Michael Hatton


Michael John Hatton is a former Australian politician who served as the Australian Labor Party member of the House of Representatives from June 1996 to October 2007, representing the Division of Blaxland, New South Wales.

Background and career

He was educated at the University of New South Wales. He was a school teacher before entering politics. From 1985 to 1996, he was an electorate officer for his predecessor as MP for Blaxland, Paul Keating. He entered parliament at a by-election necessitated by Keating's resignation from parliament after he lost the 1996 election to John Howard.
In May 2007 he lost party preselection and retired at the 2007 federal election which had seen his party return to power. This meant that the entirety of his parliamentary career equated to the entirety of his party's time in Opposition.
Some of Hatton interests included technology and computers where he was a champion of introducing more IT into Australian schools and greater access to Internet; he worked on whitepapers which ultimately convinced Keating to implement the NBN. Hatton was the NBN's earliest advocate. Keating was the first person to call on National Broadband Network to be built on fibre optics; and equity and access to internet for disadvantaged.