Anne Aly – First Female Muslim Minister in the Australian Government

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed a record number of women to a diverse ministerial team comprising religious minorities and indigenous peoples.

The Albanese Cabinet included 23 ministers, including 10 women, compared to seven in former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Liberal government.

Youth Minister Dr. Anne Aly Mahmoud el-Serougi and her colleague, Industry Minister Ed Husic, became the first Muslim ministers in the Australian Federal Government.

Anne Aly is the first woman of Arab and Muslim origin to hold a senior position in The History of Australia, an Egyptian woman born in Alexandria on March 29, 1967.

 

Early Life

Born on March 29, 1967, in Alexandria, Dr. Anne Aly graduated from Edith Cowan University, studied at the American University in Cairo, and then set out to line up her successes, and became a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Anne moved to Australia when she was two years old. Her mum was a nurse and her dad an engineer, but they both worked in factories in Australia before her dad later became a bus driver.

By her late twenties, Anne was a single working mother of two young boys in Perth. She knows the importance of having a secure and well-paid job, having raised her boys while working on the minimum wage.

Anne went on to study for her Master's and Ph.D. at Edith Cowan University and held a number of senior positions within the Western Australian Public Service.

She then worked at both Curtin University and Edith Cowan University with a focus on counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism.

Within a few years, she was able to prove her political merit and skill, then became a member of the House of Representatives in 2016, which recently won the last election and formed the government, and became the Australian Government's Minister for Youth and Early Childhood Education.

Dr. Anne Aly is one of Australia's 100 most influential figures and Australian person of the year and has served as a deputy in the Australian House of Representatives, making her well-deserved as The Australian Government's Minister for Youth and Early Childhood Education.

 

 

Counter Terrorism

Anne has been an advisor to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Directorate, a Board member of both the Council for Arab Australian Relations and the Australia Arab Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and has addressed President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism summit at the White House.

Anne is also the Founding Chair of People against Violent Extremism (PaVE) a non-profit organization focused on empowering communities to challenge violent extremism. 

Founded by Australia's first non-governmental organization to combat extremism violence called People Against Extremism Violence, Dr. Anne Aly led a social media campaign against violence and extremism, setting up a series of seminars to harness young people's skills and talents to address issues in their communities, culminating in her journey as the first woman of Arab and Muslim origin to hold a senior position in Australia's history.

She published more than 50 articles on terrorism and related issues, and wrote and edited five books in various fields.

According to her website, “She is now happily married to David, a former WA Police Officer and former captain of Australia’s Ice Hockey team.”

 

Political Career

Although she is a recent member of the Australian Labor Party, within a few years she has proved worthy and statesmanship, and has been a member of the House of Representatives since the 2016 election from Labor, which won the elections on May 21, 2022, with 77 of the 150 seats in the Australian House of Representatives.

Anne Aly represents the left-wing movement of the Australian Labor Party, and her victory in the ministerial post in the Government of Albanese, of Italian origin, means that ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity has become a reality in Australia.

It also means that change is irreversible, as well as the bankruptcy of some politicians from other currents who need a shift in charged perceptions filled with prejudices from the other, which is culturally, ethnically, and religiously different.

Aly is one of eleven MPs in the 46th Parliament of Australia who possesses a Ph.D., the others being Katie Allen, Fiona Martin, Jim Chalmers, Andrew Leigh, Daniel Mulino, Jess Walsh, Adam Bandt, Mehreen Faruqi, Anne Webster, and Helen Haines.

During the 2016 election campaign, Liberal Party Justice Minister Michael Keenan was accused of starting a smear campaign against Aly in regards to her previous counter-terrorism work at PaVE.

Keenan's lead was followed by Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop, Mathias Cormann, John Howard, and Luke Simpkins.

Simpkins had written to Aly in 2015 to express his respect for her counter-terrorism efforts, including "content of your media interviews and approach to the issue of radicalisation," and Aly's work had been actively backed by the Coalition government, previous to Aly being a Labor candidate.

Aly was the target of a hoax in 2017 when it was reported that she declined to lay a wreath at an ANZAC Day service in Perth.

The Love Australia or Leave Party circulated the story. Aly claimed that the suggestion that she declined to put a wreath had offended her.

In the 2019 federal election, Aly was re-elected with a 1.6 percent increase in the margin of victory. Unauthorized anonymous fliers targeting Aly with false charges were disseminated in the Cowan electorate during the 2019 federal election campaign. The flyers were labeled "racist" by the Labor Party.

Aly has stated that she believes in marriage equality, that she is economically conservative but "more left" on social policies, that she believes in a strict separation of church and state, that she defends women's rights to wear a hijab if they choose to do so even though she does not wear one herself, and that she protested the Iraq war.

Aly noted the widening income discrepancy in her inaugural statement, stating her goal to bring the advantages of progress to every area.

Following Labor being elected to government at the 2022 federal election, Anne Aly was appointed Minister for Early Childhood Education and Youth.