Nott returned to Australia and took part in the campaign against hookworm and then was appointed medical superintendent of Mackay District Hospital. From 1924 to 1927 he was mayor of Mackay. In 1925 he won the seat of Herbert, then including Mackay and Townsville, in Federal Parliament for the Nationalist Party. In this contest he unexpectedly defeated the Australian Labor Party candidate Ted Theodore, who had resigned as Premier of Queensland in order to enter federal politics (he had to wait for a by-election in 1927 in a Sydney seat before he was successful). In 1928 Nott lost the seat to the Labor candidate, George Martens. He ran unsuccessfully as a Nationalist in North Sydney (1929) and as a member of the Nationalists' successor, the United Australia Party, in Calare (1934) and East Sydney (1940).
