senator Marielle Smith Contact information

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Marielle Smith was elected as a Senator for South Australia on 18 May 2019 and was officially sworn into the 46th Parliament on 2 July 2019. Marielle is passionate about representing South Australian families. She has been an advocate for better early childhood education and care, the importance of standing up for rural and regional Australia and the crucial work of creating jobs and opportunities for South Australians of all backgrounds.

She is also a passionate advocate for delivering a fairer future for young Australians, to guarantee that fundamental Australian promise of delivering inter-generational fairness.

Marielle is also a forceful advocate for gender equality, arguing for the rights of women and the need to close the gender pay and superannuation earnings gaps between women and men.

Since entering Parliament, Marielle has campaigned on children’s safety, early education, South Australian jobs and the need to close the regional health divide in Australia, especially for women. Marielle serves on a number of committees and is currently the Chair of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, as well as being a member of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, the Senate Standing Committee on Appropriations, Staffing and Security, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Prior to entering Parliament, Marielle served on public and private boards and was a senior adviser to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on gender and global education issues. In addition to working as a manager within her family business, Marielle has devoted much of her career towards delivering better policies that improve our State and Nation for the generations to come, as an international policy adviser in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and as an early childhood education adviser to former Minister Kate Ellis MP. In 2012, Marielle lived in Ghana where she volunteered with a local NGO protecting children from forced trafficking and labour.

Marielle holds a Masters of Science with Distinction in Public Policy and Administration from the London School of Economics and a first class honours degree from the Australian National University.

Marielle lives in Adelaide with her husband, young son and, depending on the week, her three lovely step-children.

ABOUT SENATOR SMITH

Marielle Catherine Feuerherdt Smith is an Australian politician and member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) who has been serving as a Senator for South Australia since 2019. She was born on 30 December 1986 in Sydney and attended University Senior College in Adelaide. Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics. After graduating from ANU, she joined the Australian Public Service through the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s graduate program.

Smith has volunteered for non-governmental organizations in Ghana and Sierra Leone and was previously a board member of Transit Systems, a bus company co-founded by her father Neil. She has also worked for Labor MP Kate Ellis as a researcher and ministerial adviser, and later as a senior policy adviser to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Smith regards both Ellis and Gillard as mentors.

In 2017, Smith was elected to the ALP state executive and state council, and served as a delegate to the Australian Labor Party National Conference. She was a preselection candidate for the Division of Adelaide in 2018.

Smith was elected to the Senate at the 2019 federal election and is a member of several Senate committees. She has been identified as a member of the Labor Right faction. In her maiden speech to the Senate, Smith called for Labor to retain its 2019 election policy of funding preschool for three-year-olds.

Smith is married to Clint Feuerherdt, who is the managing director of SeaLink Travel Group and former CEO of Transit Systems. They have two children together and three step-children. Smith’s mother was born in the United Kingdom and she held British citizenship by descent until renouncing it in 2018 prior to running for parliament.