Representative Michelle Rowland Contact information

Michelle Anne Rowland is an Australian politician and current Minister for Communications in the government of Anthony Albanese. She was born on November 16, 1971, in Blacktown, Sydney. Rowland’s mother is Fijian, but she does not hold dual citizenship as the Fijian constitution at the time did not allow for citizenship to pass through the maternal line. She was raised in Seven Hills and educated at Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, and the University of Sydney.

Rowland began her professional career as a senior telecommunications lawyer with law firm Gilbert + Tobin in Sydney. She later became a Director of the Western Sydney Area Health Service from 2000 to 2004 and was a former local councillor (Ward 2, 2004–2008) and deputy mayor of Blacktown (2007–2008).

In 2010, Rowland entered federal politics and won the Australian House of Representatives seat of Greenway for the Australian Labor Party (ALP), following the 2009 electoral distribution which had made Greenway notionally Labor, on a margin of 5.7 points. She was subsequently re-elected to the seat at the 2013 federal election with an increased majority. Rowland was appointed to the Labor opposition’s frontbench as Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications as well as Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism. In October 2015, Rowland was elevated to Shadow Minister for Small Business as well as continuing as Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism.

After the ALP’s defeat at the 2013 election, Rowland was appointed to Bill Shorten’s Shadow Ministry. She held various portfolios, including Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications (2013–2015), Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism (2013–2016), Shadow Minister for Small Business (2015–2016), and Shadow Minister for Communications (2016–2019). She was elevated to the shadow Cabinet in 2016 and maintained her place following Anthony Albanese’s election as party leader in 2019.

In October 2021, Rowland was elected President of the Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) at the NSW State Conference. Rowland is a member of Labor Right and has supported the introduction of same-sex marriage since 2012. Despite the 2017 Australian Marriage Law postal survey returning a 53.6% no vote for her electorate of Greenway, Rowland voted for the bill that enacted same-sex marriage in Australia.

In 2021, Rowland was a vocal critic inside the Labor caucus of its capital gains tax, negative gearing, and income tax policies, seeing all three dropped. After the ALP’s victory in the 2022 Australian federal election, Rowland was appointed as the Minister for Communications in the government of Anthony Albanese.