Timothy Andrew Fischer AC FTSE (3 May 1946 – 22 August 2019) was an Australian politician and diplomat who served as leader of the National Party from 1990 to 1999.

[1][2] He was the fourth of five children born to Barbara Mary (née van Cooth) and Julius Ralph Fischer; he was predeceased by an older brother who died of meningitis as an infant.

[4] Fischer's father worked as a jackaroo, settling in Boree Creek, New South Wales, in 1936, where he ran a stock and station agency and later bought a small farm.

[5] His paternal grandfather was born in Kleve, Germany, and had his assets frozen due to anti-German sentiment during World War I.

[15][16] Fischer was an enthusiastic supporter of the "Fightback" package of economic and tax reforms proposed by the Liberal leader John Hewson in 1991.

But he was unsuccessful in persuading the majority of rural voters, particularly in Queensland, that the proposed changes, particularly the goods and services tax, were in their interests, and Labor under Paul Keating won the 1993 election.

The Liberals had won a majority in their own right in the 1996 election, leaving the Nationals in a much weaker position compared to previous Coalition governments.

In pushing to permanently extinguish native title rights of indigenous Australians following the Mabo and Wik decisions, Fischer attracted much criticism.

[21] In 2001, shortly before the expiry of his last parliamentary term, Fischer made public his support for an Australian republic in the future.

After his retirement, he returned to farming at Boree Creek, and became involved in charity work, assisting organisations such as the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Fred Hollows Foundation and Autism New South Wales.

[26] He served as chairman and a patron of the Crawford Fund, an initiative of the ATSE supporting international agricultural research, from 2001 to 2006.

[28] He also served as founding Patron of Australia for UNHCR (2001–2006),[29] an Australian charity that raises funds for the UN's refugee agency.

[30] On 21 July 2008, Fischer was nominated by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as the first resident Australian Ambassador to the Holy See.

[31] Fischer worked closely with the Vatican on all aspects of the canonisation of Australia's first Roman Catholic saint, Mary MacKillop.

[33] In August 2013, following the shooting death of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane in Oklahoma, Fischer called for a tourism boycott of the United States to protest the activities of the National Rifle Association of America and what he felt were overly lax American gun laws.

[35] Between 2008 and 2009, Fischer hosted three series of ABC Local Radio podcasts The Great Train Show, covering a wide range of railway topics from around the world and within Australia.