[1] Nixon is the earliest elected Country MP still alive,[2] and along with Ian Sinclair he is one of the last two surviving ministers who served under Holt, McEwen, Gorton and McMahon, as well as the First Fraser Ministry.

At the age of 18 he sustained a severe injury to his left hip while playing Australian rules football, requiring him to spend eight months in hospital.

He had initially not been a candidate for preselection, agreeing to stand only when the presumed nominee suffered a fatal heart attack three days before nominations closed.

[citation needed] During the Fraser government, Nixon was a significant figure in the renamed National Country Party (NCP), along with Anthony and Sinclair.

Nicknamed the "mulga mafia", the trio were "an assertive and sometimes combative presence in the House, and a significant influence on the government's policy agenda".

[12] On the floor of parliament, Nixon was known for trading insults with opposition members and particularly his verbal stoushes with Fred Daly.

In 1994, Hugh Lamberton wrote in The Canberra Times that Nixon was "one of the few long-serving politicians to have established a post-parliamentary life not overburdened with a nostalgic dependence on past achievement".

Freeman City of Jakarta, Athens.Chief Commissioner East Gippsland Shire 95–97[citation needed] Nixon delivered the eulogy at Malcolm Fraser's state funeral in 2015.

[15] In the 1990s, Nixon suffered severe injuries in a quad bike accident while spraying blackberries on his farm, including twenty fractures to his ribs, a broken sternum and a partially collapsed lung.