Sandy Macdonald
Australian politician
John Alexander Lindsay Macdonald, (born 10 May 1954) is a former Australian politician. He was member of the Australian Senate from 1993 to 1998, and again from 2000 to 2008, representing the state of New South Wales for the National Party.
Early life
Macdonald was born in Quirindi, New South Wales and was educated at Sydney University, where he graduated in law. He was a wool and beef farmer before entering politics.
Political career
Macdonald was the third Senate candidate for the Coalition at the 1998 federal election but narrowly lost his seat to Aden Ridgeway of the Australian Democrats. In May 2000, he regained a seat in the Senate following the resignation of National Party Senator David Brownhill. In June 2005, Macdonald was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade, and in January 2006, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence.
Macdonald was at the centre of an allegation of a breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Independent Member for New England, Tony Windsor, claimed through an interview with Tony Vermeer from The Sunday Telegraph that he had been approached, in May 2004, by a figure associated with the National Party with the offer of a diplomatic position in exchange for retiring from politics. Windsor made the allegations during the course of the 2004 Federal election campaign, some five months after the alleged incident occurred.
The public source identifies “Sandy Macdonald” as australian politician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sandy, Macdonald and Australian.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16186348. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1993, 1998 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sandy Macdonald” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.