Michelle Ananda-Rajah

Biography

Michelle Renuka Ananda-Rajah is an Australian politician and former clinician-scientist. She was born in London in 1972 to Tamil parents who had fled from Sri Lanka prior to the Sri Lankan Civil War. As a child, she lived in Zambia for 11 years before moving to Australia, where she became an Australian citizen in 1996.

Ananda-Rajah earned her bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery (MBBS) in 1997 and her PhD in 2014 from the University of Sydney. After completing her studies, she worked as a clinician-researcher and physician in infectious diseases and general medicine at Alfred Health. She was also a recipient of the prestigious TRIP fellowship by the Medical Research Future Fund in 2019 and was appointed to JAMA Network Open as a statistical and methods reviewer.

Aside from her medical work, Ananda-Rajah is also the co-founder of Healthcare Workers Australia, a grassroots advocacy group that campaigned for improved respiratory protection for healthcare workers since August 2020.

Ananda-Rajah’s foray into politics came when she was preselected as the Labor candidate for Higgins in July 2021 ahead of the 2022 Australian federal election. Though she initially trailed Liberal incumbent Katie Allen for most of the night, Ananda-Rajah secured the win when a Green candidate’s preferences flowed overwhelmingly to her on the seventh count. This gave her a 2.4% swing in primary vote and a 4.6% swing in two-party preferred vote, allowing her to win the seat with a two-party preferred vote of 52%. By winning, Ananda-Rajah made history as the first Labor member for Higgins in the seat’s 73-year history.

After her seat of Higgins was abolished in the 2024 redistribution, Ananda-Rajah was elected to the Senate for Victoria at the 2025 federal election, taking her seat on 1 July 2025 for a term ending in 2031.