In 2016, Linda Burney became the first Aboriginal-Australian woman to be elected to the House of Representatives. The "proud member" of the Wiradjuri nation also served for 13 years in the NSW Parliament. Burney, a mother of two, is the Labor shadow minister for Families and Social Services and the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians. Born in 1957, Burney began her working life as a teacher in Western Sydney, and in 2002 Charles Sturt University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in Education. “I have to say I hadn’t fully appreciated how happy and proud this would make thousands of people,” she said at the time of her Federal Election win in 2016. “I have had thousands of messages from around Australia.”
