Peter Baldwin

Who is Peter Baldwin?

Peter Jeremy Baldwin is a former Australian politician. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1983 to 1998.

Baldwin was born in Aldershot, Hampshire. His family moved to Australia in 1958. He attended Normanhurst Boys' High School in Sydney, later receiving a BEE from the University of Sydney, and a BA from Macquarie University.

Baldwin was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1975 to 1982. In the 1970s he was prominent as a left-wing activist in the Australian Labor Party, seeking to break the grip over the corrupt right-wing machine that controlled many Labor subdivisions in and near central Sydney. As part of his campaign he uncovered substantial and illegal doctoring of the party's account books in the Enmore branch of the ALP.

On 16 July 1980, he was brutally assaulted at his home in the nearby Sydney suburb of Marrickville. Pictures of his battered face dominated the front pages of newspapers around the nation, and led to increased pressure for reform of the party. No one was ever charged with the assault. Subsequently it was alleged that the bashing was undertaken by underworld figure Tom Domican acting on suggestions from the Labor state secretary at the time, Graham Richardson. In March 2007 Richardson won a settlement against Fairfax of A$50,000 for defamation on the basis of this report.