Nicola Roxon
Nicola Louise Roxon (born 1 April 1967) is an Australian former politician. After politics, she has worked as a company director and academic.
Nicola Roxon
Roxon represented the lower house seat of Gellibrand in Victoria for the Australian Labor Party; from the 1998 federal election until her retirement in August 2013. Between 2011 and 2013, Roxon was the first female Attorney-General of Australia.
Post politics, Roxon was appointed an adjunct professor at Victoria University, board chair at VicHealth, and at HESTA.[1]
Early and personal life
Roxon was born in Sydney, New South Wales. She is the second of three daughters and the niece of the late Australian journalist and Sydney Push member Lillian Roxon.[2] Her paternal grandparents were Jewish and migrated from Poland to Australia in 1937. Anglicising the family name from Ropschitz to Roxon, her grandfather worked as a GP in Gympie and Brisbane, Queensland.[3] Her mother Lesley trained as a pharmacist, while her father Jack was a microbiologist. He was a strong influence in her life and she was devastated by his death from cancer when she was 10 years old.
Roxon was educated at the Methodist Ladies' College in the suburb of Kew in Melbourne, Victoria. She studied for a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws at the University of Melbourne, winning the university medal for law.[4] She ultimately came to the view that "governments have got a role to make sure they can help people in circumstances they can't control—either through their health failing or an accident".[2]
Between 1992 and 1994, Roxon was employed as a judge's associate to High Court Justice Mary Gaudron.[2] She then became involved with the trade union movement, joining the National Union of Workers as an organiser. Roxon was also an industrial lawyer and senior associate with the law firm Maurice Blackburn and Co. from 1996 to 1998.[5]