Michael John Hatton (born 28 August 1951, Sydney) is a former Australian politician who served as the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...

member of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

from June 1996 to October 2007, representing the

Division of Blaxland The Division of Blaxland is an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales. Blaxland runs from the North Shore and Western railway line in the north to Marion Street and the Bankstown railway line in the south, between Wood ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

Background and career

He was educated at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

. He was a school teacher before entering politics. From 1985 to 1996, he was an electorate officer for his predecessor as MP for Blaxland,

Paul Keating Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is an Australian former politician and unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He previously serv ...

(

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

1991–1996). He entered parliament at a by-election necessitated by Keating's resignation from parliament after he lost the 1996 election to

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...

. In May 2007 he lost party preselection and retired at the

2007 federal election This electoral calendar 2007 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2007 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included, although they are not elections. By-elections are not ...

which had seen his party return to power. This meant that the entirety of his parliamentary career equated to the entirety of his party's time in Opposition. Some of Hatton interests included technology and computers where he was a champion of introducing more IT into Australian schools and greater access to Internet; he worked on whitepapers which ultimately convinced Keating to implement the NBN. Hatton was the NBN's earliest advocate. Keating was the first person to call on National Broadband Network to be built on fibre optics; and equity and access to internet for disadvantaged.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatton, Michael 1951 births Living people Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Labor Right politicians Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Blaxland Politicians from Sydney University of New South Wales alumni 21st-century Australian politicians 20th-century Australian politicians Australian schoolteachers