Sophie Mirabella

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Sophie Mirabella

Sophie Mirabella (née Panopoulos) (born 27 October 1968), Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2001, representing the Division of Indi, Victoria. She was born in Melbourne, Victoria, and was previously a solicitor and articled clerk from 1995 to 1997. From 1998 until her election to Parliament, she worked as a barrister and as a paid member of government committees.

At the time of her election Panopoulos was described by political opponents as the "Uptown Girl" reflecting her limited previous connection to her rural electorate. Despite this, she comfortably retained the safe Liberal seat in 2001, and 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. 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.

She was also been at odds with her National Party coalition colleagues in regard to the implementation of Voluntary Student Unionism in Australian Universities. Mirabella has been an advocate of VSU since her Liberal student days and has strongly supported the legislation.

She married Greg Mirabella, a former soldier still working in the defence industry, in June 2006 [1]. She was accused of failing to disclose campaign donations as required by law, including large donations from cigarette company British and American Tobacco. In a move described as arrogant and inappropriate, she was named as Chair of the Australian parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, the 'watchdog' committee that oversees the Australian Electoral Commission, which is conducting a probe into non-disclosures of donations to her fundraising body, Friends of Indi.^[1]