Parliamentary Career
Hunter was elected to the South Australian Legislative Council at the 2006 state election, in fourth place on the ALP ticket.
He used his maiden speech to outline his commitment to social justice issues and education as a force for progressive change, and attacked the push for the teaching of Intelligent Design as “fundamentalist dogma dressed up as science”. He also reflected on his political life in the Australian Labor Party, recalling his step-father’s advice that “Labor stood for the working people and the Liberals stood for the rich”, and saying, “in all my years since then I have not seen anything to refute his approach to politics”.
Hunter served as chair of the Social Development Committee's inquiry into Bogus, Unregistered and Deregistered Health Practitioners. The Committee produced a report recommending substantial regulation of currently unregistered health practitioners, a public awareness campaign, and strict rules on the display of legitimate health qualifications.
In September 2010 Hunter gave a speech in parliament criticising the practice of homeopathy for failing to meet the standards of peer reviewed scientific research, and called for Nicola Roxon, the Federal Minister for Health, to immediately review all taxpayer funding of homeopathy.
Read more about this topic: Ian Hunter (politician)
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“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)