Sang Minh Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Minh Sang) (born 1 January 1960)[1] is an Australian politician. He was an Australian Labor Party member of the Victorian Legislative Council from May 1996 until November 2006, representing Melbourne West Province.[1]
Nguyen was born in the Vietnamese town of Long Xuyen.[1] He studied at Lasan Duc-Minh High School in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) from 1970-4,[1] but fled Vietnam in 1977 as a refugee with the fall of the city to the Communists and the end of the Vietnam War, spending 10 months in Leamsing refugee camp in Thailand.[1] After securing refugee status in 1978,[2][3][4] he briefly studied at Greythorn High School then completed his secondary studies at Swinburne TAFE in 1980.[1]
He became involved in a series of positions related to helping the community, working as a mathematics teacher at the Collingwood Education Centre from 1983 to 1984, as a youth worker at the Ecumenical Migration Centre from 1985 to 1987,[1] and as a coordinator at the Indochinese Communities Council.[4] In 1988, Nguyen was elected to the City of Richmond council, becoming at 28 the youngest member of the council and Victoria's first Vietnamese councillor.[4] He later went on to serve as the city's mayor for a year in August 1991, the first Vietnamese mayor in Australia,[2] and continued to serve as a councillor until 1994. During this period, he also became involved with the trade union movement, serving as a Migrant Liaison Officer for the National Union of Workers from 1989 to 1993.[1]
In 1993, Nguyen took up a position as a staffer working for then federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans.[1] He worked with the Minister for three years before winning pre-selection to contest the safe Labor Legislative Council seat of Melbourne West Province at the 1996 election.[3] Nguyen faced a challenge from left-wing social welfare campaigner Les Twentyman, who ran as an independent, but Twentyman's vote dropped from 22.9% an earlier unsuccessful 1992 bid to just 10.3%,[5] and Nguyen was elected. As a member of parliament, he served on the Family and Community Development Committee from 1996-99, the Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee from 1999-2006, and the House Committee from 2003-06.[1] He was often a spokesperson for the Vietnamese community in the chamber and elsewhere.
In March 2006, Martin Pakula, who had unsuccessfully tried to unseat former federal Labor leader Simon Crean in a preselection challenge earlier in the month, was selected instead of Nguyen, despite Nguyen being keen to recontest the seat.[6][7] In 2008 he considered running to be Labor's candidate in the Kororoit by-election.[8]