SYDNEY (AFP) -- Australia's former deputy prime minister Mark Vaile announced his resignation from politics on Saturday, ending a 15-year career in parliament during which he spent seven years as trade minister.

Vaile was deputy prime minister from 2005 until November last year when the conservative coalition of his National Party and former prime minister John Howard's Liberal Party was voted from power.
The 52-year-old said that he was proud of his work as trade minister from July 1999 to September 2006.
""Our work to secure Free Trade Agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the United States of America and Chile and launching negotiations with ASEAN, Malaysia, China and Japan are all outstanding policy achievements which I am honoured to be part of,"" he said in a statement on his website.
Vaile's resignation follows that of Howard's long-standing foreign minister, Alexander Downer, earlier this month.
Dates for by-elections for both seats have not yet been set.