In parliament[edit]

In 1974, Lamont was preselected as the Liberal candidate for the usually
safe Labor seat of South Brisbane, in what was seen at the time as a
test run for a future bid for the federal seat of Brisbane. Lamont
reportedly told a senior cabinet minister on the day before the election
that he thought he might win, only to be told "Dont get carried away,
Col, you need 11 per cent and the state swing is going to be about
seven per cent." He won the seat with a 17% swing as Labor suffered
one of the worst defeats in its history, taking a seat that had since 1912
only ever fallen to the conservatives for one term following the 1957
Labor split and for one term during the Great Depression.[3]
In parliament, Lamont was a fierce advocate for transparency and
accountability of government. He once stated that he had been offered a
promotion to the ministry by Russ Hinze after the 1977 election if he
promised to stay away from police corruption and civil liberties, and that
he had replied "If that's the price, I don't want it." He publicly dissented
from the Bjelke-Petersen government on numerous occasions, staunchly
opposing Bjelke-Petersen's anti-street march laws and addressing a
large rally at the University of Queensland. He also opposed BjelkePetersen's appointment of Labor renegade Albert Field to the Senate
against convention during the 1975 constitutional crisis, and opposed
Bjelke-Petersen's appointment of Terry Lewis as police commissioner who would subsequently be jailed for corruption.[4][5][6][7][3] When Lewis'
reforming predecessor Ray Whitrod resigned as Police Commissioner in
1976 in protest at Bjelke-Petersen's promotion of Lewis to Assistant
Commissioner, Lamont went on television to call for Whitrod to withdraw
his resignation.[8] Lamont discovered during 1977 that the police special
branch had been conducting surveillance of him and other Liberal
dissidents and reporting directly to Bjelke-Petersen.[7]
His seat was intentionally made unwinnable by Bjelke-Petersen in a
redistribution before the 1977 election; he attempted to switch to the
seat of Woodridge, but was defeated by Bill D'Arcy.[7] His Labor
successor in South Brisbane, Jim Fouras, recounted being told by
National Party MPs at the time of his election that they had changed
South Brisbane's boundaries because they would rather have a Labor
member than another term of Colin Lamont.[3]