Editing Flinders University (section)

===Independence and opening===
In 1965, the Australian Labor Party won the state election and [[Frank Walsh]] became premier. The ALP wished to break up the University of Adelaide's hegemony over tertiary education in the state, and announced that they intended the Bedford Park campus to be an independent institution.<ref name=history1/>

[[File:Flinders_University_Coat_of_Arms.png|thumb|Coat of arms adopted as the university's founding logo in 1966 and used until 2022]]
On 17 March 1966, a bill was passed by state parliament officially creating The Flinders University of South Australia.<ref name="history2">http://www.flinders.edu.au:80/about/our-university/our-history/1966---1971-the-first-students.cfm {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100801084725/http://www.flinders.edu.au/about/our-university/our-history/1966---1971-the-first-students.cfm |date=1 August 2010 }} Flinders University – 1966–1971: The first students</ref><ref>[https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/__legislation/lz/c/a/flinders%20university%20act%201966/current/1966.23.auth.pdf ''Flinders University Act 1966'', Version: 1.7.2021]</ref> Although the Labor Party had favoured the name "University of South Australia", academic staff wished that the university be named after a "distinguished but uncontroversial" person. They settled upon British navigator [[Matthew Flinders]], who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in 1802. Its original coat of arms, designed by a professor in the Fine Arts faculty, included a reproduction of Flinders' ship ''Investigator'' and his journal ''A Voyage to Terra Australis'', open to the page in which Flinders described the coast adjacent the campus site.<ref name=history1/>

Flinders University was opened by [[Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon|Queen Elizabeth]], the Queen Mother, on 25 March 1966.<ref name=history2/>

Originally created as an extension of the [[University of Adelaide]], the university council resolved in August 1965 that it would become a separate, independent institution, functioning under its own council from 1 July 1966. [[Peter Karmel]] was the first Vice-Chancellor, and teaching at "the University of Adelaide at Bedford Park" began in 1966 with 400 students.<ref name=id>{{cite web | title=Independence Day | website=Flinders University | date=1 July 1961 | url=https://www.flinders.edu.au/about/history/independence-day | access-date=25 August 2024}}</ref>

A significant early initiative was the decision to build the Flinders Medical Centre on land adjacent to the campus and to base the university's Medical School within this new public hospital – the first such integration in Australia. Flinders accepted undergraduate medical students in 1974, with the FMC opening the following year.<ref name=history2/>