John Norman Button (30 June 1933 – 8 April 2008) was an Australian politician, who served as a senior minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. He was notable for The Button Car Plan, which involved modernising Australia's car industry by reducing tariffs and government protection..
Button was born in Ballarat, and was educated at the Geelong College and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated in arts and law. He became a promi...
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John Norman Button (30 June 1933 – 8 April 2008) was an Australian politician, who served as a senior minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. He was notable for The Button Car Plan, which involved modernising Australia's car industry by reducing tariffs and government protection..
Button was born in Ballarat, and was educated at the Geelong College and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated in arts and law. He became a prominent barrister and solicitor in Melbourne, and was active in the Australian Labor Party from the late 1950s. In the 1960s he joined a group of other middle-class Labor activists, such as John Cain, Barry Jones, Richard McGarvie, Frank Costigan and Michael Duffy, known as "the Participants," whose objective was to end Left-wing control of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party.
In 1970, the Participants formed an alliance with the federal Labor leader Gough Whitlam and the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Bob Hawke, to...
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