Natasha Stott Despoja

Natasha Jessica Stott Despoja AO (born 9 September 1969) is an Australian diplomat, advocate, author, and former politician.

Stott Despoja was born in Adelaide on 9 September 1969.

She is the daughter of Shirley Stott Despoja, an Australian-born journalist and Mario Despoja, who was from Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia).

She attended Stradbroke Primary and Pembroke School and later graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1991.

She was President of the Students' Association of the University of Adelaide (SAUA) and the South Australian Women's Officer for the National Union of Students.

She then went on to work as a political advisor to Senator John Coulter and Senator Cheryl Kernot.

Starting her career in student politics, she became an advisor to the Australian Democrats and was appointed to the Australian Senate in 1995 at the age of 26.

At the time, she was the youngest woman to serve in federal Parliament.

When Democrats Senator John Coulter resigned for health reasons in 1995, Stott Despoja was the successful candidate to fill the resulting vacancy.

Her rise to prominence began when she won a full term in the 1996 election the following year, becoming the youngest woman ever elected to the federal Parliament at age 26.

Late the following year, following the resignation of Cheryl Kernot and the rise of Meg Lees to the leadership of the Democrats, Stott Despoja was elected deputy leader of the Democrats.

During this time, she built her image as spokesperson for Employment, Higher Education, Youth, Science and Information Technology, Consumer Affairs, Trade, and the Republic.

She went on to become deputy leader of the Democrats in 1997 and then federal leader from 2001 to 2002.

During the passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) legislation in 1999, Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett split with the party's other senators by opposing the package, which had been negotiated by Lees and prime minister John Howard.

She said that she refused to break promises made during the election.

The party had stated that they would work with whichever party formed government to improve their tax package.

The Australian Democrats traditionally permitted parliamentary representatives to cast a conscience vote on any issue but, on this occasion, close numbers in the Senate placed greater pressure than usual on the dissenters.

The passage of the GST was not popular among the Democrats membership.

Unlike other parties, the members directly elected the party leader and a spill could be called at any time with 100 signatures.

Meg Lees had been subject to such a challenge before but was re-elected unopposed as no other senator opted to run.

By early 2001, the party's fortunes were declining.

The state election in Western Australia in February, where the Democrats lost both their seats in the upper house, was particularly damaging and prompted another spill campaign against Lees.

Stott Despoja, who by this time was widely recognised and popular among voters, decided to run and was successful, winning 69% of votes.

Stott Despoja became the leader of her party on 6 April 2001.

From the beginning she faced difficulties in working with Lees, who viewed her run for the leadership as a betrayal.

Other senators, including new deputy leader Aden Ridgeway, remained sympathetic to Lees.

In the 2001 federal election in November, the Democrats recorded a fall in their Senate vote from 8.5% to 7.3% and returned four of the five senators up for election.

The party also saw a marginal lift in its primary vote for the lower house from 5.1% to 5.4%.

The substantial rise of the Greens vote to 4.9% in the Senate and their election of a second senator ignited further discussion about the fortunes of the Democrats.

Throughout 2002, Stott Despoja struggled to keep the party together as senators publicly strayed from party positions and privately expressed a lack of confidence in her leadership.

After the party bureaucracy opened an investigation into Meg Lees for allegedly damaging party unity, which Lees and her allies saw as part of a campaign by Stott Despoja to silence her, Lees left the party in July 2002.

This was followed by a stand-off with Andrew Murray, who threatened to follow.

After deciding to stay, Murray proposed a ten-point package to reform party structures and address the issues raised by Lees, designed to shift power from the leader.

She retired from the Senate in 2008 as the longest-serving senator from her party.

She has remained active in the public sphere, working with government and non-profit organisations.

Stott Despoja was the founding chair of Our Watch, a national foundation to prevent violence against women and children, and served as national Ambassador for Women and Girls from 2013 to 2016.

She was also a member of the World Bank Gender Advisory Council from 2015 to 2017.

She has served in positions at the United Nations, including on the High Level Working Group on the Health and Human Rights of Women, Children, and Adolescents in 2017, and as a member of the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) since 2020.

She has published several books and writes regularly on current topics.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019 for her work on gender equality.