Labor MP Peta Murphy has died aged 50 after a battle with breast cancer.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced her passing this afternoon, saying that she died at home with her family.
“Every one of us in the Labor family is broken hearted,” he said in a message to social media.
“Peta Murphy was the strongest of local members, the most inspiring of colleagues and the very best kind of friend.”
Murphy represented the Victorian seat of Dunkley for the Labor Party.
Murphy was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, while acting as a junior counsel on a murder trial. After being elected in 2019, she used her first speech to parliament to reveal she’d learnt just two weeks prior that the cancer had returned.
“While Peta’s was a life so very well lived, it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t with us for longer,” Albanese said.
“My deepest condolences to Peta’s loved ones and all those who had the privilege of knowing her. May you always carry the glow of her in your hearts.”
Murphy helped lead the charge for reforms around online gambling, advocated for a national registry for metastatic cancer patients, and was an active member of the parliament’s inquiries into the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Since the news broke, tributes have been pouring out for Murphy, who had still been working up until the past week.
“Even before she entered parliament, Peta was respected in Victoria as a fighter for people’s rights,” he said on X (formerly Twitter).
“We’re all poorer without her,” he said.
“Our condolences to her family, friends and the broader Labor movement.”
Leader of the Nationals David Littleproud said the party was “deeply saddened” by her passing.
“The Member for Dunkley was brave, inspiring and courageous in her health battle and never wavered from her commitment to Parliament and the community,” he wrote in a statement.
“Peta was a fighter in both a Parliamentary and a personal sense and will be missed by all members.”
Labor minister Anika Wells said Murphy was her “exceptional friend”.
“Immortality sat uncomfortably, concurrently sentient of the injustice she was being cut down in the prime of her life, with a humility that resisted the adoration people constantly wanted to express for her,” she wrote on Instagram.
“A disposition for intellectual openness, a generosity for the maltreated, a fierceness loving those lucky enough to be loved by her.”
Her death means a by-election will need to be held for the Dunkley seat. She is survived by her husband Rod.
The post ‘The Bravest MP I Ever Met’: Tributes Flow For Labor’s Peta Murphy, Who Died Age 50 appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
