Andrew Bragg

Biography

Andrew James Bragg, a member of the Liberal Party, is an Australian politician who won the seat for New South Wales in the Senate during the 2019 federal election. He is a strong advocate for reforms to the Australian retirement system and supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Bragg was born on July 11, 1984, in Melbourne and spent his early years in Shepparton, Victoria, where he played for the Congupna Football Club. He attended local Catholic schools before studying accounting at the Australian National University. Bragg’s father and three of his grandparents were born in the United Kingdom, and he was a British citizen by descent until he renounced it in December 2017.

Bragg is a trained accountant who began his career in internal audit at Ernst & Young before spending seven years at the Financial Services Council, where he worked in superannuation and asset management policy, and later as head of policy. During this period, Bragg earned a Master of Financial Regulation from Macquarie University. He then served as Director of Policy & Global Markets at the Financial Services Council from 2014 to 2016, where he played a key role in establishing industry self-regulation standards for superannuation governance and the Trowbridge Review and the inaugural Life Insurance Consumer Code of Practice.

In November 2016, Bragg became the policy director of the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal Party think tank. He was later appointed executive director of the Business Council of Australia in August 2017.

Bragg’s foray into politics began when he ran unsuccessfully for Liberal preselection at the 2016 federal election in both the Senate ticket in New South Wales and the Division of Murray in Victoria. In April 2017, he was appointed acting federal director of the Liberal Party following the resignation of Tony Nutt. Later that year, he was the national director of the Liberals & Nationals for Yes campaign during the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Bragg won preselection on the Coalition’s Senate ticket in 2018 and was elected to the Senate during the 2019 federal election. He serves on several Senate committees related to finance and technology, and in 2020, he led a year-long inquiry into Australia’s financial technology sector before chairing the resulting committee. Bragg also formed a 15-person advisory committee of legal and business experts to advise the Australian government on policies that could increase the country’s competitiveness with countries like China in the financial technology sector. Additionally, Bragg led a motion requiring the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to disclose information about its content-sharing agreement with The New Daily. After ABC canceled the contract with The New Daily, Bragg wrote an op-ed supporting the move in The Daily Telegraph that said The New Daily was the propaganda arm of the superannuation industry. The New Daily threatened a defamation lawsuit, but Bragg refused to retract the statement.

Bragg is a member of the Moderate Faction of the Liberal Party and a vocal critic of industry superannuation funds, which invest mandatory retirement contributions from workers. During his tenure at the Business Council of Australia, he lobbied to require the funds to use independent directors. In his first speech after being elected to the Senate, Bragg discussed why he opposed mandatory retirement payments and advocated for mandatory disclosures from industry superannuation funds on how retirement funds are being managed and how much money is given to trade unions.

Bragg also supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which calls for the legislature to consult a network of representatives of indigenous people before passing legislation affecting indigenous people. He lobbied other politicians to support the legislation as well.