1. Penelope Ying-Yen Wong was born on 5 November 1968 and is an Australian politician who is serving as the minister for Foreign Affairs and leader of the Government in the Senate in the Albanese government since 2022.
54 Facts About Penny Wong
1. 2.
Penny Wong previously served as minister for Climate Change and minister for Finance and Deregulation during the governments of Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2007 until 2013.
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Penny Wong then worked as a lawyer and political advisor.
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Penny Wong entered politics by winning a Senate seat in the 2001 election.
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Penny Wong was the first female openly LGBTI Australian federal parliamentarian, and was an instrumental figure in the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia in 2017, reversing her previous endorsement of Labor Party policy that had opposed it.
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On 6 March 2024, Penny Wong became longest-serving female cabinet minister in the history of the Australian Parliament.
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Several surveys have consistently found Penny Wong to be the most trusted politician in Australia.
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Penelope Ying-Yen Penny Wong was born on 5 November 1968 in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, which had become part of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.
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Penny Wong's parents were Jane, an English Australian whose forebears first reached South Australia on Cygnet in 1836, and Francis Wong, a Chinese-Malaysian architect-cum-town-planner of mixed Cantonese and Hakka descent who hailed from Sandakan, the former capital and second-largest city or town located in the state's east coast.
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Penny Wong's parents had met in the early 1960s, when Francis Wong was studying architecture at the University of Adelaide under the Colombo Plan.
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Penny Wong grew up speaking Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese in addition to English which was her first or home language spoken to her mixed-race parents.
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Penny Wong was accepted into the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Adelaide, but after spending a year on exchange in Brazil, found she had an aversion to blood.
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Penny Wong then studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours at the University of Adelaide in 1993, followed by a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice at the University of South Australia.
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Penny Wong became involved with the leadership of the Adelaide University Labor Club, and has been a delegate to the South Australian Labor Party State Convention every year since 1989.
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Penny Wong worked part-time for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and won a position on the National Executive of the National Union of Students.
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Penny Wong was admitted to the South Australian Bar in 1993.
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On returning to Adelaide, Penny Wong began practising law, working as a solicitor at the firm Duncan and Hannon.
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Penny Wong ran for pre-selection for the Senate in 2001, and was selected for the top position on the Labor Party's South Australian ticket.
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Penny Wong was elected at the 2001 election, her term commencing on 1 July 2002.
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Penny Wong is a member of Labor Left, and is a member of EMILY's List Australia, the support network for Labor women, and sat on a number of Senate committees, primarily those related to economics.
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In June 2005, Penny Wong was appointed Shadow Minister for Employment and Workforce Participation, and Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility.
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In December 2007, in the wake of the Labor Party victory in the 2007 election, Penny Wong was appointed to the Cabinet of Australia in the first Rudd government as the Minister for Climate Change, the first person to hold this role in an Australian Cabinet.
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Penny Wong accompanied then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Bali for the international climate change talks.
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Penny Wong led final negotiations as Chair of the United Nations Working Group in the closing days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2007, shortly after her appointment as minister.
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Shortly after the commencement of the Gillard government in June 2010, Julia Gillard promoted Penny Wong to succeed Lindsay Tanner as Minister for Finance and Deregulation.
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In February 2013, Penny Wong was elected as the ALP's deputy Senate leader following the resignation of Chris Evans, thus becoming Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate.
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Penny Wong retained the position of Minister for Finance after Kevin Rudd's successful leadership spill in June 2013.
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Penny Wong was the first woman to be elected as ALP Senate leader, and the first woman to serve as Leader of the Government in the Senate.
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Penny Wong held these roles until Labor's defeat at the 2013 federal election.
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In March 2019, Penny Wong was named the 2018 McKinnon Political Leader of the Year.
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Penny Wong was sworn in on 23 May 2022, only two days after the election and before final results were known, in order to attend a pre-scheduled meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
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Penny Wong is the first Asian Australian and the first openly LGBTI person to hold the office of Australian Foreign Minister.
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On 16 June 2022, Penny Wong visited New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta to reaffirm bilateral relations and cooperation in the areas of climate change, indigenous and Indo-Pacific issues.
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Penny Wong stated that her government would consider New Zealand's concerns about Australia's Section 501 deportation policy, which had strained relations between the two countries.
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Penny Wong said the Australian Government "understand[s] and respect[s] the longstanding US policy of neither confirming or denying".
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Penny Wong said the government wanted a greater US military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.
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Penny Wong sought to improve the relationship between Australia and China, which deteriorated after the previous Australian government under Scott Morrison wanted to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and condemned China's mistreatment of ethnic Uyghurs.
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Penny Wong has expressed support for Israel during the Gaza war.
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Penny Wong paused funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in February 2024 after Israel alleged that 12 of the UNRWA's 13,000 staff were either involved in the attacks by Hamas on 7 October or had links to Hamas.
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Penny Wong said she was waiting for Israel to provide evidence for the allegations and said that the UNRWA was the only organisation providing substantive support to the occupied Palestinian territories.
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On 6 March 2024 Penny Wong became longest-serving female cabinet minister in the history of the Australian Parliament, setting a new record as she served her 2,769th day in cabinet and exceeding the number of days served by former Liberal senator Amanda Vanstone.
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Penny Wong has been described by her biographer as "principled, intellectual, private, restrained and sane".
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Several studies and surveys have consistently found Penny Wong to be the most trusted politician in Australia among respondents.
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Penny Wong has been consistently named as Australia's most trusted politician through studies and opinion polling.
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Polling conducted by The Australia Institute in 2019 found that Penny Wong was the most trusted federal legislator, though then-Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern topped the poll altogether.
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Studies taken in March 2022 and December 2023 by Roy Morgan Research found Penny Wong to be Australia's most trusted politician.
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Penny Wong was deemed the most effective minister in the Albanese government in a survey of Australian Financial Review readers in 2022 and 2023.
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Opinion polling undertaken by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in December 2023 found Penny Wong to be the most liked politician in the country.
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Penny Wong is a practising Christian just like her late father, Francis and late paternal grandmother, Lai Fung Shim, for she is a congregant of the Pilgrim Uniting Church in Adelaide.
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Penny Wong held Malaysian citizenship before renouncing it in 2001.
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Penny Wong is a lesbian and came out publicly a month after she assumed her Senate seat in 2002.
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In 2010, Penny Wong was selected by readers of Samesame website as one of the 25 most influential lesbian Australians.
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Penny Wong's wife, Sophie Allouache, is a public servant and former University of Adelaide Students' Association president.
54.
Penny Wong received media attention in June 2022, on a visit to Indonesia, for making a speech in fluent Indonesian; it is unclear whether she learned Indonesian separately, or was relying on the similarities between Indonesian and Malay, which she learned as a child in Malaysia.