Michael Darby
Michael John Darby is an Australian who has run for political office for the Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Party. He is an active business man, having had business ventures in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Darby is the son of long-serving state Liberal MP Douglas Darby and attended Newington College. A former army officer and interpreter, he became active in politics in the 1970s. His first run for office was as the Liberal candidate for the safe Labor seat of Werriwa in the 1974 federal election, running against then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. He later contested the 1988 Oxley by-election as an independent, and also ran as an independent in Dickson in 1993. He subsequently returned to the Liberal Party and ran in the fifth position on the Coalition Senate ticket for New South Wales in 2004. In 2009–2010 he was campaign director for the Christian Democratic Party.
