Peter Hall (politician)

Peter Hall (born May 27, 1952) is an Australian politician. He has been a National member of the Victorian Legislative Council since 1988, representing Gippsland Province. He is the current leader of the National Party in the Legislative Council, as well as their spokesperson for the portfolios of Education, Training, Resources, Environment and Energy Industries.

Hall was born and raised in Castlemaine, Victoria. He showed some promise as an Australian Rules Football player as a young person, being the Best and Fairest for the Castlemaine Football Club in 1969. While studying teaching at Monash University in Melbourne, Hall made his debut for the Carlton Football Club in what was then the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League. He went on to play 37 senior games between 1971 and 1974. However, he retired from top-grade football at the end of the 1974 season, moving to Traralgon in 1975 to take up a full-time secondary teaching position.

Over the next fourteen years, Hall continued to teach in Traralgon while also being the playing coach of his local football club. He twice won the league's Best and Fairest Award, and coached both Traralgon and Morwell to premierships. Both of these careers were to end, however, when Hall was elected to the safe National seat of Gippsland Province at the 1988 state election.

Hall was given little responsibility in his first term in office, but after being re-elected in 1996, he was made Deputy President of the Legislative Council and Chairman of the Ministerial Rural Health Advisory Group. When the Liberal-National coalition lost government in 1999, Hall became the Deputy Leader of the National Party in the Legislative Council and Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation, Youth Affairs and Racing.

However, this was to again change in 2000, when the now-opposition coalition fractured. This meant that the Victorian division of the National Party was now the only one anywhere in the country to be seperate from the Liberal Party. Hall subsequently lost his three shadow ministries, but instead became the party's spokesperson for education, tertiary education, resources and the environment. The following year, he was again promoted, and was made Leader of the National Party in the Legislative Council.

The 2002 election saw a major landslide victory for the Labor government at the expense of both the Liberal and National Parties. There was a swing to Labor in almost every seat in the state, with numerous MPs losing their seats. Hall, however, was the only exception in the Legislative Council, slightly improving his vote despite the party's poor statewide result. After the election, he maintained his position as leader in the Legislative Council, despite the sacking of his Liberal counterpart, Bill Forwood.