20 Facts About Rob Hulls

Rob Justin Hulls was born on 23 January 1957 and is a former Australian politician who was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly from 1996 to 2012, representing the electorate of Niddrie.

Rob Hulls was born in Melbourne as one of seven children.

Rob Hulls was privately educated at Xavier College from 1969 to 1972 and then moved to the private Peninsula School from 1973 to 1975.

Rob Hulls completed the Articled Clerk's Course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1982, was Admitted as Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria on 1 March 1983 and was admitted as Solicitor at the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1986.

Rob Hulls was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the people and Parliament of Victoria, and to the law" in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Rob Hulls served one term in Federal Parliament from 1990 to 1993 as the member for Kennedy, Queensland.

Rob Hulls succeeded the long-standing National Party member Bob Katter Sr.

Rob Hulls left Queensland soon after the losing his Federal Parliament seat, and in 1994 on returning to Melbourne was appointed Chief of Staff to the Victorian Opposition Leader, Jim Kennan, former attorney-general, who resigned from State Parliament shortly afterwards.

Rob Hulls stayed on as Chief of Staff under Kennan's replacement John Brumby, who was Premier from 2007 to 2010.

Rob Hulls oversaw the establishment of the state's first Charter of Human Rights and reform to Victoria's Upper House.

Rob Hulls established special courts for Victoria's indigenous community, for people with mental health issues, for people with drug addiction and for victims of family violence, as well as creating Australia's first and only Neighbourhood Justice Centre.

Rob Hulls appointed Australia's first female chief justice of any superior court by appointing Marilyn Warren as Chief Justice of Victoria in 2003, as well as appointing a significant number of women to both the Magistrates Court and the County Court.

In May 2008, Rob Hulls sought and obtained the first posthumous pardon in Victoria's legal history and the only instance of a pardon for a judicially executed person in Australia to date, when he sought and obtained a pardon for Colin Campbell Ross, who was found to have been wrongfully executed for the murder of a young girl in 1922.

Rob Hulls was unsuccessful in a campaign to defrock the legal profession and ban the wearing of wigs in courts, a move that was actively opposed by the Victorian Bar Association.

Rob Hulls was quoted as saying that "members of the legal profession could continue to wear wigs in the privacy of their homes if they so wished but the wearing of wigs by the legal profession in the 21st century was outdated and elitist".

Rob Hulls was appointed as deputy premier to John Brumby on 30 July 2007 after the retirement of John Thwaites, and retained the position as attorney-general until his party's defeat at the election on 27 November 2010.

Rob Hulls subsequently served as Deputy Opposition Leader and as Labor's education spokesman.

In 2011, Rob Hulls suffered from the life-threatening condition epiglottitis which caused his airway to block; this led to him being placed in an induced coma for five days.

On 27 January 2012, Rob Hulls announced he was resigning from parliament.

In October 2012, Rob Hulls was appointed adjunct professor at RMIT and was invited to establish the new Centre for Innovative Justice as its inaugural director.