road Safety and State Emergency Services (1983) and Works and Housing (1984–86). He was also secretary of the Parliamentary Labor Party from 1977 to 1988. Yewdale retired from politics in 1989; he died in Rockhampton in 1999.

References

1928 births 1999 deaths Members of the Queensland Legislative Assembly Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Queensland 20th-century Australian politicians {{Australia-Labor-Queensland-MP-stub