Neville Bonner

Bonner was born on 28 March 1922 on Ukerebagh Island, a small island in the Tweed River of New South Wales close to the border with Queensland. He was the son of Julia Bell, an Indigenous Australian, and Henry Kenneth Bonner, an English immigrant. His maternal grandmother Ida Sandy was a member of the Ugarapul people of the Logan and Albert Rivers, while his maternal grandfather Roger Bell (or Jung Jung) was a fully initiated member of the Yagara people of the Brisbane River. According to Bonner, his grandfather was "sort of captured ... out of the tribe" as a young boy and given an English name.^[1]

Bonner's parents met and married in Murwillumbah, New South Wales. His father abandoned his mother when she was pregnant with him, leaving her destitute. She subsequently moved to the Aboriginal reserve on Ukerebagh Island, where she had another son. After about five years, the family moved near Lismore, New South Wales, to be closer to Bonner's grandparents, living on the banks of the Richmond River under a lantana bush. His mother subsequently had three children with Frank Randell, an Aboriginal man who was employed by the local police. One of his half-brothers died as a child and he "witnessed frequent acts of violence by Randell against his mother".^[1]

Bonner's mother died in July 1932, when he was ten years old, and his grandmother subsequently became his main caregiver. She moved the family to Beaudesert, Queensland, where in 1935 he completed his only year of formal education at Beaudesert State Rural School. His grandmother died in June 1935 and he moved back to New South Wales after finishing the school year.^[1] Bonner worked as a ring barker, cane cutter and stockman before settling on Palm Island, near Townsville, Queensland in 1946, where he rose to the position of Assistant Settlement Overseer.^[2]

In 1960 he lived in Ipswich, where he joined the board of directors of the One People of Australia League (OPAL),^[3] a moderate Indigenous rights organisation. He became its Queensland president in 1970. He joined the Liberal Party in 1967 and held local office in the party. Following the resignation of Senator Annabelle Rankin in 1971, Bonner was chosen to fill the casual vacancy and he became the first Indigenous Australian to sit in the Australian Parliament. He was elected in his own right in 1972, 1974, 1975, and 1980.

While in the Senate he served on a number of committees but was never a serious candidate for promotion to the ministry. He rebelled against the Liberal Party line on some issues. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to pressure from younger candidates, he was dropped from the Liberal Senate ticket at the 1983 election. He stood as an independent and was nearly successful. The Hawke government then appointed him to the board of directors of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1981 Bonner was the only government voice opposing a bill put forth that would allow drilling in the Great Barrier Reef. He regularly crossed the floor on bills, a characteristic that has endeared him to politicians today but is often considered the reason for his political career coming to an end.^[4]

Following Bonner's electoral defeat, incoming ALP prime minister Bob Hawke publicly promised him a government post.^[5] In June 1983 he was appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).^[6] He briefly acted as ABC chairman in April 1984,^[7] and in June 1986 was reappointed to a further five-year term on the board, concluding in 1991.^[8]

From 1992 to 1996 he was member of the Griffith University Council. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1993. In 1998 he was elected to the Constitutional Convention as a candidate of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.

In 1998 Bonner announced he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.^[9] He died at a hospice in Ipswich on 5 February 1999, aged 76. He was granted a state funeral, held at St Stephen's Church, and interred at Warrill Park Lawn Cemetery.^[1]

 

 

In 1979 Bonner was jointly named Australian of the Year,^[10] along with naturalist Harry Butler. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1984.^[11]

The head office of the Queensland Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability services in Brisbane, built in 1999, was named the Neville Bonner Building.^[12] Despite having won two architectural awards (the RAIA Beatrice Hutton Award for Commercial Building 1999, a national award,^[13] and the RAIA (Queensland) F.D.G Stanley Award & Regional Commendation 1999), it was demolished in 2017 to make way for the Queen's Wharf development.^[14][15] The Neville Bonner Bridge, a footbridge built in 2023, and opened in August 2024, is part of the new development.^[16]

The Neville Bonner Memorial Scholarship was established by the federal government in 2000, a scholarship for Indigenous Australians to study Honours in political science or related subjects at any recognised Australian university.^[17]

In 2002, the Neville Bonner Award for Indigenous Education was introduced as part of the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT), which were established by the federal government in 1997.^[18][19] The inaugural award was won jointly by Marcia Langton and Larissa Behrendt.^[20]

A multipurpose 47-bed hostel, managed by Aboriginal Hostels Limited, located in the Rockhampton suburb of Berserker, was redeveloped and reopened in July 2002 as the Neville Bonner Hostel.^[21][22]

The Queensland federal electorate of Bonner was created in 2004 and was named in his honour.^[23]

The suburb of Bonner in Canberra, created around 2008, bears his name.^[24]

Bonner married Mona Banfield in 1943, in a Catholic ceremony at Palm Island's mission.^[1] They had five sons and fostered three daughters, prior to Mona's death in 1969. Bonner remarried in 1972 to Heather Ryan (née Trotter), who had three adult children.^[25] His great-niece Joanna Lindgren was appointed to the Senate in 2015.^[26]

Bonner was taught to make boomerangs by his grandfather. In 1966, he established a boomerang manufacturing business named Bonnerang, with the assistance of his family. The boomerangs were handmade from the roots of black wattle trees, as Bonner refused to use synthetic materials. His company produced up to 450 boomerangs per week, but folded after a year due to a shortage of wood. After being elected to parliament, Bonner gave a boomerang demonstration in the gardens of Parliament House. In his maiden speech he called on the intellectual property of the boomerang to be reserved for Indigenous people, as non-Indigenous people were producing cheap synthetic properties. One of his boomerangs is held by the Museum of Australian Democracy.^[27]

• List of Indigenous Australian politicians

• Burger, Angela (1979). Neville Bonner: A Biography. Macmillan. ISBN 0333252365.
• Jacobs, Sean (28 August 2021). Neville Bonnr. Connor Court Publishing. ISBN 9781922449719.

• Listing of Neville Bonner's life in published media & books
• Classroom Resource
• Episode on Bonner's life and career on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National's Hindsight program