Jill Hennessy

Jill Hennessy has been a Labor Party Member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly since February 2010, representing the seat of Altona. She was minister for health in the Daniel Andrews ministry from December 2014 to November 2018, and was attorney-general from November 2018 to December 2020—the second female attorney-general in Victoria’s history. On 16 December 2020, she announced she would step down from the role of attorney-general, effective immediately, to spend more time with her family, but would stay in parliament and recontest her seat at the next federal election. Hennessy graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. She also holds a Master of Laws degree from the University of Melbourne. In 2016, she was awarded the Thornett Award for Promotion of Reason by the Australian Skeptics, for ‘courageously facing down those who misrepresent and mislead the public in their promotion of dodgy medical claims and practices’.