Rex Connor - Federal Politics

Federal Politics

In 1963 Connor quit state politics and was elected to the Australian House of Representatives for the Wollongong-based seat of Cunningham at the 1963 election. In Canberra, Connor developed a reputation as an eccentric. A large, shabbily dressed man who always wore a hat long after hats had gone out of fashion, Connor seldom spoke in the House and never spoke to journalists. He kept his real age a secret (several obituarists assumed that he had actually been born no earlier than 1908). Sometimes he would reveal an ungovernable temper, and after an incident in which he ripped a clock off a wall in Parliament House and threw it across the room in a rage, he was unofficially known as "The Strangler". His earlier socialism had evolved into a fierce economic nationalism, directed mainly at foreign-owned banks and mining companies.