Neville Thomas Bonner (28 March 1922 – 5 February 1999) was an Australian politician, and the first Aboriginal Australian to become a member of the Parliament of Australia. He was appointed by the Queensland Parliament to fill a casual vacancy in the representation of Queensland in the Senate in 1971, and in 1972 became the first Indigenous Australian to be elected to the parliament by popular vote. Bonner was an elder of the Jagera people.

Bonner was born on 28 March 1922 on Ukerebagh Island, a small island in the Tweed River of New South Wales close to the border with Queensland. He was the son of Julia Bell, an Indigenous Australian, and Henry Kenneth Bonner, an English immigrant. His maternal grandmother Ida Sandy was a member of the Ugarapul people of the Logan and Albert Rivers, while his maternal grandfather Roger Bell (or Jung Jung) was a fully initiated member of the Jagera people of the Brisbane River. According to Bonner, his grandfather was "sort of captured ... out of the tribe" as a young boy and given an English name.

Bonner's parents met and married in Murwillumbah, New South Wales. His father abandoned his mother when she was pregnant with him, leaving her destitute. She subsequently moved to the Aboriginal reserve on Ukerebagh Island, where she had another son. After about five years, the family moved near Lismore, New South Wales, to be closer to Bonner's grandparents, living on the banks of the Richmond River under a lantana bush. His mother subsequently had three children with Frank Randell, an Aboriginal man who was employed by the local police. One of his half-brothers died as a child and he "witnessed frequent acts of violence by Randell against his mother".

Bonner's mother died in July 1932, when he was ten years old, and his grandmother subsequently became his main caregiver. She moved the family to Beaudesert, Queensland, where in 1935 he completed his only year of formal education at Beaudesert State Rural School. His grandmother died in June 1935 and he moved back to New South Wales after finishing the school year. Bonner worked as a ring barker, cane cutter and stockman before settling on Palm Island, near Townsville in 1946, where he rose to the position of Assistant Settlement Overseer.

While living in Ipswich, Queensland, Bonner joined the Coloured Welfare Council, which later merged into the One People of Australia League (OPAL). He was elected to OPAL's state committee in 1965 and served as president from 1968 to 1974. Bonner was considered a moderate within the Indigenous community, with OPAL having a reputation for cooperation with the Queensland state government. He publicly came into conflict with Aboriginal pastor Don Brady on a number of occasions regarding the government's policy on Palm Island, which Brady had described as a "police state" but Bonner said had put residents "head and shoulders in front of other Aborigines". In 1970 he criticised the Black Power movement as divisive and likely to provoke racial conflict.

Bonner joined the One Mile branch of the Liberal Party in 1967, having attended meetings for several years at the invitation of his future stepdaughter Robyn Kunde. He campaigned for the "Yes" vote on behalf of the Liberal Party at the 1967 referendum on Indigenous Australians. He had previously voted for the Australian Labor Party (ALP), but was "annoyed that Labor should presume the automatic support of Aboriginal people" after an incident where the local Labor MP Bill Hayden challenged his decision to hand out Liberal-branded how-to-vote cards. Bonner was chosen as a branch delegate in 1968 and was elected to the Queensland Liberals' state executive in 1969.

In March 1970, Bonner won Liberal preselection as the party's second-ranked candidate in Queensland at the 1970 half-Senate election, behind incumbent senator Ian Wood. His candidacy was reported by The Canberra Times as "the first time that a major party has endorsed an Aboriginal candidate for the Senate". He was placed in third position on the joint ticket with the Country Party, losing to Vince Gair of the Democratic Labor Party for the final vacancy.

In 1971, Liberal senator Annabelle Rankin resigned and Bonner was chosen by the party as its candidate for the casual vacancy. He was formally appointed to fill the vacancy on 11 June 1971. He was the first Indigenous Australian to sit in federal parliament.