Joseph Peter Gardiner (4 July 1886–23 January 1965) was the Australian Labor Party member for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly seat of Roebourne from 1911 to 1915. His sudden and still unexplained departure from Western Australia in 1915 was an important factor in the collapse of John Scaddan's Labor government.

Joseph Gardiner was born in Adelaide, South Australia on 4 July 1886. He was educated at the Christian Brothers College in Adelaide, and was then apprenticed to his bootmaker father in West Perth in Western Australia. He later went to the Pilbara region, where he traded on the coast between Cossack and Broome. He was secretary of the Miners' Union at Whim Creek , and from 1910 to 1912 was manager of the Weld Hotel in Cossack. On 31 October 1911, Gardiner was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly seat of Roebourne. In 1913 and 1914 he lived in West Perth, and was secretary of the Bootmakers' Union. In 1914, he married Mary Holman .

In January 1915, for reasons still unknown, Gardiner walked out of Parliament House, never to return. Eventually inquiries were made as to his whereabouts, and it was found that he had left the state without his wife. On 30 September 1915, Gardiner's seat was declared vacant on grounds of non-attendance. The Labor Party did not retain the seat in the subsequent by-election, and its majority of two was erased. Shortly afterwards, another Labor member resigned, and John Scaddan's government was defeated.

Little is known of the rest of Gardiner's life. He was working as a labourer in Adelaide in 1922, and in June of that year, he married Bertha Annie Paver. He subsequently worked at various occupations while living for many years in Melbourne, Victoria. From 1932 on lived at Bentleigh, Victoria. He was listed as a journalist when he died on 23 January 1965.

References

• Black, David (1981). Party Politics in Turmoil. in Charles Stannage (ed). A New History of Western Australia. University of Western Australia Press. Nedlands, Western Australia. ISBN 0855641703.
• Black, David and Geoffrey Bolton (2001). Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia, Volume One, 1870–1930 (Revised Edition). Parliament of Western Australia, Parliament House, Perth, Western Australia. ISBN 0730738140.