By Ewen McRae
Kelvin Thomson has resigned from his position as advocacy strategist at Brimbank council to take up a position with the Sustainable Australia Party.
The former Labor state and federal politician had worked at the council since May, 2018, with his role designed to assist the council to drive its advocacy agenda on a range of issues affecting the community and work with local partners to develop campaigns.
He had previously held a similar role with the Alliance for Gambling Reform, following his retirement from politics in 2016.
Mr Thomson announced last week he had resigned from the Labor Party to join the Sustainable Australia Party and advise the party’s first elected member of Parliament, Clifford Hayes, who was elected to the Legislative Council for the Southern Metropolitan Region at the recent Victorian election.
Mr Thomson had been a member of the Labor Party since 1975, but said his present views were more aligned with his new party.
“It was an honour and privilege to represent the Australian Labor Party in two Parliaments and three levels of government for a total of 35 years,” he said in a statement. “To say the Labor Party has been my life is putting it mildly. So I have submitted my resignation from the Labor Party with a very heavy heart. For a decade now I have set out what I believe to be the myopia, greed, vanity and ecological illiteracy that drives Big Australia, Australia’s policy of rapid population growth.
“I have arrived at a point where there are irreconcilable differences between the course I believe Australia and the world needs to chart, and the course that the Australian Labor Party is charting.
“I retain a hope that in time the Labor Party will embrace views about Australia’s population that are more in keeping with the needs of this generation.”
