Amanda Vanstone
Amanda Eloise Vanstone (born 7th December 1952) is the Australian Immigration Minister and Minister for Multicultural Affairs. Vanstone has served as a politician since December 1984, when she was first voted to the Australian Senate. In 1996 Vanstone was appointed the only female member of Prime Minister John Howard's cabinet.
Early Life
Amanda Vanstone was born on the 7th December, 1952, the youngest of four children in Adelaide, South Australia. As a child, Vanstone was educated at St Peters Collegiate Girls School before attending the University of Adelaide. At university, Vanstone received both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice and a Marketing Studies Certificate from the South Australian Institute of Technology which is now the University of South Australia. In the late 1980s, Amanda married Tony Vanstone, a commercial lawyer from Adelaide.
Prior to entering politics, Vanstone worked as a retailer in a large department store, and later had her own business selling prints and picture-frames. She later took up a job as a legal practitioner.
Political Career
In 1984, at age 32, Vanstone was elected the youngest member of the Australian Senate as a representative for South Australia. She was one of 27 senators for the Australian Liberal Party elected that year. Vanstone's maiden speech to the Senate was made on the 27th of March 1985 and addressed issues that young Australians had with the then Labor Government led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
Vanstone was a member of the Opposition Shadow Ministry from 1987 to 1988, from 1989 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996, serving as Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister for Justice from 1994 to 1996.
In March 1996 Vanstone became the only woman in John Howard's cabinet when she was appointed Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. In this portfolio she presided over heavy cuts to the employment programs established by the Keating government, which drew strong criticism. In October 1997 she was dropped from Cabinet and appointed Minister for Justice, a title which was changed to Minister for Justice and Customs in October 1998.
Vanstone made a comeback in January 2001 when she was re-appointed to Cabinet as Minister for Family and Community Services. During this period she was also Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. In the Family and Community Services portfolio she presided over the massive government pensions and welfare system whose service delivery agency, Centrelink, is a frequent target of criticism by welfare activists.
Vanstone proved to be a robust defender of government policies, not afraid to use strong language or offend interest groups. The then Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services, Wayne Swan, described her as "a political hyena who takes delight in attacking society's most vulnerable." Her defenders said that she was only carrying out Cabinet policy.
In his reshuffle in October 2003, Howard showed his confidence in Vanstone by appointing her Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Reconciliation, one of the most difficult portfolios in the government. Her biggest decision in this portfolio was to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which she said had become a corrupt bureaucracy not serving the interests of indigenous Australians.
During 2005 Vanstone became involved in three major controversies, two of them involving the treatment of asylum-seekers by her department - the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon cases - and a third involving a defecting Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin. An inquiry by the former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer was severely critical of the Immigration Department's treatment of Cornelia Rau.
In January 2006 a ministerial reshuffle saw Indigenous Affairs transferred to Mal Brough. Vanstone's title was changed to Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.