When student politics are mentioned on the floor of Parliament, it is usually as an insult. Take non-university-educated Labor backbencher Tony Zappia’s comments last year as an example: “Playing political games may be fun in student politics, but it is not fun when real lives are affected.”
Yet many of Zappia’s bosses and lots of other current frontbenchers on both sides of the aisle began their political careers in student associations on campuses around Australia.
Last time Crikey listed the MPs who were involved in student politics was in 2010, so we thought it was well past time for an update.
Labor
- Anthony Albanese: the prime minister is a well-known former student activist, entering the campus political scene while completing an economics degree at Sydney Uni in the 1980s.
- Richard Marles: joined Melbourne University’s Labor Club “on the first day of O Week” and was active in student politics.
- Penny Wong: elected to the Adelaide University Union in 1988 and joined the Labor Party the same year, and was also on the national executive of the National Union of Students.
- Tony Burke: president of Australian Young Labor while an arts-law student at Sydney Uni in the late 1980s.
- Tanya Plibersek: a women’s officer at the University of Technology Sydney.
- Amanda Rishworth: elected president of the Flinders University Student Union while studying there.
- Bill Shorten: led the right-leaning Young Labor activist group Vanguard as a law student at Monash University.
- Brendan O’Connor: “heavily involved in the National Organisation of Labor Students at Monash University”.
- Michelle Rowland: chosen as NSW Young Labor secretary in 1996 while a student at the University of Sydney.
- Murray Watt: contested the position of student union president at the University of Queensland.
- Andrew Giles: a member of the Melbourne University Australian Labor Party club.
- Anika Wells: involved in student politics while enrolled at Griffith University.
Coalition
- James Paterson: vice-president of the Liberal Club at the University of Melbourne in 2008, vice-president of the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation from 2008 to 2009, and president of the Young Liberal Movement in Victoria in 2009.
- Ted O’Brien: “duked it out” in student elections for the University of Queensland Union in 1993.
- Jonathon Duniam: former president of the University of Tasmania Liberal Students.
- Simon Birmingham: once the president of the Adelaide University Liberal Club.
- Michaelia Cash: an executive member of the Curtin University Young Liberals from 1988 to 1990.
- Paul Fletcher: “was active in student politics at Sydney University”.
- Bridget McKenzie: the president of the Deakin University Student Association, and has said she “beat the Labor Party ticket with typical country response of non-partisan support, people deciding on a pragmatic outcome and then joining the cause”.
- David Coleman: president of the Student Guild at UNSW in 1997.
- Barnaby Joyce: said in 2005 he “didn’t engage much in student politics” at the University of New England. We suppose that means he did engage somewhat?
Greens
- Adam Bandt: a member of the progressive national student organisation Left Alliance during studies at Murdoch University
- Sarah Hanson-Young: president of the Students’ Association while enrolled at the University of Adelaide.
- Max Chandler-Mather: a “card-carrying party member and confirmed rabble-rouser on the Labor Left” while studying at the University of Queensland.
Have we missed anyone? Get in touch with Anton at anilsson@crikey.com.au and let him know.
