Lisa Singh

Singh is the granddaughter of Ram Jati Singh OBE, who was a member of the Fijian Legislative Council (the precursor of the present day Fijian Parliament) in the 1960s.

Her father arrived in Australia as an international student in 1963.

She attended St Mary's College, Elizabeth College, and the University of Tasmania, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Social Geography.

She completed a Master of International Relations from Sydney's Macquarie University.

Lisa Maria Singh (born 20 February 1972) is an Australian former politician.

Singh was born in 1972, in Hobart, Tasmania, to a Fijian-Indian father and an English-Australian mother.

Her uncle, Raman Pratap Singh, was a Fijian politician and a past President of the National Federation Party and was a Member of Parliament from 1994 to 1999.

From 1999 to 2001, Singh was an adviser to Senator Sue Mackay.

Singh then became the Director of the Tasmanian Working Women's Centre, where she campaigned for paid parental leave and equal pay.

She was a member of Emily's List, and served on its National Executive in Australia.

Singh became Hobart Citizen of the Year in 2004 for her work in the peace movement at the time of the Iraq war, especially in highlighting the plight of women and children in war.

Singh has also served as the President of the YWCA Tasmania, the President of the United Nations Association Tasmania and as a member of the Tasmania Women's Council.

She was convenor of the Australian Republican Movement from 2004 to 2007.

She was manager of the Tasmanian Government arts unit, arts@work, before being pre-selected by the Australian Labor Party for a House of Assembly seat.

She had previously been a member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, representing the division of Denison from 2006 to 2010.

The granddaughter of an Indo-Fijian member of the Parliament of Fiji, Singh was Australia's first female federal parliamentarian of Indian descent.

After leaving politics she worked as Head of Government Advocacy for Walk Free, an international human rights organisation and initiative of the Minderoo Foundation.

She is currently the Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute, the University of Melbourne’s centre dedicated to promoting support for and understanding of the bilateral relationship.

She is also the former Deputy Chair of the Australia India Council.

She sits on the advisory councils of Asialink and the Australian Human Rights Institute.

In 2023 she joined the Board of Directors of Beyond Blue, Australia's well known and trusted mental health organisation.

Singh was elected to the House of Assembly at the 2006 state election, as the member for Denison.

In August 2007, she abstained from voting on a controversial bill supporting Gunns' Bell Bay Pulp Mill, after having failed in an appeal to then-Premier Paul Lennon for a free vote on the matter.

Singh firstly became a parliamentary secretary in 2008.

The she entered Cabinet as Minister for Corrections and Consumer Protection, Minister for Workplace Relations, and Minister Assisting the Premier on Climate Change.

She was sworn in at a ceremony at Government House on 26 November 2008.

As minister, Singh introduced legislative reforms in workers compensation, corrections, climate change and asbestos management.

Singh was defeated at the 2010 state election.

Following that, she co-founded the Asbestos Free Tasmania Foundation, an advocacy group to highlight the dangers of asbestos and support sufferers of asbestos-related disease, and became its first CEO.

Singh was elected to the Australian Senate in the August 2010 federal election, making her the first person of South Asian descent to be elected to the Australian Parliament.

She was a Senator for Tasmania from 2011 to 2019.

On 18 October 2013, she was promoted to the position of shadow parliamentary secretary to The Shadow Attorney-General.

He made an unsuccessful attempt to regain his seat in 2014.

Singh's great-grandparents migrated from India to Fiji under the British Indian indenture system around the turn of the century.

In her maiden speech in the Senate, Singh described her ancestral connection to India through her great-grandfather's "Rajput warrior roots".

Singh worked in public relations and for the Australian Education Union as an industrial organiser.

On 24 June 2014, the federal Labor leader, Bill Shorten, promoted her to the position of shadow parliamentary secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water.

In 2016, twelve senators were to be elected due to the double dissolution election, Singh's sixth position on the ticket was described in some media reports as "unwinnable".

Following a campaign to vote for Singh "below the line" on the ballot paper, she received 20,741 votes, 80% of a quota, which was enough to overturn the party's ticket order and she was elected as the 10th senator elected for Tasmania.

Singh was defeated at the 2019 federal election after being again placed in the "unwinnable" fourth position on Labor's Tasmanian Senate ticket.