Leopold Thomas Broinowski (28 June 1871 – 26 September 1937) was an Australian political journalist.

Broinowski was born in Carlton

Carlton, Victoria

Carlton is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...

 to ornithologist and artist Gracius Joseph Broinowski

Gracius Joseph Broinowski

Gracius Joseph Broinowski was an Australian artist and ornithologist. He was born at the village of Walichnowy in central Poland, the son of a landowner and military officer. He studied languages, classics and art at Munich University...

 and Jane, née Smith. The family moved to Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 in 1880 where Leopold attended St Ignatius' College, Riverview

St Ignatius' College, Riverview

Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview is a Roman Catholic, day and boarding school for boys, located in Riverview, a small suburb situated on the Lane Cove River on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....

. He studied at the University of Sydney

University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...

 and graduated with an Bachelor of Art in 1897 after spending time as a teacher and helping on his father's Campbelltown

Campbelltown, New South Wales

Campbelltown is a suburb in south-western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Campbelltown is located 51 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the City of Campbelltown.- History :Campbelltown...

 farm. A strong proponent of Federation, he abandoned his law degree in 1898 to become Edmund Barton

Edmund Barton

Sir Edmund Barton, GCMG, KC , Australian politician and judge, was the first Prime Minister of Australia and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia....

's secretary during the Federation referenda. He subsequently became a journalist, writing for the Goulburn Evening Penny Post before moving to Hobart to work for the Mercury

The Mercury (Hobart)

The Mercury is a daily newspaper, published in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, by Davies Brothers Pty Ltd, part of News Limited and News Corporation...

, of which he became associate editor in 1904. In 1908 he married Annie Coverdale Sorell, with whom he had two children.

Broinowski contested the Australian House of Representatives

Australian House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....

 at the 1922 federal election

Australian federal election, 1922

Federal elections were held in Australia on 16 December 1922. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives, and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Nationalist Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes lost its majority...

, running unsuccessfully as one of three endorsed Nationalist

Nationalist Party of Australia

The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...

s in Denison

Division of Denison

The Division of Denison is anAustralian Electoral Division in Tasmania.The division was created in 1903 and is named for Sir William Denison, who was Lt-Governor of Van Diemens Land 1847-55...

. His early support for federation was tempered by a strong states' rights campaign; his slogan was "Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

 First". Following his defeat he became a returned servicemen's advocate; given the Certificate of Merit by the Returned Sailors' and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia, he edited Tasmania's War Record 1914–18. As a political reporter he had a sizeable impact on Tasmanian politics and was generally respected across the political spectrum despite his clear conservative leanings. He died from cerebrovascular disease in Hobart in 1937.