Gordon Barton
Gordon Page Barton (30 August 1929 – 4 April 2005) was an Australian businessman and political activist. He was born in Surabaya, Java, to a Dutch mother and Australian father. At the University of Sydney he cleverly chose courses and managed to earn three degrees at once, a feat the university later stopped. He started Interstate Parcel Express Company (IPEC) while still studying.
In 1966 he used some of his wealth to form the Liberal Reform Group, a faction of the Liberal Party unhappy with its stance on the Vietnam War. This group became the Australian Reform Movement and then the Australia Party, one of the forerunners of the Australian Democrats.
In 1967 Barton started Tjuringa Securities, Australia’s first major corporate raider. Tjuringa took over Federal Hotels, which built the Hobart Casino—the first legal casino in Australia—and the Angus and Robertson bookshops and publishing business, asset stripping them. He also started two newspapers, the Sunday Observer and the Sunday Review. The Sunday Observer owned by Barton in the 1960s was short‑lived and not related to The Observer in the UK. The two papers were later merged with Nation to form Nation Review.
Barton married Yvonne Hand, who died in 1970. They had two children, Cindie and Geoffrey. From 1977 he lived with Mary Ellen Ayrton; their blended family also included Ayrton’s daughter Kate. Barton died in Spain in 2005 at age 75.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:43 (CET).