Jim Molan

Major General Andrew James Molan, (born 11 April 1950) is an Australian politician and former major general in the Australian Army. He has been a Senator for New South Wales since November 2019, representing the Liberal Party. He was previously a Senator for New South Wales from December 2017 to June 2019.

During his military career, Molan was commanding officer of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, commander of the 1st Brigade, commander of the 1st Division and its Deployable Joint Force Headquarters, and commander of the Australian Defence College. In April 2004, he deployed for a year to Iraq to serve as Chief of Operations for the new Headquarters Multinational Force in Iraq. He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as the Legion of Merit by the U.S. government. He retired from the Australian Army in 2008, and later that year released his first book, ''Running the War in Iraq''.

Following his retirement from the Australian Army, Molan was appointed by the Abbott Government as a special envoy for Operation Sovereign Borders and was subsequently credited with being an architect of the coalition's ''Stop the Boats'' Australian border protection and asylum-seeker policies. In 2016, Molan unsuccessfully stood as a Liberal Party candidate for the Senate in New South Wales at the 2016 federal election. In December 2017, during the parliamentary eligibility crisis, the High Court declared him elected in place of Fiona Nash, who was ineligible to stand. He was not re-elected to the Senate in the 2019 federal election.

On 10 November 2019, Molan was selected by the NSW Liberal Party to fill the casual vacancy left by the resignation of Senator Arthur Sinodinos. He was appointed by a joint sitting of the NSW Parliament on 14 November 2019. At the 2022 election, he was re-elected to a six-year term expiring 30 June 2028.

Early life and education

Molan joined the Australian Army following completion of his schooling in Victoria. On graduating from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1971, he was allocated to the Royal Australian Infantry Corps. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Queensland. He is a graduate of the ADF School of Languages where he studied Indonesian. He maintains an interest in aviation and holds civil commercial licences and instrument ratings for fixed and rotary wing aircraft. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD) and is accredited as a Master Project Director (MPD).

Military career

Molan has had a long and active military career. Regimental postings include the 1st Battalion, Pacific Islands Regiment (Papua New Guinea) as a rifle platoon commander; 9th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment, as adjutant; rifle company second-in-command and rifle company commander in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment; Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment; Commander of the Army's mechanised 1st Brigade; and Commander of the 1st Division and its Deployable Joint Force Headquarters.

Molan was the Commander of the Australian Defence College, including the Australian Defence Force Academy; the Australian Command and Staff College; and the Australian Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies.

He served as the Army Attache in Jakarta as a colonel between 1992 and 1994 and for this service he was awarded the Indonesian decoration Bintang Dharma Yudha Nararya in 1995. Between 1998 and 1999, Molan was the Defence Attache in Jakarta as a brigadier and served in East Timor. On 25 March 2000 he was upgraded to an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service in Indonesia and in East Timor.

In April 2004, he deployed for a year to Iraq. He was despatched to serve as the Chief of Operations for the new Headquarters Multinational Force in Iraq, which was being planned. However, he initially instead spent some time trying to find a specific role within the headquarters structure, before being allocated responsibility for energy security. He was eventually made Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, and served during continuous and intense combat operations. For distinguished command and leadership in this period, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and the American Legion of Merit. He has been accused of responsibility for planning and carrying out multiple purported war crimes during the attack on Fallujah in late 200


After returning from Iraq he served as Defence Materiel Advocate of the Defence Materiel Organisation; and Adviser to the Vice Chief of the Defence Force on Joint Warfighting Lessons and Concepts. Major General Molan retired in July 2008.

Post-military

In August 2008 Molan released his first book, ''Running the War in Iraq''. The book concentrated on his experience as Chief of Operations in Iraq during 2004–05, and contained some criticism about Australia's capacity to engage in military conflict. In an August 2008 speech, Molan stated that: "Our military competence was far worse than even we thought before East Timor, and people may not realise that the military performance bar has been raised by the nature of current conflict, as illustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan." Writing in a February 2009 article, Molan called for a doubling of the Australian military presence in Afghanistan, from about 1,100 troops to 2,000.

Molan has been associated with the Liberal Party, helping to launch the Liberal opposition party's military-led border protection campaign in the lead up to the 2013 federal election in Brisbane on 25 July 2013. Molan has been an outspoken critic of Labor's management of defence matters. Stephen Smith, at the time the Minister for Defence, described Molan as 'partisan' and a "Liberal Party activist". In mid-2014 Molan was engaged as an advisor to Minister for Defence David Johnston, but resigned after three weeks. In a subsequent interview Molan implied that his resignation was due to dissatisfaction with Johnston.

Political career

At the 2016 federal election, Molan was a Liberal party senate candidate for New South Wales. However, in what former prime minister Tony Abbott called a "tragedy for our country and for our party", Molan failed to be elected.

In November 2017, the High Court of Australia ruled that Nationals Senator Fiona Nash was ineligible to be elected to the Senate due to her dual British Citizenship. On 22 December, the High Court declared Molan duly elected in place of Nash.

In February 2018 it was revealed that Molan shared, on his personal Facebook page in March 2017, anti-Muslim content from far-right political party Britain First. Molan refused to apologise for his sharing of this material. In response to the Facebook post, Greens MP Adam Bandt accused Molan of war crimes over his actions in Iraq. Bandt later apologised.

Molan is a member of the centre-right faction of the Liberal Party.

2019 federal election

In November 2018, Molan polled the third-highest number of votes in the Liberal Party's Senate preselection ballot for the 2019 federal election. Subsequently he was placed in the "unwinnable" fourth position on the Coalition's Senate ticket in New South Wales, below Hollie Hughes, Andrew Bragg, and the Nationals' candidate Perin Davey.

Molan was disappointed at being relegated to a low-priority position on the official Coalition NSW Senate ticket and spoke of being unable to defend the Liberal Party after the decision. Later, in May 2019 during the Australian Federal election campaign, a row broke out affecting both the Liberal Party and the National Party when Molan began an independent campaign, not supported by the Liberal Party, to be elected. Molan and his supporters began urging voters to ignore the official joint how-to-vote instructions issued by both the Liberal Party and the National Party. Instead, voters were encouraged to vote directly for Molan. This independent campaign was reported in the media as leading to marked divisions within the Liberal and National Parties. Disagreements grew to the extent that in the week before the election, senior officials of the National Party in NSW took the "extraordinary step" of advising voters to ignore the agreed Liberal-National how-to-vote card and vote directly for the preferred National Party candidates. Former deputy prime minister and parliamentary leader of the National Party, Barnaby Joyce, was reported as saying that the row threatened to undermine the coalition agreement which existed between the Liberal and National Parties at the federal level.

However, on 10 November 2019, Molan was selected by the NSW Liberal Party to fill the casual vacancy left by the resignation of Senator Arthur Sinodinos. He was appointed by a joint sitting of the NSW Parliament on 14 November 2019, and served the remainder of Sinodinos's six-year term which expires in June 2022. Molan was re-elected in 2022.

Climate change

On 3 February 2020, on the ABC program Q&A, Molan was asked about his declaration that his "mind is open" on whether humans were causing climate change. Asked "What is the evidence you are relying on?", Molan replied: "I'm not relying on evidence..." and was promptly laughed at by the live audience. Molan was challenged about being so open minded that "his brain may fall out" in response to the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season and climate change on the same episode of Q&A.

Cancer diagnosis and leave

On 5 April 2021, Molan announced that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and that he would be taking leave from the Senate to undergo further testing and treatment.

Published works

Molan has published his opinion on matters related to his expertise, and gives interviews and speeches to recount his experiences. The following is an incomplete list of his published works, interviews, speeches, opinion pieces and debates:

Books

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Articles and opinion pieces

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Speeches, interviews and debates

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Personal

Molan is married to Anne and they have three daughters and a son. One of their daughters, Erin Molan, was a presenter of the rugby league television program, '' The Footy Show''.

Honours and awards

References

External links

bio note
HarperCollins
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Molan, Jim
1950 births
Australian Army officers
Australian generals
Australian military personnel of the Iraq War
Living people
Military personnel from Melbourne
Officers of the Legion of Merit
Officers of the Order of Australia
People educated at Parade College
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross (Australia)
Royal Military College, Duntroon graduates
University of New South Wales alumni
University of Queensland alumni
Members of the Australian Senate for New South Wales
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Australia
Fellows of the Australian Institute of Company Directors