Jim Molan

Major General Andrew James Molan, AO, DSC (11 April 1950 – 16 January 2023) was an Australian politician and a senior officer in the Australian Army.^[2] He was a Liberal Party senator for New South Wales from December 2017 to June 2019 and from November 2019 until his death in January 2023.

During his military career, Molan commanded the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, the 1st Brigade, the 1st Division and its Deployable Joint Force Headquarters, and the Australian Defence College. In April 2004, he was deployed to Iraq for a year to serve as chief of operations of the new headquarters for the Multinational Force in Iraq. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as the Legion of Merit by the United States government. He retired from the Australian Army in 2008, and later that year released his first book, Running the War in Iraq.

Following his retirement from the Australian Army, Molan was appointed by the Abbott government as a special envoy for Operation Sovereign Borders and was subsequently credited with being an architect of the coalition's Stop the Boats Australian border protection and asylum-seeker policies.^[3][4] In 2016, Molan unsuccessfully stood as a Liberal Party candidate for the Senate in New South Wales at the 2016 federal election.^[5][4][6] In December 2017, during the parliamentary eligibility crisis, the High Court declared him elected in place of Fiona Nash, who was ineligible to stand.^[7] He was not re-elected to the Senate in the 2019 federal election.

On 10 November 2019, Molan was selected by the NSW Liberal Party to fill the casual vacancy left by the resignation of Senator Arthur Sinodinos. He was appointed by a joint sitting of the NSW Parliament on 14 November 2019.^[8] At the 2022 election, he was re-elected to a six-year term that was supposed to expire 30 June 2028. He died less than a year into his new term.