Sophie Mirabella

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. Since 22 September 2008 she has been the Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth. [ [http://www.aph.gov.au/House/members/shadmin.pdf Coalition Shadow Ministry] ] 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.

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.

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.

In the federal Parliament Mirabella is a member of the Employment and Workplace Relations and Legal and Constitutional Affairs committees.

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.

She married Lieutenant-Colonel Greg Mirabella, a former soldier still working in the defence industry, in June 2006 [http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/bm/local/271868.html] .

In January 2008, Mirabella launched an attack on former 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". [ [http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/liberal-mp-attacks-frothing-fraser/2008/01/05/1198950131148.html Liberal MP attacks 'frothing' Fraser - National - theage.com.au ] ]

On the 13th of 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. [ [http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/outspoken-liberal-mp-defends-apology-boycott/2008/02/14/1202760494786.html Outspoken Liberal MP defends apology boycott - National - theage.com.au ] ] 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. [ [http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23210486-2,00.html Children removed 'for own good', says Mirabella] ]

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