Bronwyn Bishop
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Bronwyn Kathleen Bishop (born 19 October 1942), Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since February 1994, representing the Division of Mackellar, New South Wales. She was born in Sydney, New South Wales, and was a solicitor and company director before entering politics.
Bishop was elected to the Senate for New South Wales in July 1987, and proved an aggressive debater with an ability to annoy ministers in the Labor government, particularly Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. After the Liberals' defeat at the 1993 election, Bishop began to be seen as a possible leadership candidate, a view she shared.
Bishop resigned from the Senate in February 1994 to contest the Mackellar by-election in the House of Representatives, a move widely seen as furthering her leadership ambitions. Although she was comfortably elected, her campaign against John Hewson for the leadership faced a setback when she did not poll as well as expected against author and filmmaker Bob Ellis, running as an independent. In 1994-95 she was Shadow Health Minister, a senior position. But when Alexander Downer resigned as Liberal leader in early 1995, Bishop found that her colleagues did not share her opinion of her leadership potential, and John Howard returned to the party leadership.
When the Liberals returned to office in 1996, Howard placed her in junior portfolios. She was Minister for Defence Industry, Science and Personnel 1996-98 and Minister for Aged Care 1998-2001. This portfolio saw her embroiled in a series of controversies over standards of care in nursing homes, and she was dropped from the ministry after the 2001 elections. Always the optimist, she campaigned to succeed Neil Andrew as Speaker of the House, but was not successful.