Victor Perton
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Victor Perton (born December 2, 1958) is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly since 1988, representing the electorate of Doncaster for the Liberal Party of Australia. He is the current Shadow Minister for Education, and one of the most visible members of the state opposition.
Perton was raised in Melbourne and is the son of refugees from Latvia and Lithuania, part of the large Baltic migration to Australia from refugee camps in western Europe after the Second World War. Perton attended Catholic school later studying studied economics and law at Monash University and Melbourne University.
He joined the Liberal Party in 1976 and served on the State Executive as State President of the Young Liberal Movement and in various state and local constituency offices over the next decade. He graduated from university in 1982, and began practicing as a barrister and solicitor, as well as being a part-owner of a retail business. Perton subsequently gained admission to practice law in five states and in 1987, gained a Diploma of Chinese Law in 1987 from Peking University in the People's Republic of China.
He remained active within the Liberal Party after graduating, serving on its state council and state policy assembly, and in 1988, stood as the Liberal candidate in the safe Liberal seat of Doncaster. He was easily elected and during the Kennett Government served as Chairman of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, the Law Reform Committee and the Data Protection Advisory Committee.
During the Kennett Government, there was media criticism that the Government was reversing some of the transparency provisions introduced over the previous decades including Freedom of Information and the Audit Act. Within the Government, young MPs like Steve Elder, Robert Doyle and Perton were seen as "small-l liberal" voices against controversial changes to the Auditor General's Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
After more than a decade, Perton finally received a break in 1999, when the surprise defeat of Jeff Kennett's Liberal government brought leadership change to the State Liberal Party. New Opposition Leader Denis Napthine appointed Perton as his Shadow Minister for Conservation and Environment and Multimedia, later shifting him from the latter to technology and innovation. Perton performed well in these positions, and in August 2002, when Robert Doyle (Napthine's successor as leader) embarked on a major reshuffle in a last-ditch bid to boost the party's flagging fortunes before the state election due late that year, he was promoted to Shadow Attorney-General while also holding the positions of Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs, Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Shadow Minister for Technology and Innovation.
Doyle's attempt to prevent a landslide defeat failed, and the party suffered the worst loss in its history, with several Shadow Ministers losing their seats, and Perton coming very close to losing his own. In the aftermath of the defeat, Perton was promoted to Shadow Minister of Education. He regularly appears in the media with vocal criticism of the government, and remains among the opposition's most high-profile members.
Within the spectrum of Liberal Party thought, Perton is regarded as a "small-l liberal" [1][2], a position more common in the Victorian Liberal Party than the more aggressively right-wing New South Wales branch.
In February 2006, Perton announced that he would not contest the next election and relinquished his shadow ministry[1]. Mary Wooldridge has been selected as the Liberal Candidate for Doncaster at the next State election.
Perton's wife Jane is a businesswoman. They have a son, Ted, born in 2005[3].
[edit] References
- ^ Liberals' Top Brass Brace For Party Purge, Ewin Hannan And Gabrielle Costa, The Age, 21 October 1999
- ^ "Libs to cross floor in (Religious Vilification) vote", Mathew Murphy, The Age, 4 May 2006
- ^ Perton quits, leaving Doyle in big pre-poll pickle, Paul Austin and Farrah Tomazin, The Age, 22 February 2006
