Who is Nicola Roxon? No one knows. Even a seasoned political journalist may struggle to tell you that the new Minister for Health and Ageing has been the Member for Gellibrand since 1998, and loves a verbal scrap in Question Time. This rising star within the Australian Labor Party seems to have come from nowhere.
Nicola Roxon's official website does tell us something of where she has come from. Educated at Methodist Ladies' College and the University of Melbourne. A successful student and winner of the Supreme Court Prize for the top law graduate of 1990. Her list of previous Parliamentary Positions is formidable She was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998 and served as Shadow Minister for Children and Youth, and for Population and Immigration, Shadow Attorney-General, Shadow Minister assisting the Leader on the Status of Women. In December 2006 she replaced Julia Gillard as the Shadow Minister for Health. Then Kevin Rudd won the election.
Her website tells something of her life outside politics. There's a small picture gallery with no captions. But you won't find her beliefs, values or views on any of the pages. Follow the link to her MySpace page and you won't find much more. Ms Roxon is ‘in a relationship' and a ‘proud parent'. And she is an Aries. She tells us she is passionate about health and that many of the Howard Government's policies are having a detrimental effect on working families. Standard stuff really. Personality excluded.
It is likely that Ms Roxon will have a difficult time raising her public profile, if that is what she sets out to do. It seems like a long time since Australians have been seriously talking about health and hospitals. The utterly dominant issue of the last two election campaigns has been money. Specifically, how to get it, and how to stop losing it. It was a strong economy that saw the Howard Government re-elected in 2004, and job security (and entitlements) that saw a change of Federal Government in favour of a non-offensive alternative. In fact, 2004 marks the last time that a truly significant health policy was created: Gillard's ill-fated Medicare Gold. Since then, very little. Health has been put on the backburner.
How Ms Roxon will attempt to give this portfolio the status it deserves is anybody's guess. We've seen a new Sun Smart campaign launch recently, with a promise