Sophie Mirabella

Sophie Mirabella
Member of the Australian Parliament for Indi
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 November 2001
Preceded by	Lou Lieberman
Personal details
Born	27 October 1968 (1968-10-27) Melbourne, Victoria
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Liberal Party of Australia
Spouse(s)	Greg Mirabella
Children	Alexandra and Katerina
Residence	Wangaratta East, Victoria
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	Lawyer
Religion	Greek Orthodox

Sophie Mirabella (née Panopoulos) (born 27 October 1968) is an Australian federal politician. She has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2001, representing the Division of Indi, Victoria. Mirabella is presently the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

Personal life

She was born in Melbourne, Victoria, educated at St Catherine's School, Toorak and was previously a solicitor and articled clerk from 1995 to 1997 at Riordans. From 1998 until her election to Parliament, she worked as a barrister.

In 1995, she began a live-in relationship with a man forty years her senior, then dean of law at Melbourne University, Colin Howard. The relationship ended in 2001, however they remained close until his death in 2011. Her relationship with Howard was later the subject of a bitter dispute between Mirabella and Howard's adult children.

She later married Lieutenant-Colonel Greg Mirabella, a former Army Reserve Officer still working in the defence industry, in June 2006.

Political career

She has been a member of the Liberal Party since 1987. She was president of the Melbourne University Liberal Club, vice-president of the Australian Liberal Students Federation, a delegate to the Liberal Party State Council of Victoria and is also a member of numerous Policy Assembly Committees. She became well-known during the debate on Australia becoming a republic as a prominent advocate for retaining the constitutional monarchy, and was an elected member of the 1998 Constitutional Convention.

Prior to her preselection as the Liberal candidate to succeed Lou Lieberman as the member for Indi, Mirabella spent some time working as a barrister in Wangaratta, despite being based on Melbourne.

Mirabella received a well above-average 5.6% swing to her in the 2004 federal election, giving her 66.3% of the two-party preferred vote and making Indi one of the safest Liberal seats in the country.

In 2005, she attracted public attention as a key member of an informal "ginger group" of Liberal backbenchers. She chaired this group with Victorian Senator Mitch Fifield. The group argued for "tax reform" (in essence, tax cuts paid for by reductions in government spending), sparking public debate on the topic.

On the prominent issue of asylum seekers, she attacked fellow Liberal backbenchers Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan, labelling them "political terrorists" for defying government policy on mandatory detention and threatening to hijack the government's agenda by voting down the proposals in Parliament. She was rebuffed soon after, as Prime Minister John Howard agreed to meet some of their concerns and recommendations. In August 2005 she called for Muslim women to be required to remove their head dress when posing for photo identification.

Mirabella has been an advocate of voluntary student unionism (VSU) since her Liberal student days and has strongly supported the legislation which prohibited universities from forcing their students to join student unions and pay "services fees" to them.

Mirabella was re-elected in the 2010 election and is Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science.

Criticism of former Liberal Party leader

In January 2008, Mirabella launched an attack on former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, after a speech he gave at Melbourne University on "the Bush Administration (reversing) 60 years of progress in establishing a law-based international system", claiming errors and "either intellectual sloppiness or deliberate dishonesty", and that he tacitly supports Islamic fundamentalism, should have no influence on foreign policy, and that his stance on the war on terror has left him open to caricature as a "frothing-at-the-mouth leftie".

Statements about the Stolen Generation

On 13 February 2008, Mirabella was one of five Liberal Party of Australia MPs not present when a motion was passed unanimously apologising to the stolen generations of indigenous children between federation and the 1970s. She explained her decision by asserting that there had never been a formal policy in Victoria of removing children from their families and that there is no evidence for any "truly stolen" children, despite the fact that the first laws passed giving authorities the right to take children from their parents were passed and used in Victoria.

Gillard-Gaddafi Comparison

On 2 March 2011, Mirabella compared the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard to Muammar Gaddafi, claiming that both were delusional. Gillard had recently announced a plan to proceed with a carbon tax despite earlier promises to the contrary. The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott refused to condemn Mirabella, instead terming the comparison colourful and not language he would use.

Political Funding Controversy

On 22 September 2011, the Melbourne Age newspaper reported that Mirabella may have potentially breached electoral laws by failing to disclose $100,000 in financial support received from Colin Howard QC, her partner at the time.

External links

• Sophie Mirabella webpage
• Search or browse Hansard for Sophie Mirabella at OpenAustralia.org

Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Lou Lieberman	Member for Indi 2001–present	Incumbent