Andrew Brideson

Who is Andrew Brideson?

Andrew Ronald Brideson is an Australian politician. He was a Liberal member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 1992 until 2006, representing Waverley Province. A former teacher and trade unionist, he has been a relatively low-level backbencher for most of his career, spending only two years in an understaffed shadow ministry from 2002 until his demotion in 2004. He did not contest the 2006 state election.

Brideson was born in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton, and studied at Bentleigh and McKinnon High Schools. He studied teaching at Frankston Teachers College and the Hawthorn Institute of Education, and occupied teaching positions at various rural schools in the West Gippsland and Wimmera regions between 1964 and 1975. In 1976, he was promoted to the position of deputy principal, and worked in this position in a number of schools.

During his teaching career, Brideson had been an active trade unionist in both the Teachers Association of Australia and Victorian Affiliated Teachers Federation, and at the end of the 1983 school year, took up positions heading both organisations. In a rare move for a unionist, Brideson acted as an advisor to several shadow ministers in the conservative Liberal Party state opposition of the time. It was also during this time he became possibly the only union leader in history to lose a wrongful dismissal claim as an employer after he sacked most of his staff without just cause. He left his position with the national body in 1990 after seven years at the helm, but continued on with the Victorian organisation until his move into politics in 1992.