Political Career
Ripoll replaced Pauline Hanson as the Federal MP for Oxley after winning the Australian federal election, 1998. Prior to the election, Oxley was divided in half, with most of the old Oxley's more rural territory shifted to the new Division of Blair. The reconfigured Oxley had a notional Labor majority of 51 percent. Hanson decided to contest the latter division instead of Oxley as she believed this would improve her chances. Former Queensland Premier Wayne Goss had already been preselected as Labor candidate, but a brain tumour forced him to retire from politics, and Ripoll was named in his place.
Ripoll was appointed Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure in October 2004.
He is a member of the national Right faction of the Australian Labor Party, affiliated to the Labor Forum also known as AWU faction.
On 2 March 2012, Ripoll was promoted into the Executive when appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer.
Read more about this topic: Bernie Ripoll
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)