Donald Alastair Cameron

Donald Alastair Cameron OBE (17 March 1900 – 5 January 1974) was an Australian politician and Minister for Health.

Cameron was born in Ipswich, Queensland, and was educated at Ipswich Grammar School and Sydney University, where he graduated in arts and medicine. From 1927 to 1933 he was a medical officer at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Coast Hospital in Sydney. In 1933, he married Rhoda Florence McLean and they then settled at Ipswich, where he practised until the Second World War, in which he served as a Colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps in the Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre and New Guinea. He was mentioned in dispatches and made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946.^[1]

After the war Cameron joined the newly formed Liberal Party of Australia, and at the 1949 election he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the new seat of Oxley, based on Ipswich. He was Minister for Health in the Menzies government from 1956 to 1961. He was also appointed Minister in charge of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in 1960 following Richard Casey's retirement. At the 1961 election he was unexpectedly defeated by the young Australian Labor Party candidate, Bill Hayden.^[1]

After his defeat, Cameron worked as Commonwealth medical officer in Sydney and was High Commissioner to New Zealand from 1962 to 1965. He was then a general practitioner in the Brisbane suburb of Nundah. He died in the Brisbane suburb of Chermside, survived by his wife, daughter and son.^[1]

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