Former Queensland minister Rod Welford dies
Former Queensland MP Rod Welford, who served in the state parliament during the Goss, Beattie and Bligh Labor governments from 1989 to 2009, has died aged 66.
Former Queensland minister Rod Welford, who served from 1989-2009, passed away on Saturday.
Labor luminaries including current state leader and former premier Steven Miles and Senator Murray Watt paid tribute to the former minister on social media on Saturday.
“Rod was a legend in everything he did – as a terrific Labor MP and minister, but as a Queenslander and a mate too,” Miles wrote on Facebook.
“He was a change agent, never satisfied unless he was working on reform.
“Rod had a lifelong passion for protecting our natural heritage, culminating in the creation of the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency under his watch.”
Federal Environment Minister Watt, himself a former state MP who succeeded Welford in the Brisbane seat of Everton, spoke of Welford’s commitment to environmental conservation throughout his career in and out of politics.
“Rod lived his passion for social justice and protecting our natural environment every day – before, during and after his long and successful parliamentary and ministerial service,” Watt wrote.
“His working life delivered lasting reforms that he and every Labor supporter were rightly proud of. He continued making a difference after politics, especially on energy efficiency and other environmental goals.”
Welford was first elected in the seat of Stafford in 1989 before switching to Everton at the 1992 election following the former seat’s temporary abolition in a redistribution.
He held several portfolios, including attorney-general, minster for justice, environment and natural resources during the governments of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh from 1998 until his retirement from politics in 2009.
More recently, he joined numerous public figures in the campaign for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s release from prison, which eventually happened in June 2024.
“The ongoing incarceration of Julian Assange is cruel and degrading in the extreme and amounts to the persecution of someone for exposing some inconvenient truths,” Welford said in 2023.
Born in 1958, Welford worked as a solicitor and barrister before entering politics. He was also a member of Royal Life Saving Society Australia, working as a professional lifeguard and winning a national medal for his club Burleigh Heads Mowbray Park SLSC.
From 2009 to 2013, he was chief executive of the Australian Council of Recycling and became an adjunct professor at Griffith University, serving on the board of its Climate Ready Initiative.
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