The Geelong Advertiser is a daily newspaper servicing Geelong, Victoria, Australia, the Bellarine Peninsula and surrounding areas. The Geelong Advertiser is the oldest newspaper title in Victoria and the second oldest in Australia, and was first published on 21 November 1840. The newspaper is currently owned by News Limited. It is the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association 2009 Newspaper of the Year (circulation 25,000 to 90,000).

The Geelong Advertiser was initially edited by James Harrison, a Scots emigrant, who had arrived in Sydney in 1837 to set up a printing press for the English company Tegg & Co.

Moving to Melbourne in 1839 he found employment with John Pascoe Fawkner as a compositor and later editor on Fawkner's Port Phillip Patriot. When Fawkner acquired a new press Harrison offered him 30 pounds for the original old press to start Geelong's first newspaper. The first weekly edition of the Geelong Advertiser appeared on Saturday 21 November 1840: edited by 'James Harrison and printed and published for John Pascoe Fawkner (sole proprietor) by William Watkins...'^{[citation needed]}.

Geelong ( /dʒəˈlɒŋ/) is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia, 75 kilometres (47 mi) south-west of the state capital; Melbourne. It is the second most populated city in Victoria and the fifth most populated non-capital city in Australia. The urban area runs from the plains of Lara in the north to the rolling hills of Waurn Ponds to the south, with the bay to the east and hills to the west, an area with an estimated population of 160,991 people. It is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Geelong municipality which covers the urban and surrounding areas and is home to over 191,000 people. An inhabitant of Geelong has been known as a Geelongite, or a Pivotonian, in the past.

Geelong was named in 1837 by Governor Richard Burke, with the name derived from the local Wathaurong Aboriginal name for the region, Jillong, thought to mean 'land' or 'cliffs'. The area was first surveyed in 1838, three weeks after Melbourne, and the Post Office was open by June 1840 (the second to open in the Port Phillip District). The first woolstore was erected in this period and it became the port for the wool industry of the Western District. During the gold rush Geelong experienced a brief boom as the main port to the rich goldfields of the Ballarat district. The city then diversified into manufacturing and during the 1860s it became one of the largest manufacturing centres in Australia with its wool mills, ropeworks, and paper mills.

Anthony John "Tony" Abbott (born 4 November 1957) is the Leader of the Opposition in the Australian House of Representatives and federal leader of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. Abbott has represented the seat of Warringah since the 1994 by-election.

Prior to entering the Australian Parliament, Abbott studied for a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws at Sydney University and for a Master of Arts as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He later trained as a seminarian and worked as a journalist, business manager, political advisor and Executive Director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. Abbott has also been an author, ultramarathon runner and member of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

Abbott served in the Howard Government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs from 1996-1998 and Minister for Employment Services from 1998-2001. He joined the Howard Cabinet in 2001 as Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Following the 2001 Election, he took on the additional roles of Leader of the House of Representatives and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service. In 2003 he became Minister for Health and Ageing , retaining this position and his role as Leader of the House until the defeat of the Howard government at the 2007 federal election.