Dai Le

Biography

Dai Trang Le, also known as Lê Trang Đài, is a Vietnamese-born Australian politician and journalist. She was born in Saigon in 1968, during the Vietnam War. Le’s family was closely associated with the Americans during the war. On the day North Vietnam captured Saigon, Le and her family were taken to a port and put on a boat to the Philippines by military-dressed men. Her father, a Vietnamese lawyer working with the American Embassy, was unable to join them and they never saw him again.

Le and her family lived in a refugee camp in the Philippines for three years before moving to Hong Kong, where they lived for nine months in another refugee camp until they were processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and accepted for resettlement to Australia. They arrived in Australia in December 1979 and lived briefly in the Fairy Meadow Migrant Hostel before being resettled in Bossley Park, a suburb in Sydney’s west.

Le completed her Higher School Certificate at Cerdon College in Merrylands and went on to study political science at Macquarie University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Le began her career as a cadet journalist in 1990 at the Liverpool City Champion newspaper and helped establish the Fairfield City Champion newspaper. She also worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) between 1994 and 2008, where she worked on various TV and radio programs such as Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent, Lateline, AM, PM, and The World Today. She was also a producer of Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue.

Le’s political career began in 2008 when she ran as the Liberal Party candidate for the New South Wales state electoral district of Cabramatta in the 2008 by-election but was unsuccessful. She ran again as the Liberal Party candidate for Cabramatta in the 2011 NSW state election, but was again unsuccessful. In 2012, she was elected as an independent candidate to Fairfield City Council’s Cabravale Ward in the NSW Local Government Election, representing the ward between 2012 and 2021.

Le stood as an independent candidate for the seat of Fowler at the 2022 Australian federal election and won, becoming the first refugee and Vietnamese Australian to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives. Prior to her election, she had been a councillor for Fairfield/Cabravale Ward. Le has been named as one of the 100 most influential Australian women in 2014.