Former Queensland senator and Nationals stalwart, Ron Boswell, dies aged 85

Former Queensland senator and National Party figure Ron Boswell, who claimed fending off a 2001 challenge from Pauline Hanson as his greatest political achievement, has died at age 85.

News of Boswell’s overnight passing, at his Brisbane home with family, was shared by party colleagues and political figures with their condolences on Tuesday morning.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley described Boswell as a great Australian who was a tireless advocate that understood the challenges of rural and regional Australia because he had lived them.

“That lived experience defined his politics and guided his work in the parliament,” Ley said in a statement.

“He stood up to, and stood in the way of, fringe politicians peddling fringe politics.”

Boswell served in the Senate from 1983 until retiring in 2014, where he led the party for 17 years. He was also Father of the Senate – a title for its current longest serving member – from 2008.

Speaking in Cloncurry, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Boswell was someone focused on the national interest who “took principled stances about people who would seek to divide the nation”.

“And for Ron Boswell’s family, for his many friends and particularly to people in what is now the LNP here in Queensland, my sincere condolences on behalf of the nation for all those who will be grieving this very sad loss,” Albanese said.

Former prime minister John Howard, in whose government Boswell held a role as parliamentary secretary to the minister for transport and regional services, praised him as “the genuine article”.

While the pair sometimes disagreed, Boswell never lost his affection and respect – with Howard also noting the Hanson battle as symbolising his commitment to an “open and tolerant National Party”.

In his 2014 valedictory speech, Boswell himself remembered the 2001 campaign against the One Nation leader as “the fight of my life”.

“I risked everything to stand up against her aggressive, narrow view of Australia,” Boswell said.

“Defeating Pauline Hanson and One Nation in 2001 has been my greatest political achievement.”

As recently as last month, Boswell wrote in a News Corp opinion piece that he hoped former Nationals colleague Barnaby Joyce “fails in his next political task” with One Nation.

“I have spent my entire political career fighting the far right,” he said, a reference to his outspoken opposition to other far-right groups such as the League of Rights.

“So to see my good friend and colleague fall to Pauline’s charm, like so many before him, is distressing.”

Joyce himself, writing for this masthead on Boswell’s retirement, described him as “the ultimate crossover politician that only survives in Queensland”.

“The hero of the religious conservative[s] that occupy Queensland like no other state, turning up by the hundreds to hear him talk about his battles for Christ,” Joyce wrote.

“Then Bozzie would talk to the fisherman like their future was his.”

Veteran political journalist and commentator Paul Bongiorno described Boswell in a social media post on Tuesday as “a person of great integrity, conviction and warmth”.

Boswell was, eventually, a reluctant supporter of the merger of the Queensland Liberal and National parties in 2008, which he was said to have viewed as a “lesser of two evils”.

Matt Canavan, a Nationals-aligned Coalition member in the senate, described Boswell on Tuesday as a “giant of a statesman who looked after the small”, but “always thought big”.

“He was never afraid to champion a big idea even when the odds were stacked against him. He was one of the first to highlight the folly of subsidising only renewable energy,” he said.

Boswell’s faith also drove his opposition to same-sex marriage, telling the Senate during debate on a bill in 2012 that “two mothers or two fathers can’t raise a child properly … it’s defying nature.”

Queensland senator James McGrath, an LNP colleague of Canavan who sits in the Liberal partyroom in Canberra, described Boswell as a “lion of not just the Senate but Queensland and the LNP”.

“Much will be written about Ron but in his own words, he was ‘not pretty, but he was pretty effective’,” McGrath said – referencing the title of Boswell’s 2023 memoir.

“Queensland and Australia are better places because of his service.”

His wife of more than five decades, Leita, died in 2021. The couple lost their son, Stephen, in 1999.

They are survived by daughter Cathy, and “the grandchildren he was so proud of”, Canavan said.

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