Michael Danby

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Michael Danby

Michael David Danby (born 16 February 1955), Australian politician, has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives since October 1998, representing the Division of Melbourne Ports, Victoria.

Danby was born in Melbourne, Victoria and was educated at Melbourne University. He was President of the Melbourne University Student Union as well as President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students [1]. From 1980 to 1983 he was an Australian Army officer cadet with Officer Cadet Training Unit 3, based at Albert Park and Puckapunyal.

From 1979 to 1983 Danby was manager of Halmaag Art Galleries in Malvern. He was Assistant Private Secretary to Barry Cohen, a minister in the Hawke government 1983-84, Editor of the Australia-Israel Review 1986-93 and an Advisor to Alan Griffiths, a minister in the Keating government, 1993-94. He was an industrial officer with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association 1994-96. In 1985 he was senior vice-president of the International Youth Conference in Kingston, Jamaica.

In 1990, Danby ran as the Labor candidate for the safe Liberal seat of Goldstein against Dr David Kemp, who had defeated former Liberal minister Ian Macphee in a preselection challenge. In 1997 he won a hotly disputed Labor Party preselection battle for the right to contest Melbourne Ports, where the sitting member, Clyde Holding, was retiring. At the 1998 election he won the seat and has been re-elected, with slightly reduced majorities, in 2001 and 2004.

Danby has been an Opposition Whip since November 2001. He is currently the only Jewish member of the Australian Parliament and has frequently spoken in support of Israel and in opposition to antisemitism and other forms of racism.

Danby has sometimes been accused of being hostile to Muslims or to Islam. He countered this accusation in an article in the Australian Financial Review in November 2005. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, he was one of only three Labor MPs not to sign a letter to the US Congress demanding the release of David Hicks^[1].

Danby has been a member of the Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) since 1998, and was Deputy Chair in 2006. He has used this position to campaign against the Howard Government's changes to Australian electoral law, which he argues have restricted the ability of voters, particularly new voters, to enrol and vote. In an article in 2005, he wrote: "For 150 years Australia has been a world leader in progressive electoral reform... As a result Australia has one of the most open and accessible electoral systems in the world, and also a system with the highest reputation for integrity and transparency. Now, for the first time in living memory, an Australian government is going to wind the process back, for no good reason other than its own partisan advantage. They are going to make it more difficult for Australians to enrol and to vote."^[2]

In 2005 Danby was critical of a forthcoming book by a Sydney journalist, Antony Loewenstein, about the Australian Jewish community and its attitudes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [2]. In a letter to the Australian Jewish News, Danby called in the book's publisher, Melbourne University Press, to "drop this whole disgusting project." he also called on the Jewish community to boycott the book. "I urge the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat it with dignified silence," he said.

Danby was one of several ALP members facing a preselection challenge in order to recontest his seat at the 2007 federal election. However, he defeated challenger Henk van Leeuwen, winning three-quarters of the local vote, thus retaining preselection.