Grace Portolesi

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Grace Portolesi is a South Australian politician and Labor member for the electoral district of Hartley, having won the seat at the 2006 state election. She is the current parliamentary secretary assisting the Attorney-General.

Portolesi was born in Adelaide to a migrant Italian family. She studied public policy and government at Flinders University, where she became involved in student politics, serving as president of the Flinders University Student Association. She worked as an equal opportunities officer at the University of South Australia after graduating from university, but in the early 1990s, moved to Queensland to take up a position as an advisor to then-Premier of Queensland Wayne Goss. She returned to Adelaide some years later to work as a policy advisor to then-Opposition Leader Mike Rann, and when Labor won government in 2002, took up a position as chief of staff for Minister for Families and Community Services Jay Weatherill, a position she held until her election to parliament in 2006.

Portolesi decided to enter politics in advance of the 2006 state election, and nominated unopposed for preselection in the highly marginal Liberal seat of Hartley. The traditionally Labor seat had been won by Joe Scalzi at the Liberal landslide of 1993, and as a popular local member, went against predictions to retain the seat in 1997 and 2002. Her status as an Italian-Australian broadened her support in the ethnically diverse community and helped neutralise a factor that Scalzi had used to his advantage in the past.

Although Labor was widely expected to win several seats at the election, Hartley was expected to be a particularly close race, due to Scalzi's incumbency, personal support, and record of bucking wider electoral trends. The campaign in the seat was heavily presidential, with Premier Mike Rann strongly supporting Portolesi and doorknocking homes for her several times. Some local issues were raised, however, mostly in the form of policing and the fate of Lochiel Park, which had been threatened with development. Early polls placed Scalzi as the favourite, but Portolesi slowly narrowed the gap, and was leading the polls by January. She seemed to suffer a major setback when polls in the week before the election returned to predicting a win for Scalzi, but ultimately achieved a 6% swing. The result was closer than in other similarly marginal seats, with Scalzi initially refusing to concede defeat, but the result had become clear by the end of the night, and he did so the following day. Three days later, it was announced that Portolesi would be appointed as a parliamentary secretary (assisting the Attorney-General) in the new government, the only one of the party's new recruits to gain such a position.

Portolesi is in the left-wing of the Labor Party, and has shown support for same-sex unions and is a member of the pro-choice organization for Australian women parliamentarians, Emily's List. ^[1] She is an opponent of the Family First Party, and expressed relief at the conclusion of the campaign that she had been able to win the seat without their preferences. ^[2][3] She is married to Miles Kemp and the two have a young daughter, Allegra.

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