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Charles William Blunt (born 19 January 1951) is a former Australian politician who served as leader of the National Party of Australia from 1989 to 1990.
Blunt was immediately promoted to the opposition front bench, serving as shadow Minister for Social Services. He was returned to parliament at the 1984 and 1987 general elections.
Unfortunately for Blunt, neither of these things was popular with rank and file NPA members, and he found his leadership under increasing attack from traditionalists. At the same time the seat of Richmond, which had been held by the NPA and its predecessor the Country Party since 1922, was becoming more urbanised. Some argue that the growing unpopularity of the National Party state government in Queensland influenced federal voting intentions. Richmond sits across the Tweed River from the Gold Coast, and the two areas share a television market. However, the seat had actually become more marginal in the latter part of Doug Anthony's tenure. The anti-war campaigner Helen Caldicott announced that she would oppose Blunt in his electorate at the next election.
The culmination of these trends was a swing against the NPA at the 1990 election, at which the Bob Hawke Labor government was re-elected. Blunt was defeated in his own seat of Richmond. He went into the election holding Richmond with a majority of six percent, just barely outside the range of being safe. However, he had no local connections, which worked against him in a country seat. Labor challenger Neville Newell won the seat on the seventh count after Caldicott's preferences flowed overwhelmingly to him, allowing him to take the seat on a swing of seven percent. It was only the second time that the leader of a major Australian party had lost his own seat in an election; the first was Stanley Bruce, the then Prime Minister, who not only led his party to defeat in 1929 election but also lost his own seat of Flinders. The NPA also lost the adjoining seat of Page, both campaigns being heavily influenced by Queensland media.
After the election, Blunt was again the focus of political controversy when he was accused of inappropriately using publicly funded mailouts of election-related material:
After an investigation Blunt was found not to have breached any rules, and the matter was dropped.
In 2014, Blunt appeared in a documentary about the Nationals, "A Country Road: The Nationals" in which he talked about his time as Nationals leader. On the same programme, John Sharp, a Nationals MP at the time of Blunt's leadership, said that in hindsight it was a mistake for Sinclair to be replaced as leader by Blunt.A Country Road: The Nationals, Episode 2
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