Peter Jeremy Baldwin (born 12 April 1951) is a former Australian politician. He was an

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

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 o ...

from 1983 to 1998. Baldwin was born in

Aldershot Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alder ...

, England. His family moved to Australia in 1958. He attended Normanhurst Boys' High School in Sydney, and later received a

Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (B.E.E. or BEE) is an undergraduate academic degree offered to a student who completes three to five years of study in electrical engineering at a university or college. Many institutes offer Bachelor of Science ...

from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

and a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

from Macquarie University. Baldwin was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1975 to 1982. In the 1970s he was prominent as a left-wing activist in the Australian Labor Party (ALP), in which position he sought to break the grip over the corrupt right-wing machine that controlled many Labor subdivisions in and near central Sydney. In the course of his campaign, he uncovered substantial and illegal doctoring of the party's account books in the Enmore branch of the ALP. On 16 July 1980, he was brutally assaulted at his home in the nearby Sydney suburb of

Marrickville Marrickville is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Marrickville is located south-west of the Sydney central business district and is the largest suburb in the Inner West Council local gove ...

. Pictures of his battered face dominated the front pages of newspapers around the nation, and led to increased pressure for reform of the party. No one was ever charged with the assault. Subsequently, it was alleged that the bashing was undertaken by underworld figure Tom Domican acting on suggestions from the Labor state secretary at the time,

Graham Richardson Graham Frederick Richardson (born 27 September 1949) is an Australian former Labor Party politician who was a Senator for New South Wales from 1983 to 1994 and served as a Cabinet Minister in both the Hawke and Keating Governments. He is c ...

. In March 2007 Richardson won a settlement against Fairfax of A$50,000 for defamation on the basis of this report. After leaving state politics, Baldwin was selected for the federal

Division of Sydney The Division of Sydney is an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales. History The division draws its name from Sydney, the most populous city in Australia, which itself was named after former British Home Secretary Tho ...

following the deselection of the previous right-aligned MP, Les McMahon. He ran on a platform similar to that advocated by

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, ...

in the British Labour Party, arguing for a revival of Labor's commitment to state ownership and for the implementation of

industrial democracy Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the decisi ...

. He held the seat from 1983 to 1998. He served as Minister for Employment and Education Services in April 1990, Minister for Higher Education and Employment Services from May 1990 to March 1993, and Minister for Social Security from March 1993 to the defeat of the Keating government in March 1996.

Later career

After leaving politics, Baldwin developed and co-founded Debategraph in March 2008, a web-based collaborative argument visualisation tool for mapping complex public policy debates which is used by the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the

Amanpour ''Amanpour'' (stylized as ''Amanpour.'') is a global affairs interview television program hosted by British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour, airing weeknights 6pm GMT/ 1pm ET & 7PM CET on CNN International. The program is also aired on ...

series on

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

. He chairs the Blackheath Philosophy Forum.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baldwin, Peter 1951 births Living people Members of the Australian House of Representatives Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Sydney Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia Australian socialists Labor Left politicians Members of the New South Wales Legislative Council British emigrants to Australia 20th-century Australian politicians Government ministers of Australia