Bernard Vincent Finnigan was born on 8 December 1972 and is an Australian former politician who served as a member of the South Australian Legislative Council from 2006 until 2015.
15 Facts About Bernard Finnigan
1.
2.
Bernard Finnigan was appointed in May 2006 as a member of the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party to the Legislative Council in a casual vacancy triggered by the death of Terry Roberts.
3.
Bernard Finnigan was the Acting Police Minister at the time of his arrest.
4.
One of twelve children, Bernard Finnigan was born in 1972 in Mount Gambier, South Australia and grew up in nearby Eight Mile Creek on the family's dairy farm.
5.
Bernard Finnigan attended Allendale East Area School and Tenison Woods College in Mount Gambier before attending the University of Adelaide.
6.
Bernard Finnigan began working for the South Australian branch of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association in 1995 as a union official, before becoming the same union's assistant secretary in 2000.
7.
On 2 May 2006, Bernard Finnigan was appointed to the South Australian Legislative Council as Labor's candidate to fill the remainder of the term left vacant by the death of former minister Terry Roberts.
8.
Bernard Finnigan described his own policy interests as including "economic development, industrial relations, federal-state relations, family issues and building social capital".
9.
Bernard Finnigan was third on Labor's upper house ticket at the 2010 election and was re-elected with an eight-year term, set to expire in 2018.
10.
Bernard Finnigan resigned as a minister and as a member of the South Australian Executive Council on 21 April 2011.
11.
The night before his party resignation, Bernard Finnigan was arrested and charged with four child pornography offences.
12.
Rann requested that Bernard Finnigan be suspended from the party while his case was before the courts, with the suspension endorsed by the party's state executive on 3 May 2011.
13.
On 29 June 2012, Bernard Finnigan was charged with 14 additional counts of obtaining access to child pornography, seven of them aggravated to be heard in the District Court of South Australia before a jury.
14.
On 24 September 2012, Bernard Finnigan was committed to stand trial on five aggravated counts of taking steps to obtain child pornography and one aggravated count of obtaining child pornography, at which point the statutory suppression on naming the accused within South Australia expired.
15.
On 10 November 2015, Bernard Finnigan was found not guilty of one count of attempting to access child pornography, however he was found guilty of one count of accessing child pornography.