{"id":370380,"date":"2025-12-25T06:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T06:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370380\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T06:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T06:02:08","slug":"former-labor-senator-nick-bolkus-minister-in-hawke-and-keating-governments-dies-aged-75-labor-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370380\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Labor senator Nick Bolkus, minister in Hawke and Keating governments, dies aged 75 | Labor party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Former federal minister Nick Bolkus, who played \u201ca significant part in shaping modern multicultural Australia\u201d, has died aged 75.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In a statement on social media on Thursday, the South Australia premier, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/peter-malinauskas\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Malinauskas<\/a>, announced the \u201clong-time Labor stalwart\u201d had \u201cpassed away peacefully this morning\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cNick was deeply respected across the political divide,\u201d said Malinauskas of Bolkus, who was elected as a senator for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/south-australia\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">South Australia<\/a> in 1980 and served as a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments before retiring in 2005.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cHe was a formidable intellect, a tireless advocate for the Labor Party, and a generous mentor to many. He was much loved by his family, colleagues and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In a statement posted to Instagram, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Labor \u201cmourns one of our great sons\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/email-newsletters?CMP=copyembed&amp;CMP=emailbutton\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><br \/>\u201cNick Bolkus came to public life as a young man, with a young man\u2019s idealism and sense of urgency, and he held true to those principles and that sense of purpose right through his long and distinguished career.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nick Bolkus in 2008. Photograph: AAP<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Bolkus, who Albanese said was the first Greek Australian to serve as a cabinet minister, was born in Adelaide on 17 July 1950.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Malinauskas said Bolkus had entered politics at a \u201cremarkably young age\u201d hand-delivering letters to everyone enrolled as Greek in the electorate during former premier Don Dunstan\u2019s campaign in Norwood in 1966.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He was one of South Australia\u2019s longest-serving members in the upper house, and was first appointed as a minister under former prime minister Bob Hawke in 1988.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">After the re-election of the Keating government in 1993, he was appointed minister for immigration and ethnic affairs and minister assisting the prime minister for multicultural affairs, positions he held until Labor\u2019s loss in the 1996 election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Malinauskas said Bolkus played \u201ca significant part in shaping modern multicultural Australia\u201d. He said Bolkus was \u201cparticularly proud\u201d of his role in allowing tens of thousands of Chinese citizens to remain in Australia after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He is survived by his wife, Mary, daughters Aria and Mikayla and son Nick. His daughter Aria is the Labor candidate for Colton at the 2026 South Australian election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former federal minister Nick Bolkus, who played \u201ca significant part in shaping modern multicultural Australia\u201d, has died aged&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-370380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}