| Intro | Australian politician |
| Is |
Politician Accountant Lawyer |
| From |
Australia Kenya |
| Type |
Finance Law Politics |
| Gender | female |
| Birth |
23 September 1962, Nyeri District |
| Age | 58 years |
| Politics | Family First Party |
Lucy Muringo Gichuhi (née Munyiri) (English: ) (born 23 September 1962) is an Australian politician who is a Senator for South Australia, sitting as an independent. She was declared to have been elected at the 2016 election for the Family First Party following a special recount on 13 April 2017 ordered by the High Court of Australia, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, following its decision that Bob Day had not been eligible to stand for election.
Before politics
Gichuhi grew up in the village of Hiriga in the Nyeri County in rural Kenya. Between school, she worked to gather food from the garden or help milk the family’s cows.
Gichuhi is the first of her father Justus Weru Munyiri’s ten children. Her father and brother still live in her ancestral home in Hiriga village in Mathira East sub-county Nyeri.
She moved to Nairobi where she trained as an accountant at the University of Nairobi. She was an accountant with various auditing firms before moving to South Australia in 1999 with her husband William and three children. She worked at Ernst and Young and the South Australian Auditor-General’s department developing programs for migrants and international students. She completed a Bachelor of Law from the University of South Australia in 2015. Prior to her appointment to the Senate, she was volunteering as a lawyer for the Women’s Legal Service.
Election
Bob Day had been the first-ranked candidate on the Family First Party ticket at the election on 2 July 2016, with Gichuhi the second and only other (a ticket—with its advantage of attracting votes above the line, which is how most electors vote—requires a minimum of two candidates). The party received 24,817 votes above the line; below the line, Day received 5,495 votes and Gichuhi 152. Following Day’s disqualification, at the direction of the High Court the Australian Electoral Commission performed a special recount, in which Day was excluded and all of the party’s votes above the line were distributed to Gichuhi with the result that she was deemed to have been elected. Gichuhi was sworn in as a Senator when the Parliament next met, on 9 May 2017. Her election and her Senatorial term are dated from the High Court’s decision on 19 April 2017.
Citizenship
Senator Gichuhi was born in Kenya and is the first person of Black African descent to be elected to the Australian Parliament.
Before her election, a question was raised in the court about Gichuhi’s eligibility on citizenship grounds. However this was not an issue as Kenya did not allow dual citizenship and she became an Australian citizen in July 2001, two years after her arrival in 1999. The Constitution of Kenya that was current at the time meant that any person who voluntarily applied for the citizenship elsewhere lost his or her Kenyan citizenship. Since 2010, Kenya has allowed dual citizenship; however, people who had lost their citizenship under the old law are required to apply if they wish to regain it. The High Court rejected the Australian Labor Party’s challenge to her eligibility.
Party status
On 25 April 2017, Family First announced it was merging with the Australian Conservatives party founded by Cory Bernardi. Gichuhi told the leaders of both parties that she had no intention of joining the Conservatives, and would sit as an Independent when Family First was disbanded. The Senate counts her as Family First Party up to 3 May 2017 and as Independent from that date.
Political views
Despite having grown up in rural Kenya, Gichuhi says that the concept of poverty never entered her mind, and she is firmly against government handouts as she believes “they create victims and nobody wins”. She said her Christian faith was the backbone of her political beliefs, but strongly supports freedom of religion.