Gay immigrant could become conservative Australia's next foreign minister | IOL News

Sydney - When Australia's prime minister appointed lawyer Penny Ying-Yen Wong as its main envoy on climate issues 12 years ago, the backlash was stinging.

A Labor victory would make Wong, 50, a top candidate to become foreign minister and inherit a host of complicated issues, including how to deal with growing Chinese influence and investment in Australia. "It says something about the diverse, multicultural, confident nation that we are," Wong told the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank, about her own political success.

When a far-right Australian politician came to prominence in 1996 by opposing immigrants from Asia, Wong's father called her from Malaysia and asked if she would be forced to leave, she said in a speech last week in Sydney. But in 2007, when then-prime minister Kevin Rudd appointed her to negotiate global climate change agreements, it was seen as a daring move given her ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Wong and Allouache have two young daughters, Hannah and Alexandra. Wong opposed same-sex marriage a decade ago, in line with her party's position. She later changed position and voted for legalization in 2017.

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