Gordon McIntosh
Gordon Douglas McIntosh (born May 29, 1925 in Glasgow , United Kingdom , † March 10, 2019 in Perth , Australia ) was an Australian politician ( ALP ).
Career
Gordon McIntosh's mother was Dorothy Robson (nee Douglas) and his father was Gordon McIntosh, a ship heater and swimming master .
McIntosh attended Drumoyne Primary School and Govan High School. From 1940 he trained as a locksmith and began to work in a shipyard in Glasgow. From 1946 to 1948 he was a mechanic in the Royal Air Force and from 1948 to 1949 in a lamp company. After all, he was in a foundry as a locksmith and maintenance engineer.
On March 31, 1950, McIntosh married Elizabeth Mary Graham, with whom he had two sons. In the same year the couple emigrated to Australia and settled in Perth. For the next 22 years he worked at the Perth Mint. During this time he was transferred to the Singapore Mint, founded in 1968, for a while .
McIntosh had been a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) since 1941 and a union official in its subdivision in Western Australia since the early 1950s . From 1968 to 1972 McIntosh served as president of the union for the state .
Since 1952 McIntosh was active in the ALP in Western Australia. From 1954 to 1956 he was secretary of the ALP association Como-Mill Point, in 1957 he reactivated the previously inactive ALP association Collier-Manning and was its secretary until 1959. From 1968 to 1972 McIntosh was party chairman in Western Australia. In May 1974 he was elected to the Australian Senate at number 3 of the ALP for Western Australia . In 1975, 1980 and 1983 he was able to return to the Senate. During this time he was assigned to the left wing of the ALP.
On June 5, 1987, McIntosh's last term in the Senate ended. The simultaneous dissolution of both houses of the Australian Parliament had shortened them. At this point, McIntosh had exceeded the age limit of the West Australian ALP to run again, so that he could no longer run.
Political positions and activities
During his time in the Senate, McIntosh dealt primarily with industrial issues, the dangers of nuclear energy, and foreign and security issues. For most of his time in the Senate, he was a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign and Security Policy. From 1983 to 1987 he was its chairman. McIntosh previously served as the temporary chairman of various other committees since 1980. The caucus elected him deputy opposition leader (1976–1980) and deputy parliamentary group leader during the reign (1983–1987). He was a member of the Australian Institute for International Affairs and from September to December 1983 Parliamentary Adviser to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York .
McIntosh was vehemently opposed to the legislation introduced by the Malcolm Fraser administration , which has been described as the "government's war on the union movement." McIntosh said the government has no understanding of what strikes are, how labor relations work, they have no understanding of workers' working conditions. McIntosh referred to his “36 years in the shop” experience. He called for the establishment of a national health and safety office to systematically compile statistics on accidents at work and occupational diseases. Union officials should have the right to conduct workplace inspections. Unions were essential to him. He also called for the 35-hour week . McIntosh called the Fraser government's laws that withheld benefits from families of workers involved in strikes a "foot on the ladder of fascism ."
In 1979 McIntosh criticized France's nuclear weapons tests on the Mururo Atoll . He felt that Australia should play a bigger role in overseeing the tests. In April 1982, McIntosh was on board a protest ship that was confiscated by the French Navy when it entered the Mururoa exclusion zone. In May he played a leading role in protests against an American nuclear-powered ship visiting Brisbane . In 1986, McIntosh made a question to the Standing Committee on Foreign and Security Policy to examine the ability of federal and state agencies to manage radiation leaks during visits to nuclear powered or armed ships. McIntosh was also concerned about the "persistent problem of nuclear waste management." Australia, as a uranium exporter, has a "moral obligation" to advocate for "the elimination of nuclear threats - whether waste or weapons."
In December 1982, McIntosh and seven other committee members published a report in which they - against the majority - spoke out against the ANZUS agreement . Australia would be unacceptably restricted by the agreement, for example when it was signed to support the United States during the Vietnam War . Despite American military bases there are “no guarantees in the ANZUS agreement” that the USA would help Australia in the event of an attack. Australia would be better off if it were able to develop its defense strategies more independently.
McIntosh was considered an indispensable advocate for the right of self-determination in East Timor, which was then occupied by Indonesia . McIntosh first visited the country as part of a delegation in March 1975 when the Portuguese colony was being prepared for independence . In December, East Timor was occupied by Indonesia , nine days after its declaration of independence . In 1976 McIntosh was a member of a parliamentary delegation to visit Indonesia. In the Senate, he later reported on a meeting with Indonesia's Defense Minister Maraden Panggabean , which McIntosh described as very open. In 1978, the Fraser government was the only country in the world to de facto recognize Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor, while McIntosh continued to uphold the East Timorese right to self-determination. He raised the issue several times in front of the Senate, in particular on reports on acts of violence, military cooperation between Australia and Indonesia and the treatment of East Timorese resistance members of FRETILIN by the Indonesian authorities. In 1982 McIntosh turned to the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization. In his letter, he rejected Gough Whitlam's views on East Timor, stressing that the Australian Prime Minister had not expressed the ALP's views at the time of the Indonesian invasion . McIntosh's letter was accompanied by a petition, which all but two Labor MEPs in the Australian Parliament had signed, demanding self-determination for East Timor. The petition was instrumental in ensuring that East Timor remained on the list of territories with open decolonization processes of the United Nations' Special Committee on Decolonization. After Labour's victory in the federal elections in March 1983, Bob Hawke's government accepted the position of its predecessors and declared the integration of East Timor into Indonesia to be irreversible. McIntosh stuck to his point of view and became "a thorn in the flesh of subsequent Australian governments" on that point.
McIntosh was again a member of a parliamentary delegation in July 1983 that visited Indonesia and, this time, East Timor. He then wrote a report that opposed the official report of the delegation headed by ALP politician Bill Morrison . The subsequent conflict was fought in public. In the Senate on September 6, McIntosh stated that the official report had "a clear tendency to reduce the importance of fundamentally important aspects of the Timor problem" and was "not a credible representation of the views of this Parliament". As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, McIntosh presented a report on September 8th describing human rights violations and the living conditions of the East Timorese people. The Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor were branded as an “illegal act” and the international recognition of East Timor’s self-determination was called for. The three opposition senators who occupied half of the committee rejected the report. When Australia and Indonesia discussed their maritime border and the closure of the Timor Gap in March 1986 , McIntosh denied the negotiations their legitimacy. In the Senate he spoke of the "people in Timor who were deprived of their rights."
In 1975 McIntosh supported the Racial Discrimination Bill to protect minorities. In 1976 he complained about the people who lived under the "truly feudal system" on the Cocos Islands . McIntosh morally questioned the suspension of Australian aid to Vietnam , which ended in 1978 after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia , and the delay in humanitarian aid to Cambodia when a famine was reported there. In the early 1980s he campaigned for refugees from Irian Jaya who were living in camps in Papua New Guinea , and in 1983 brought up "the appalling lack of basic human rights in Chile " under General Pinochet in the Senate.
After the end of his time as a professional politician, McIntosh continued to support East Timor, which was liberated by the Indonesians in 1999 and finally given independence in 2002. In 1988 McIntosh sent a ten-page letter to its military leader Xanana Gusmão via Australian channels of the East Timorese Resistance , in which McIntosh gave a detailed account of the history of East Timor's struggle for independence and criticized the Australian government at the time, whose motivation was to “protect Australia's economic interests to the detriment of principles who are worthy of a democratic country ”. According to the letter, everything indicates that Australian policy was determined by the Indonesian offer to jointly exploit the raw materials in the Timor Gap. Gusmão published the letter in February 2016. In March, McIntosh visited East Timor one last time to attend Veterans Day.
Others
When McIntosh was awarded the Ordem de Timor-Leste , East Timor's highest order, in December 2014 , his award document recognized him as the “Conscience of the Federal Parliament in relation to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the oppression of the Timorese people”. As early as the 1980s, the FALINTIL fighters gave him the battle name “Ulun tos” (literally “peasant's head”) in memory of his stubbornness in the dispute over the 1983 delegation report.
His personal archive with documents on East Timor is located in Perth in the Clearing House for Archival Records on Timor (CHART).
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s John Hawkins: McIntosh, Gordon Douglas (1925–2019). In: The Biographical Dictionary of Australian Senate. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Gordon McIntosh Obituary. In: WestAnnouncements.com.au . March 13, 2019, accessed March 13, 2019 .
- ^ A b c Governo expressa condolências pela morte de Gordon McIntosh. Government of East Timor , March 13, 2019, accessed March 13, 2019 (Portuguese).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | McIntosh, Gordon |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | McIntosh, Gordon Douglas (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian politician (ALP) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 29, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 10, 2019 |
| Place of death | Perth , Australia |