Sam Piantadosi

The Honourable Sam Piantadosi
Member of the Western Australian Parliament for North Central Metropolitan Province
In office 1983–1989 Serving with Joe Berinson
Preceded by	New creation
Succeeded by	Electorate abolished
Member of the Western Australian Parliament for Electoral region of North Metropolitan
In office 1989–1996 Serving with Joe Berinson (1989–93) Graham Edwards (1989–96) Bob Pike (1989–94) Reg Davies (1989–96) Max Evans (1989–96) George Cash (1989–96) Ross Lightfoot (1993–96) Iain MacLean (1994–96)
Preceded by	New creation
Succeeded by	Various
Personal details
Born	April 1946 Roccabescerano, Avellino, Italy
Died	4 March 2010
Citizenship	Australian
Political party	ALP (up to April 1996)

Samuel Mathew Piantadosi (April 1946 - 4 March 2010) was an Australian union official and politician. A senior Western Australian union official and the founding chairman of the Ethnic Communities Council in the 1980s, he was elected as an Australian Labor Party member of the Western Australian Legislative Council at the 1983 state election. His election made him the first post-war Italian migrant to be elected to the Parliament of Western Australia. He was re-elected in 1989, but resigned from the Labor Party in 1996, late in his second term, after reading newspaper reports that party figures were suggesting he would retire. He subsequently resigned from the Legislative Council several months short of the conclusion of his term in an unsuccessful attempt to contest the Legislative Assembly seat of Yokine as an independent at the 1996 state election. He returned to politics in 2007 as a councillor and later Deputy Mayor of the Town of Bassendean, and held the latter role until his death.

Piantadosi was born in Roccabescerano, Italy. His family migrated to Western Australia in 1982, and settled in Northbridge. He was educated at St Brigid's Primary School, Christian Brothers' College and Leederville Technical College. He worked for twelve years as an accounts clerk and office manager with the United Fruit and Vegetable Growers Co-operative, and undertook two years' national service in the Army from 1966 to 1968. Having joined the Labor Party in 1968, he entered the trade union movement in 1976, serving as ethnic co-ordinator of the Water Supply Union, the first person to hold such a role in a Western Australian union. He became secretary of the Water Supply Union in 1979, and after that union amalgamated into the new Hospital Services and Miscellaneous Workers Union in 1981, was elected president of the new union, a role he held until his election to parliament. He was the founding convenor of the WA Trades and Labor Council's Migrant Workers Committee, the founding secretary of the North Perth Migrant Resource Centre (1979) and a member of its management committee (1980-1986), a member of the State Advisory Panel for Interpreters and Translators (1979-1981) and the founding chairman of the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia (1983).

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