Danna Vale

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Danna Sue Vale (born 14 November 1944), Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since March 1996, representing the Division of Hughes, New South Wales. She was educated at Sydney University and was a solicitor before entering politics. Although not a prominent frontbencher, she has attracted controversy over matters that seem ridiculous to the Opposition and many in the Coalition.

Vale was Minister for Veterans' Affairs 2001-04 and Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence 2001-03.

In 2004, Danna Vale was the subject of controversy when she became involved in the "Cash For Comment" scandal. Conservative Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones had been cleared by Australian Broadcasting Authority head David Flint, who was subsequently shown by ABC-TV's "Media Watch" program to have written Jones letters of support during the investigation. Ms Vale sent a fax to Jones exhorting him to keep on fighting, and to "Stay Brave And True". Unfortunately for Vale, the fax was sent to Jones at his old 2UE fax number, which meant that it was received instead by his rival, John Laws. Laws, who had been penalised by the "Cash for Comment" inquiry where Jones had not been, released the facsimile.

In 2005, Danna Vale advocated for a controversial plan to build a Gallipoli Memorial Park on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.

In February 2006, Danna Vale again was the source of controversy when she made comments suggesting that if abortifacient RU-486 were approved for use in Australia, it would lead to Islamic Australians outnumbering non-Islamic Australians. "When you actually look at the birthrates and you look at the fact that we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence," she was reported as saying. "You multiply that by 50 years, that's 5 million potential Australians we won't have here."^{[citation needed]}