Malcolm Thomas "Mal" Brough is a former Australian politician and Liberal

Liberal Party of Australia

The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...

 member of 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....

 from March 1996 to November 2007, representing the Division of Longman

Division of Longman

The Division of Longman is an Australian Electoral Division in Queensland. The division was first proclaimed in 1994. The division is named after Irene Longman, the first female Member of the Queensland State Parliament and the third woman elected to a parliament in Australia.-Boundaries:Longman...

, Queensland. Brough was President of the Queensland Liberal Party from May to September 2008.

Early life

He was born in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Queensland, and was an Australian Army

Australian Army

The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...

 officer and businessman before entering politics. Former Family Feud

Family Feud

Family Feud is an American television game show created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Two families compete against each other in a contest to name the most popular responses to a survey question posed to 100 people...

 host Rob Brough

Rob Brough

Rob Brough is a news presenter and former compère on Australian television.He became a household name as the host of the Australian version of the TV show Family Feud...

 is his brother. Brough has Aboriginal ancestry.

Federal politics

Brough was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business 2000–01 and Minister for Employment
Services 2001–04. In July 2004 he was moved to the portfolios of Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Revenue. He was Minister for Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) and thus a member of the Howard Cabinet from January 2006 to November 2007.

Brough was the public face of the government's controversial Northern Territory Emergency Response, a package of measures designed to combat high rates of child neglect

Child neglect

Child neglect is defined as:# "the failure of a person responsible for a child’s care and upbringing to safeguard the child’s emotional and physical health and general well-being"...

 and abuse

Child abuse

Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...

 in the territory.

Brough lost his seat of Division of Longman

Division of Longman

The Division of Longman is an Australian Electoral Division in Queensland. The division was first proclaimed in 1994. The division is named after Irene Longman, the first female Member of the Queensland State Parliament and the third woman elected to a parliament in Australia.-Boundaries:Longman...

 in the 2007 election, following a 10.32% swing to the Labor Party

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 Jon Sullivan

Jon Sullivan

Jonathan Harold "Jon" Sullivan , an Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 2007 to 2010, representing the seat of Longman for the Australian Labor Party and previously, a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly from 1989 to 1998, representing the...

.

He was not a candidate at the 2010 federal election but has not ruled out a return to politics altogether.

State politics

Brough was elected as the President of the Queensland division of the Liberal Party in May 2008. He remained in that position after a vote in July 2008 to merge into the new Liberal National Party of Queensland, which he opposed, as the merger had not received final ratification from the federal Liberal Party. On 26 September 2008 he resigned from his post, saying “You try and do the right thing and, quite frankly, at this point it’s all over the shop and it’s no wonder voters get so disenchanted with the non-Labor side of politics.”