Bronwyn Bishop - Political Career

Political Career

After the retirement of Sir John Carrick at the double dissolution of 5 June 1987, Bishop was nominated by the Liberal Party to contest the vacant seat in the Senate for New South Wales at the election on 11 July 1987. She won the seat and her term was deemed to have commenced from 1 July. She was elevated by Andrew Peacock to the shadow ministry in 1989 as Shadow Minister for Public Administration, Federal Affairs and Local Government (1989–1990). She proved an aggressive debater against the Australian Labor Party, particularly with Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. She was the first woman to be popularly elected as a Senator for New South Wales.

After the Liberals' defeat at the 1993 election, Bishop began to be seen as a possible leadership candidate, a view she shared. In a move widely seen as furthering her leadership ambitions, Bishop resigned from the Senate on 24 February 1994 to contest the Mackellar by-election in the House of Representatives following the retirement of Jim Carlton. Although she was comfortably elected, her campaign against John Hewson for the Liberal Party leadership faced a setback when she did not poll as well as expected against author and filmmaker Bob Ellis, who ran against Bishop as an independent candidate for Mackellar. When John Hewson called a spill for the Liberal leadership in 1994, Bishop found that her colleagues did not share her opinion of her leadership potential, and Alexander Downer successfully challenged for the party leadership.

From 1994 to 1995 she was Shadow Health Minister, a senior position, but caused controversy on her first day in office by announcing her support for tobacco advertising, drawing criticism from both the Australian Medical Association and her own party, which supported the Keating Government's legislation to prohibit tobacco advertising in 1992. Her remarks were attacked by the then AMA president and soon-to-be Liberal MP for the neighbouring seat of Bradfield, Brendan Nelson, who said that: "Mrs Bishop has a lot to learn about health...there are now more than 50,000 pieces of medical research and literature supporting the view that smoking is injurious to humans." Bishop was dropped from Health and moved to Urban and Regional Strategy (1994), and then later as Shadow Minister for Privatisation and Commonwealth/State Relations (1995–1996).

When the Liberals returned to Government in 1996, Prime Minister John Howard appointed Bishop a Minister in various junior portfolios and was the first Liberal woman from New South Wales to become a minister. She was Minister for Defence Industry, Science and Personnel from 11 March 1996 to 21 October 1998 and Minister for Aged Care from 21 October 1998 to 26 November 2001. It was in this role that she endured her greatest scandal, the kerosene baths controversy of 2000. The revelation that some residents at Melbourne's Riverside private nursing home had suffered blistering after being bathed in a weak kerosene solution as a cure for scabies led to a national outcry over the standards of care maintained by Bishop's department. She was dropped from the ministry after the 2001 election. On 1 January 2001, Bishop was presented with the Centenary Medal "For service to Australian society through parliament and government". In 2004 she campaigned to succeed Neil Andrew as Speaker of the House, but was not successful.