Jeffrey Allan "Jeff" Knuth (born 9 March 1962) is a former Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n politician. Born in Ayr

Ayr, Queensland

Ayr is a town in Queensland, Australia near the delta of the Burdekin River, named after the Scottish town of Ayr by the settlers from the United Kingdom...

, Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, he is married to Janine and was a painter and decorator before entering politics. In 1998, he was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly

Queensland Legislative Assembly

The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting form of the Alternative Vote system...

 as a member of Pauline Hanson

Pauline Hanson

Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a political party with a populist and anti-multiculturalism platform...

's One Nation, representing the seat of Burdekin

Electoral district of Burdekin

Burdekin is an electoral district in the Queensland Legislative Assembly in the state of Queensland, Australia. Centred on the Ayr–Home Hill region, the electorate also includes some of Townsville's southern suburbs as well as the coal-mining town of Collinsville...

. He was party whip and spokesperson for Public Works and Housing until 23 February 1999, when he resigned from the party to sit as an independent

Independent (politician)

In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...

. On 5 August, he formed the Country Party Queensland as a splinter group from One Nation, but on 18 February 2000 joined the larger City Country Alliance

City Country Alliance

The City Country Alliance was a short lived Australian political party that briefly held six Queensland state seats.It was founded in late 1999 after the One Nation Party contingent in the Queensland Legislative Assembly split...

, led by Bill Feldman

Bill Feldman

William Patrick "Bill" Feldman is a former Australian politician. He was a police officer before entering politics, having attained the rank of sergeant in 1994. On 7 May 1978 he had married Gail, with whom he has two children, Dannielle and Luke...

. He was defeated by Labor

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

's Steve Rodgers

Steve Rodgers

Steven Gordon "Steve" Rodgers is a former Australian politician. He was a Labor member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 2001 to 2004, representing the seat of Burdekin....

 in 2001, and contested the seat in the 2004 state election as an independent with the support of federal independent MP Bob Katter

Bob Katter

Robert Carl "Bob" Katter is an Australian federal politician, a member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1993 for the Division of Kennedy, and the leader of Katter's Australian Party...

. He later became aligned with the New Country Party

New Country Party

The New Country Party is a minor political party in Australia. It emerged out of the internal divisions of the One Nation Party in Queensland and Western Australia in 2003 and was registered by the Australian Electoral Commission on 9 January 2004...

.

His brother, Shane Knuth

Shane Knuth

Shane Andrew Knuth is an Australian politician. He has represented the seats of Charters Towers and Dalrymple in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, for the National Party , the Liberal National Party and Katter's Australian Party .Knuth was born in the Queensland town of Tully...

, later won the seat of Charters Towers

Electoral district of Charters Towers

Charters Towers was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland. It has had three incarnations, most recently being created as part of a redistribution in 1991 and lasting until 2008....

 for the National Party

National Party of Australia

The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...

.
He later went on to defeat One Nation's last parliamentary representative for the seat of Dalrymple

Electoral district of Dalrymple

The district of Dalrymple is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland.-Geography:Based in inland northern Queensland, Dalrymple is a north–south elongated electorate, running from the Atherton Tableland west of Cairns at its northern end, down to areas...

.