Representative Clare O'Neil Contact information

Clare Ellen O’Neil, born on September 12, 1980, is an Australian politician and current Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security. She is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2013, representing the Victorian seat of Hotham.

O’Neil began her political career as the youngest female mayor in Australian history, when she was elected mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong in 2004 at the age of 23. Prior to entering federal parliament, she worked as a manager at McKinsey & Company.

O’Neil joined the Australian Labor Party at 16 and soon met Simon Crean, former party leader and her predecessor as the member for the division of Hotham. In her maiden speech, she described Crean as one of her “Labor heroes” and “a person in whose footsteps I am honoured to walk”.

O’Neil was endorsed as a late replacement candidate for the Australian Labor Party in Hotham at the 2013 Australian federal election, following the disendorsement of her friend Geoff Lake. She retained the seat for Labor and was quickly flagged by political commentator Peter van Onselen as a future front bencher.

O’Neil is a member of the Labor Right faction. From 2013 to 2016, she served on the House of Representatives standing committees on Agriculture and Industry and Tax and Revenue. Following the 2016 election, O’Neil was appointed to the shadow ministry under opposition leader Bill Shorten, becoming Shadow Minister for Justice. She was additionally made Shadow Minister for Financial Services in June 2018.

In 2022, O’Neil was appointed as Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security, being the first Cabinet Minister responsible for Cyber Security. As Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security, O’Neil’s focuses include improving Australia’s response to natural disasters from climate change, improving Australia’s cyber security, countering foreign interference, reforming Australia’s migration system, national resilience, and strengthening Australia’s democracy. She has announced a comprehensive review of Australia’s migration system to address existing challenges and set a new direction for the coming decades.

In her first six months as Minister for Cyber Security, Australia was subject to the Optus and Medibank cyber attacks, which were at the time Australia’s largest cyber attacks in history, occurring within three weeks of each other. As a result of these cyber attacks, O’Neil created a new joint task force to “hack the hackers” and disrupt cyber attacks in Australia before they were committed. She also appointed a new expert advisory board to develop a new Cyber Security Strategy to improve Australia’s national resilience to cyber threats and properly address the consequences of cyber incidents. O’Neil was praised for leading the Albanese Government’s response to the Optus and Medibank cyber attacks.