Michael Danby

The Honourable Michael Danby MP
Member of the Australian Parliament for Melbourne Ports
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 October 1998
Preceded by	Clyde Holding
Personal details
Born	(1955-02-16) 16 February 1955 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Alma mater	University of Melbourne, not completed
Occupation	Politician
Religion	Judaism

The Honourable Michael David Danby (Born 16 February 1955) is an Australian politician and 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 briefly Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts, from March to September 2013.

Past experience

Danby was born in Melbourne, Victoria and lives in Elwood, in his electorate. Danby attended Mount Scopus Memorial College and then studied Arts at Melbourne University but left without graduating. He was President of the Melbourne University Student Union as well as President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. From 1980 to 1983 he was an Australian Army Reserve officer cadet with Officer Cadet Training Unit, 3 Training Group, 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, and Editor of the "Australia-Israel Review" (published by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) from 1986-93. In 1985 he was senior vice-president of the International Youth Conference in Kingston, Jamaica. He was a ministerial adviser to Alan Griffiths, the Industry Minister in the Keating government, 1993-94. He was an industrial officer with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association 1994-96.

Political office

In 1990 Danby ran as the Labor candidate for the safe Liberal seat of Goldstein against Dr David Kemp. 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, defeating Tim Pallas, now a Victorian opposition MP. He was elected in 1998 with 55 percent of the vote, and was reelected with slightly reduced majorities in 2001 and 2004. In 2007 he gained a 3% two-candidate-preferred (TCP) swing to Labor and in 2010 secured a further 1% TCP swing. Danby was outspoken in his criticism of the Labor Party’s handling of the 2010 election, attacking the Western Sydney focus of the Labor Party Campaign.^[1]

Electoral Matters Committee activities

Danby was a member of the Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters from 1998 until 2010, and was Deputy Chair in 2006. He used this position to run a high profile campaign against the Howard Government's changes to Australian electoral law, which he argued 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] Soon after the 2010 Federal Election Danby drew attention to the fact that for various reasons 1.4 million eligible Australians had not voted, and criticised the Government for not having acted during its previous term to ensure greater voter turn-out.^[1]

Other parliamentary activities

From 2008 to 2010 Danby was chair of the Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration.^[3] He was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade throughout the 42nd Parliament and was again chosen for this position in the 43rd parliament.^[4] He is also Chair of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for the United States,^[5] and the Parliamentary Group for Tibet.^[6]

In 2008 and 2009 the Migration Committee completed three major reports.^[7] These reports made numerous recommendations in relation to Australia’s immigration detention system, several of which of have been adopted by the Australian Government, including the recommendation that ‘detention debt’ should be abolished.^[8] Danby gained some media attention in late 2009 following his criticism of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's use of the term 'illegal immigrants' rather than 'asylum seekers'. Regarding use of the term 'illegal immigrants' he stated "I don't find these sort of populist expressions helpful in this debate."^[9]

In July 2009 in his role as Chair of the Parliamentary Group for Tibet, Michael Danby led the first ever delegation of Australian MPs and Senators to Dharamsala,^[10] India, the base of the Central Tibetan Administration. The group met with Dalai Lama, and other senior lamas, as well as numerous government Ministers. Michael Danby also gave a speech at the celebrations for the Dalai Lama’s 74th birthday entitled ‘Let freedom reign in Tibet’.^[11] The Chinese Government reacted angrily to the delegation's visit, saying the visit constituted interference in China's internal affairs.^[12]

From July 2011 to March 2013 Danby was chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade,^[13] a role which saw him represent the Prime Minister at the inauguration of the new nation of South Sudan in 2011.^[14]

Jewish representation

Jews only make up about 10% of Melbourne Ports Electorate. Danby was the only Jewish member of the Australian Parliament from 1998 to 2007, when Mark Dreyfus, also from the ALP, was elected. This was followed in 2010 with the election of Josh Frydenberg who is a Liberal. All three represent electorates in Victoria. He has frequently spoken in support of Israel. He supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question. In May 2011 he said: "I am a strong supporter of Israel. Obviously also a strong supporter of a peace process there and a two-state solution, and I have that dialogue with a friends from Israel when I get the opportunity to.^[15]

In 2005 Danby was critical of a book by a Sydney Jewish atheist journalist, Antony Loewenstein, about the Australian Jewish community and its attitudes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which he regarded as anti Israeli propaganda.^[16] In a letter to the Australian Jewish News, Danby called on 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.

In a speech to Federal Parliament in December 2008, Danby stated it was important to remember the names of victims of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Regarding the deaths of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, Rivka Holtzberg and the others killed at the Nariman House, Danby stated “I raise my voice in this national parliament and praise the memory of those innocent kedoshim who were killed in the Chabad House in Mumbai only because they were Jews.”^[17]

Danby has been a long time campaigner for Government funding of schools at risk of facing terrorist or other violent attacks. In a speech to the House of Representatives he welcomed the Australian Government’s $20 million funding program for schools at risk, and noted that a Sunday program that he had appeared on had sparked interest in the issue among many of his fellow MPs and Senators.^[18]

Other activities

Danby was an outspoken supporter of the Australian National Academy of Music, opposing Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s decision to cut funding for the institution, which is in his electorate, in October 2008.^[19] Following a wide outcry the Government changed its decision to close the Academy and announced an additional $500,000 for the elite classical training centre.^[20]

Danby helped organise the visit of the Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer, to Australia for the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2009.^[21] The visit drew condemnation from the Chinese Government, but Danby criticised the Chinese Government for describing Kadeer as a terrorist,^[21] and argued that she was “a paradigm of non-violence" ^[22]

In September and October 2010 Michael Danby wrote a number of articles critical of ANU academic Hugh White’s Quarterly Essay entitled “Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing”.In an article published in the Wall Street Journal Asia Danby was highly critical of White’s contention that Australia should support US military evacuation of South China Sea, and other possible zones of conflict with China.^[23]

In another article in The Australian (co-authored with foreign affairs experts Carl Ungerer and Peter Khalil), Danby warned against a ‘Munich Moment’ which would result if Australia followed White’s advice and decided that the price of China’s growing power was to cease “lecturing China about dissidents, Tibet or religious freedom".^[24]

White responded to these articles in both The Australian and the Australian Financial Review. However it seems Danby had the last word in the debate, publishing another article in the Australian Financial Review, which attacked White’s thesis as advocating “unprincipled appeasement”. Danby also accused White of holding ‘cold-blooded, Kissingerian views’, ‘treating China and the United States as if they were no more than a pair of traditional great-power rivals competing for territory or markets, like the Habsburg and Ottoman empires’.^[25]

In a Parliamentary Speech in October 2010 Danby pointed to calls for reform from within the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party as reason not to follow White’s approach.^[26]

In late 2010 Danby campaigned against major changes to the boundaries of the electorate of Melbourne Ports, as proposed by the Australian Electoral Commission. When the final boundaries were announced on 17 December 2010, the changes were significantly less drastic than had initially been canvassed.^[27]

Danby is a member of the World Movement for Democracy's Steering Committee.^[28]

Personal

In February 2008 he and his longtime partner, barrister Amanda Mendes da Costa, were married at Parliament House, Canberra, the first Jewish wedding held in the building.^[29]

References

External links

• Michael Danby's homepage
• Search or browse Hansard for Michael Danby at OpenAustralia.org
• National Security Must Come Before Politics (Australian Financial Review) (pdf)
• The battle for Melbourne Ports - Australian Jewish News
• The Young Lib, the green T-shirt and the how-to-vote card - The Age