The Evolution of a Disgraced Politician: 'Mal' Colston 1938-2003

There is no better subject in Queensland than Malcolm (Mal) Arthur Colston. Possibly no one who has entered either federal or state politics in this country has departed from it as loathed and despised as this senator (as he was between 1975 and 1999). Only in the last few years of his life was Colston a highly visible figure in Australian politics. Between his defection from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in August 1996 and his retirement from the Senate in June 1999, he held the balance of power in the upper house, thereby significantly increasing his influence over the legislative agenda of the Liberal-National government as well as his public profile. Over the same period he endured one of the most vicious vendettas in Australian political history when, in early 1997, sections of the ALP and the media, determined to destroy what was left of his career, exposed his past 'rorting' of travel allowances.