Louise Pratt

Louise has been a member of the Australian Senate since July 2008.

Her key policy interests include combating climate change and economic inequality, increasing women's workforce participation, improving maternity services and early childhood education, ending all discrimination against LGBTI Australians, population and development issues and closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Louise is proud of Labor's record in government and has advocated and supported a range of Labor's reforms in the Senate, including improvements to maternity services, fair work legislation, same-sex law reform, action on climate change, regulating political donations, reforming the AusAID family planning guidelines, paid parental leave, health system reform, enhancing migrant workers' rights, the stimulus package, the rights of refugees and better consumer protection laws.

Louise entered the Federal Parliament with a strong background in community activism and a history of parliamentary service at the State level. In 2001, she was the youngest woman ever elected to the Western Australian Legislative Council.  As an MLC, she served as the Chair of the Council's Environment and Public Affairs Committee and as the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians’ Australia regional representative.

As a member of both the Gallop and Carpenter Labor Governments, Louise chaired a Greenhouse Stakeholder Group and a review of Adoption Legislation for the State Government, was the secretary of the Western Australian State Labor Caucus, and a key member of the State Government’s Ministerial Taskforce on lesbian and gay law reform.