Niels Nielsen (Australian politician)

Niels Rasmus Wilson Nielsen (2 March 1869 – 1 July 1930) was a Danish-born Australian politician.

He was born in Copenhagen to Niel P. Nielsen and Susan Wilson. He arrived in Australia around 1874, becoming a carpenter and farmer near Young and a local officer of the Australian Workers' Union. Around 1888 he married Marie Booth in Yass; they would have two sons. In 1899 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the Labor member for Boorowa. He transferred to Yass in 1904. In 1910 he was appointed Secretary for Lands in the first state Labor government, but he was removed from the ministry in 1911 after his controversial attempt to prohibit the conversion of leasehold lands to freehold created extensive division in the Labor Party. Unable to regain ministerial office, he resigned his seat in 1913. He spent some time in the United States as a commercial agent of the government, and in 1916 as a conscriptionist left the Labor Party for the Nationalist Party. He was chairman of the Taronga Park Trust from 1927 until his death at Gladesville in 1930.^[1]

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