John FitzPatrick (Australian federal politician)

For other people named John Fitzpatrick, see John Fitzpatrick (disambiguation).

John FitzPatrick (24 April 1915 – 28 July 1997) was an Australian politician.

John FitzPatrick
Member of the Australian Parliament for Darling
In office 25 October 1969 – 10 December 1977
Preceded by	Joe Clark
Succeeded by	Seat abolished
Member of the Australian Parliament for Riverina
In office 10 December 1977 – 19 September 1980
Preceded by	John Sullivan
Succeeded by	Noel Hicks
Personal details
Born	(1915-04-24)24 April 1915 Broken Hill, New South Wales
Died	28 July 1997(1997-07-28) (aged 82)
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Occupation	Boilermaker

FitzPatrick was born and lived all of his life in Broken Hill, New South Wales and was a boilermaker before running for Parliament. He was elected for the Australian Labor Party as the federal member for Darling in rural New South Wales from 1969 to 1977 and as the member for Riverina from 1977 to 1980.

FitzPatrick served his first four terms as the member for Darling, based on Broken Hill. It had been one of the few country seats where Labor consistently did well; indeed, it had been in Labor hands for all but a few months since Federation. As a measure of how safe this seat was, he retained it in 1975 with a majority of seven percent even amid Labor's collapse that year.

Ahead of the 1977 federal election, Darling was abolished, and FitzPatrick opted to follow most of his constituents into neighbouring Riverina. That seat had previously been a safe National Country seat, but the addition of the heavily pro-Labor territory from Darling gave Labor a notional majority. FitzPatrick challenged the National Country incumbent, John Sullivan, and won narrowly even as the Coalition was easily reelected. However, facing the prospect of a challenge from the popular mayor of Broken Hill City Council, Noel Hicks, FitzPatrick did not run for reelection in 1980.