Joseph William Kirton (1861-1935) was an Australian politician, who after primary school was apprenticed to a trade, worked in the Victorian Post and Telegraph Department, with continued studies he became an Auctioneer and Commission Agent.

He served thee terms in the Victorian Parliament and became a Director and the Chief President of the Australian Natives' Association.

But his biographer comments that ‘as a minister ... he seemed to forget lifelong principles and by calling the rail strike of May 1903 a rebellion he so alienated ... his working-class support that he lost his seat’.

[3] Becoming a director in 1892 and Chief President of the ANA in 1895, Kirton worked to achieve a democratic form of federation for Australia, with universal suffrage and limitation of the powers of the Senate.

[4] In 1911 Kirton moved to Melbourne, where he set up an estate agency and became secretary of Victorian Master Baker's Association, working with that organisation until 1921.