Malcolm Arthur Colston (5 April 1938 – 23 August 2003) was an Australian politician who served as a Senator for Queensland from 1975 to 1999.
He was a member of the Labor Party until 1996, when he resigned to sit as an independent following a dispute over his candidacy for Deputy President of the Senate.
Colston was a schoolteacher before entering politics, and held a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Queensland.
The expectation of Colston's victory was such that he was invited to attend the first meeting of the ALP Caucus after the election and was able to vote on the composition of the third Whitlam ministry.
The Constitution provides that a Senate casual vacancy is filled by a person chosen by the relevant state parliament.
Although not a constitutional requirement until 1977, it was long a convention for the state parliament to choose a person nominated by the departing Senator's political party.
However, the Premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, claimed that Colston was a "dangerous socialist" and refused to appoint him.
After the 1996 election, the Labor Party refused to nominate Colston to become Deputy President of the Senate, a position he had previously held from 1990 to 1993.
[5][6] Colston resigned from the Labor Party by fax message at 11:30 a.m., on 20 August, and he took his seat as an independent that afternoon.
He had appointed his wife, Dawn Colston, as executor and trustee of his will, but she died eleven months later, before she could dispose of her husband's will.
Notwithstanding the controversies that he generated after his defection from Labor, Colston requested that no condolence motion be moved in the Senate after his death.