21 Facts About Kelvin Thomson

Kelvin John Thomson was born on 1 May 1955 and is a former Australian politician.

Kelvin Thomson served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives for the Australian Labor Party, representing the Division of Wills in Victoria, from March 1996 until May 2016.

Kelvin Thomson attended the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws.

Kelvin Thomson served as a councillor on the Coburg City Council from 1981 to 1988, and was deputy mayor from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1987 to 1988.

Kelvin Thomson was married to Victorian Labor MP Marsha Thomson until their separation in 2003; the couple have two children.

In October 1988, Kelvin Thomson was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the member for Pascoe Vale.

Kelvin Thomson served on the Opposition Shadow Ministry from 1992 to 1994, and in 1994 he was the Manager of Opposition Business.

On 9 March 2007, Kevin Rudd informed the media that his office had received an anonymous tip-off that, in 2000, Kelvin Thomson had provided Melbourne gangland figure Tony Mokbel with a personal reference.

In September 2009, after the release of a report forecasting that Australia's population would reach 35 million by 2049, Kelvin Thomson reiterated his call to reduce immigration levels.

Kelvin Thomson has since been an advocate for sustainable population levels in Australia.

Kelvin Thomson describes himself as a keen environmentalist and naturalist; as an MP, he has been strongly anti-nuclear, supportive of sustainable population policies, and in favour of action on climate change.

Kelvin Thomson argued that these policies were distorted by a pro-growth ideology that conflicted with the evidence, and by a failure to understand the infrastructure costs associated with rapid population growth.

Since 2008, Kelvin Thomson has emerged as a political theorist whose speeches and articles question some of the Labor Party's current directions and call for reforms.

Kelvin Thomson's analysis begins by noting the exceptional speed of Australia's population growth since 2000.

Kelvin Thomson cites demographer Graeme Hugo, who has described it as more than three times the average annual increase observed in industrialised countries.

Kelvin Thomson believes this largely explains why Anna Bligh's seemingly competent Queensland state government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government in Queensland history, being forced to alienate voters by selling off public assets during an economic boom while still failing to meet the population's infrastructure demands.

Kelvin Thomson had previously generalised this analysis in his August 2011 paper The Witches' Hats Theory of Government: How Increasing Population is Making the Task of Government Harder.

Kelvin Thomson assembled evidence indicating an inverse statistical relationship between population growth and the longevity of governments worldwide.

On 10 November 2015, Kelvin Thomson announced that he would retire from politics at the 2016 federal election.

Kelvin Thomson held the seat of Wills from 1996 until 2016 and was succeeded by Peter Khalil.

In January 2019, Kelvin Thomson joined Sustainable Australia as an advisor to MLC Clifford Hayes.