Monique Ryan

Monique Marie Ryan (born 20 January 1967) is an Australian politician and former paediatric neurologist.

She is currently the independent Member of Parliament for the Division of Kooyong, Victoria, having won the seat at the 2022 federal election.

Monique Ryan
A picture of Ryan speaking in front of a microphone
Ryan in 2022
Member of the Australian Parliament
for Kooyong
Assumed office
21 May 2022
Preceded byJosh Frydenberg
Personal details
Born
Monique Marie Ryan

(1967-01-20) 20 January 1967 (age 57)
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Political partyIndependent
Other political
affiliations
Labor (2007–2010)
Children3
Alma materUniversity of Melbourne
University of Sydney
OccupationPaediatric neurologist
Known forDirector of Neurology at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne
Websitehttps://www.moniqueryan.com.au/

Ryan completed her medical qualifications in Melbourne and Sydney, and Boston, Massachusetts, United States. She became director of neurology at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital in 2014. During her medical career, Ryan has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and supervised several clinical trials for neurological diseases.

In 2022, at the 2022 federal election, Ryan became a Teal independents candidate for the Division of Kooyong; Climate 200 and a number of individual donors supported her. Ryan's campaign heavily focused on climate change, anti-corruption, and the Government of Australia's management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaigns of Ryan and her main opponent, incumbent Liberal member Josh Frydenberg, spent over A$2 million each. Ryan won Kooyong at the 2022 federal election with 52.9% of the after-preferences vote.

Early life

Monique Marie Ryan was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on 20 January 1967. She has a twin sister and is one of seven children born to Maurice and Marguerite Ryan. Ryan grew up in the Melbourne suburbs Caulfield North, Toorak and Hawthorn. She attended Loreto Mandeville Hall, Toorak, graduating as dux in 1984.

Medical career

Monique Ryan studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and graduated in 1991. She then underwent paediatric training in Sydney and completed a neurology residency at the Children's Hospital Boston in Massachusetts, United States, and also completed a neurophysiology fellowship at the Lahey Clinic in the same US state. In 2015, she became director of neurology at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, where she supervised 45 people and had a research budget of A$3.5 million, and was appointed as head of the RCH's neuromuscular clinic and neuromuscular research unit.

Ryan has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has overseen a number of clinical trials for neuromuscular diseases, including ones for Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy. Her publications have over 10,000 citations and she has an H-index of 50, which is a measure of the impact of her research. She was joint editor of the textbook Neuromuscular Disorders of Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence: A clinician's approach (2014).

Ryan was awarded prizes for her research in neurology by the US Child Neurology Society in 2000, the American Academy of Neurology in 2002, and the XIth International Congress on Neuromuscular Disorders in 2006. In 2019, Ryan was awarded an Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Innovation Award for her impact in medical research.

In 2019 and 2023, Ryan was called as an expert witness to inquiries into the deaths of Kathleen Folbigg's children, where Ryan testified neurogenetic disorders may have been the cause of the death of Folbigg's son Patrick.

2022 election campaign

In the lead-up to the 2022 federal election, Monique Ryan responded to an advertisement in The Age calling for an independent candidate in the Division of Kooyong to unseat the federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who received an eight-percent swing against him at the previous election.

On 12 December 2021, Ryan launched her election campaign for Kooyong at Hawthorn Arts Centre. She was one of a number of centrist Teal independents who campaigned to unseat moderate Liberal Party MPs on the basis of a lack of action on climate change among other policies. Ryan had been a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) between 2007 and 2010, which led Frydenberg to characterise her as a "fake independent".

Ryan primarily campaigned on policies relating to climate change and anti-corruption. The Morrison government consistently opposed a federal anti-corruption commission or federal version of New South Wales' Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), which Prime Minister Morrison described as a "kangaroo court". Ryan and other teals campaigned on their support of a federal ICAC-like body and Ryan endorsed the ICAC model independent MP Helen Haines proposed.

Voices of Kooyong, an organisation former politics academic Ann Capling established, backed Ryan's campaign, which was reported to have 1,500 volunteers and more than 2,000 donors as of April 2022. Volunteers from Ryan's campaign canvassed every household in the electorate. The volunteer manager of Ryan's campaign was Rob Baillieu, son of former Premier of Victoria Ted Baillieu. Ted had previously campaigned for Frydenberg.

Around 3,700 individual donors contributed $1.84 million to Ryan's campaign and Climate 200, a climate advocacy organisation who contributed $5.96 million combined to the campaigns of teal candidates, contributed $749,000. Between January and March 2022, Ryan's campaign spent $86,700 on advertisements on Facebook. Frydenberg's campaign spending $57,359 on competing advertising over the same period. In total, Ryan's campaign spent $2.12 million and Frydenberg's spent around $2 million.

At a function on 2 May 2022, Frydenberg stated Ryan's mother-in-law had approached him in the street and said she would vote for him. Ryan initially stated the anecdote was untrue but later stated it was true and that drawing family members into the campaign was inappropriate. On 5 May, Ryan and Frydenberg participated in a televised debate hosted by Sky News in front of a live audience at Hawthorn Town Hall. During the debate, Ryan called Frydenberg the "Treasurer for New South Wales" (NSW), a criticism of the federal government's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic that was perceived to favour NSW over Victoria. By 6 May, Ryan's campaign it had issued more than 3,000 corflute signs and posters, enough for 1:25 houses in Kooyong. In early May, the walls of a pub at Kew junction were painted with a mural depicting Ryan but the painting was stopped on 13 May because the building's owner had not given permission.

On 19 May, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) announced individuals isolating with COVID-19 would be unable to vote in person and that the date to apply for telephone voting had already passed. This ruling prevented around 100,000 people from voting. In response, Ryan announced she would be taking Special Minister of State Ben Morton to the Federal Court of Australia to argue telephone voting should be allowed for all COVID-positive voters. Ryan crowdfunded to fund the court case and raised more than $73,000 by 9:30 pm that day. The court case did not proceed because on 20 May, the AEC announced telephone voting would be extended to all who required it.

When polls closed on the day of the election, 21 May, Ryan was initially convinced she had no chance of victory, thinking Frydenberg was "a bridge too far" to defeat. As the results were reported, however, Ryan's chances of winning continued to increase. Three hours later, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) election expert Antony Green stated Frydenberg would not get more than 43% of the two-candidate vote. At 10:30 pm, Ryan delivered a speech to her supporters, saying: "Kooyong, our climate has changed". Frydenberg stated he would not concede defeat because it was still "mathematically possible" for him to win. On 22 May, with around 71% of the vote counted, Ryan was projected to win with 54% of the two-candidate vote. On 23 May, Frydenberg telephoned Ryan to concede defeat. Ryan described the telephone call as "respectful" but stated in The Teal Revolution Frydenberg refused to say "congratulations" and told Ryan her campaign "was not really run in the right spirit".

Ryan won the seat of Kooyong, receiving 52.9% of the two-candidate vote. Ryan said her first priority would be action on climate change.

Member of Parliament

In June 2022, Monique Ryan reported incidents in which her supporters had received letters containing threats and abuse to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Ryan gave her first speech to Parliament on 28 July.

Dispute with Sally Rugg

After winning the seat of Kooyong at the 2022 election, Ryan hired Sally Rugg as chief of staff. Disagreements about Rugg's working hours and responsibilities. arose. Further incidents, which Rugg alleged amounted to hostile conduct in the workplace, also arose. In January 2023, Rugg resigned as Ryan's chief of staff and a court application was lodged alleging a breach of Fair Work Australia's (FWA) general protections. Rugg stated she had been forced to work excessive hours and that Ryan had justified this by saying she wished to be prime minister one day. Ryan publicly disagreed with these statements and stated she was joking about becoming prime minister. After failures at mediation, the case was set to proceed to trial. Justice Debra Mortimer denied an injunction for reinstatement. Legal academics anticipated the case as potentially of precedent value for Australian employment law; Ryan argued her court case with Sally Rugg demonstrated the crossbench required more staff. Staffing numbers for the crossbench were reduced in June 2022. On 8 May 2023, the dispute was resolved when Rugg accepting a settlement of A$100,000 with no admission of fault and all parties paying their own costs.

Beetaloo Basin fracking project

In June 2023, Ryan stated her opposition to fracking projects in the Northern Territory (NT) and endorsed a letter written by paediatricians that opposed fracking in the Beetaloo Basin. In response to criticism from Ryan and other crossbench MPs, NT resource minister Natasha Fyles gave a speech at the National Press Club characterising critics of fracking projects as "teals and trolls". Ryan and independent senator David Pocock criticised the speech.

Julian Assange

Monique Ryan has called for the release of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen who was being held in HM Prison Belmarsh in London, UK, while appealing a US extradition order to face charges there. In September 2023, Ryan travelled to Washington, D.C., as part of a cross-party parliamentary delegation, which also included Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, to lobby US politicians for their government to cease its campaign to extradite Assange.

Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Ryan supported the unsuccessful campaign to create an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which was voted upon in the October 2023 referendum, and stated she was proud a majority (60.68%) of Kooyong residents voted Yes. During the campaign, Ryan criticised comments made by opposition leader Peter Dutton, who claimed there was a "skew" towards the Yes side in the counting of referendum votes.

2023 Israel-Palestine conflict

On 13 October 2023, following Palestinian terrorist group Hamas's attack against Israel, Ryan attended a pro-Israel rally in Caulfield, Melbourne. On 17 October, Ryan voted in favour of a parliamentary resolution that condemned Hamas's attack. The Greens proposed an amendment to the resolution, adding a statement that said Parliament also condemned "war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel, including the bombing of Palestinian civilians", which Ryan voted against. Fellow teal independents Kylea Tink and Sophie Scamps voted in favour of the amendment, which was not successful. The resolution passed with the support of the government, opposition, and several crossbenchers. On 3 November, Ryan called for a "humanitarian pause" in the conflict, describing the "human suffering in Gaza" as "intolerable". In response, the principal of a Jewish school in the electorate of Kooyong published an open letter criticising Ryan for not mentioning Israeli suffering in her statements.

Stage three tax cuts

Stage three tax cuts, the final tranche of personal income-tax reforms legislated by the former Coalition government, were due to take effect in July 2024. In October 2023, Ryan, along with crossbenchers Senator David Pocock and MP Dai Le, stated she opposed the stage-three cuts which would mostly benefit middle-to high-income earners. Ryan stated cancelling the tax cuts would allow for the doubling of funding for rent assistance.

In January 2024, in response to the government considering modifying the tax cuts, Ryan stated she welcomed changes being made and said the 37% tax bracket should be maintained. The changes made to stage three announced by the government included keeping the 37% tax bracket.

Electric vehicles

In October 2023, Ryan stated her opposition to an electric vehicle tax, such as the one that had been introduced in Victoria, as a distance-based charge to recoup lost government revenue from petrol excise. The High Court of Australia struck down Victoria's legislated tax as unconstitutional. Ryan said there should fair application of road-use charges to all vehicles.

Anti-corruption legislation

In November 2023, to address political lobbying in Australia, Ryan introduced a private member's bill entitled Lobbying (Improving Government Honesty and Trust) Bill 2023 to the House, and stated the bill came from a need to "clean up politics", saying: "our current lobbying rules are toothless and ineffective". The Human Rights Law Centre praised the bill and called it "the most ambitious proposal to regulate lobbying put before federal parliament in decades".

Airlines

In August 2023, it was reported Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's son had been granted access to the exclusive Qantas Chairman's Lounge, leading to public discussions of Qantas's influence on politicians. It was also reported the heads of several regulators overseeing Qantas and other airlines were also provided with complimentary access to the lounges. In September, Ryan and other MPs gave up their access to the exclusive area at Canberra Airport, citing concerns such access was a lobbying tool.

In November 2023, Ryan called for a "mandatory compensation scheme" for passengers whose flights are cancelled without warning, and stated Australian airlines were behaving as a "mafia of the skies".

Health policy

In August 2023, Ryan signed a complaint the Cancer Council of Western Australia (WA) submitted to the Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code panel (ABAC). The complaint related to ABAC's approval of advertising for "Hard Solo", an alcoholic version of the Australian soft drink Solo. Following the complaint, ABAC found the code had been breached and Asahi Breweries renamed the product "Hard Rated".

Environmental policy

In January 2024, Ryan, along with other teals, opposed the Victorian state government's plans for the construction of a wind farm in the port of Hastings over concerns of damage to wetlands. The federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek vetoed the project.

Personal life

Monique Ryan is a supporter of the Carlton Football Club. She lives in Hawthorn, Victoria, with her son, her two step-children and her husband Peter, a health products executive.

Selected publications

Select publications include the following:

  • Nemaline myopathy: a clinical study of 143 cases (2001) MM Ryan, C Schnell, CD Strickland, LK Shield, G Morgan, ST Iannaccone, et al. Annals of Neurology: Official Journal of the American Neurological. 50:3. 312–320.
  • Clinical course correlates poorly with muscle pathology in nemaline myopathy (2003) MM Ryan, B Ilkovski, CD Strickland, C Schnell, D Sanoudou, C Midgett, ... Neurology 60 (4), 665–673.
  • Guillain–Barré syndrome in childhood (2005) MM Ryan. Journal of paediatrics and child health 41 (5–6), 237–241.
  • Mobile arm supports in Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a pilot study of user experience and outcomes (2021) A Cruz, L Callaway, M Randall, M Ryan. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology 16 (8), 880–889.
  • McDonald CM, Henricson EK, Abresch RT, Duong T, Joyce NC, Hu F, Clemens PR, Hoffman EP, Cnaan A, Gordish-Dressman H; CINRG Investigators. Long-term effects of glucocorticoids on function, quality of life, and survival in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a prospective cohort study. Lancet. 2017 Nov 22. pii: S0140–6736(17)32160–8.
  • Finkel RS, Mercuri E, Darras BT, Connolly AM, Kuntz NL, Kirschner J, Chiriboga CA, Saito K, Servais L, Tizzano E, Topaloglu H, Tulinius M, Montes J, Glanzman AM, Bishop K, Zhong ZJ, Gheuens S, Bennett CF, Schneider E, Farwell W, De Vivo DC; ENDEAR Study Group. Nusinersen versus Sham Control in Infantile-Onset Spinal Muscular Atrophy. N Engl J Med. 2017;377: 1723–1732.

Footnotes

References

Parliament of Australia
Preceded by Member for Kooyong
2022–present
Incumbent

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Monique Ryan Early lifeMonique Ryan Medical careerMonique Ryan 2022 election campaignMonique Ryan Member of ParliamentMonique Ryan Personal lifeMonique Ryan Selected publicationsMonique Ryan FootnotesMonique Ryan

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