Monique Marie Ryan (born 20 January 1967) is an Australian politician and former paediatric neurologist. She is currently the independent Member of Parliament for the Division of Kooyong, Victoria, having won the seat at the 2022 federal election and retaining it in 2025.
Ryan completed her medical qualifications in Melbourne and Sydney, and Boston, Massachusetts, United States. She became director of neurology at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital in 2014. During her medical career, Ryan has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and supervised several clinical trials for neurological diseases.
In the 2022 federal election, Ryan became an independent candidate for the Division of Kooyong; Climate 200 and a number of individual donors supported her. Ryan's campaign heavily focused on climate change, anti-corruption, and the Government of Australia's management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ryan has been classified by the media as being a Teal independent. The campaigns of Ryan and her main opponent, incumbent Liberal member Josh Frydenberg, were estimated to have spent over A$2 million each. Ryan's campaign featured significant community involvement, with more than 1,500 volunteers canvassing the electorate and 2,000 individual donors. Ryan won Kooyong at the 2022 federal election with 52.9% of the after-preferences vote, and retained the seat at the 2025 federal election with a swing against her.
Since entering parliament, Ryan has advocated for a range of issues, and proposed a private member's bill to improve integrity in government. She has been particularly vocal on issues of climate change, health, and anti-corruption policy. Ryan has also been prominent in calling for reforms in the HECS system, and created a petition on the issue that gained more than 260,000 signatures. Her proposed changes were adopted by the Albanese government in May 2024.
Early life Monique Marie Ryan was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on 20 January 1967. She has a twin sister and is one of seven children born to Maurice and Marguerite Ryan. Her father was a telecommunications executive and her mother was a charity worker who served as CEO of the Christian Brothers Foundation, and founded Women for Women in Africa, a charity supporting the Kibera slum in Kenya.
Ryan grew up in the Melbourne suburbs Caulfield North, Toorak and Hawthorn. She attended Loreto Mandeville Hall, Toorak, graduating as dux in 1984.
Medical career
Ryan studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and graduated in 1991. She then underwent paediatric training in Sydney and completed a neurology residency at the Children's Hospital Boston in Massachusetts, United States, and also completed a neurophysiology fellowship at the Lahey Clinic in the same US state."Professor Monique Ryan" The Royal Children's Hospital. Retrieved 20 January 2022 In 2015, she became director of neurology at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, where she supervised 45 people and had a research budget of , and was appointed as head of the RCH's neuromuscular clinic and neuromuscular research unit.
Ryan has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has overseen a number of clinical trials for neuromuscular diseases, including ones for Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy. Her publications have over 10,000 citations and she has an H-index of 50, which is a measure of the impact of her research. She was joint editor of the textbook Neuromuscular Disorders of Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence: A clinician's approach (2014).
Ryan was awarded prizes for her research in neurology by the US Child Neurology Society in 2000, the American Academy of Neurology in 2002, and the XIth International Congress on Neuromuscular Disorders in 2006. In 2019, Ryan was awarded an Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Innovation Award for her impact in medical research.
In 2019 and 2023, Ryan was called as an expert witness to inquiries into the deaths of Kathleen Folbigg's children, where Ryan testified neurogenetic disorders may have been the cause of the death of Folbigg's son Patrick.
Political career 2022 election campaign
In the lead-up to the 2022 federal election, Monique Ryan responded to an advertisement in The Age calling for an independent candidate in the Division of Kooyong to unseat the federal treasurer and deputy leader of the Liberal party, Josh Frydenberg, who had received an eight-percent swing against him at the previous election. Ryan had no previous political experiencewhether in university, community or local council politicsand stated that she was motivated to stand for election due to "a rising sense of desperation" around climate policy, as well as the government's attitude towards women.
On 12 December 2021, Ryan launched her election campaign for Kooyong at Hawthorn Arts Centre. She was one of a number of centrist "teal independents" who campaigned to unseat moderate Liberal Party MPs on the basis of a lack of action on climate change among other policies. Ryan had been a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) between 2007 and 2010, which led Frydenberg to characterise her as a "fake independent". Ryan has stated she had never attended any party meetings and had quit Labor in 2010 due to dissatisfaction with their policies regarding climate change.
Ryan campaigned primarily on policies relating to climate change and anti-corruption. The Morrison government consistently opposed a federal anti-corruption commission or federal version of New South Wales' Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), which Prime Minister Morrison described as a "kangaroo court". Ryan and other teals campaigned on their support of a federal ICAC-like body and Ryan endorsed the ICAC model independent MP Helen Haines proposed.
Voices of Kooyong, an organisation established by former politics academic Ann Capling, backed Ryan's campaign, which was reported to have 1,500 volunteers and more than 2,000 donors as of April 2022. Volunteers from Ryan's campaign canvassed every household in the electorate. The volunteer manager of Ryan's campaign was Rob Baillieu, son of former Premier of Victoria Ted Baillieu. Ted had previously campaigned for Frydenberg.
Around 3,700 individual donors contributed $1.84 million to Ryan's campaign and Climate 200, a climate advocacy organisation which contributed $5.96 million combined to the campaigns of teal candidates, contributed $749,000. Between January and March 2022, Ryan's campaign spent $86,700 on advertisements on Facebook. Frydenberg's campaign spending $57,359 on competing advertising over the same period. In total, Ryan's campaign spent $2.12 million and Frydenberg's spent around $2 million.
At a function on 2 May 2022, Frydenberg stated that Ryan's mother-in-law had approached him in the street and said she would vote for him. Ryan initially stated that the anecdote was untrue but later stated that it was true and that drawing family members into the campaign was inappropriate. On 5 May, Ryan and Frydenberg participated in a televised debate hosted by Sky News in front of a live audience at Hawthorn Town Hall. During the debate, Ryan called Frydenberg the "Treasurer for New South Wales" (NSW), a criticism of the federal government's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic that was perceived to favour NSW over Victoria. By 6 May, Ryan's campaign said it had issued more than 3,000 corflute signs and posters, enough for 1:25 houses in Kooyong. In early May, the walls of a pub at Kew junction were painted with a mural depicting Ryan, but the painting was stopped on 13 May because the building's owner had not given permission.
On 19 May, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) announced that individuals isolating with COVID-19 would be unable to vote in person and that the date to apply for telephone voting had already passed. This ruling prevented around 100,000 people from voting. In response, Ryan announced she would be taking Special Minister of State Ben Morton to the Federal Court of Australia to argue that telephone voting should be allowed for all COVID-positive voters. Ryan crowdfunded to fund the court case and raised more than $73,000 by 9:30pm that day. The case did not proceed, because on 20 May the AEC announced that telephone voting would be extended to all who required it.
When polls closed on the day of the election, 21 May, Ryan was initially convinced she had no chance of victory, thinking Frydenberg was "a bridge too far" to defeat. As the results were reported, however, Ryan's chances of winning continued to increase. Three hours later, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) election expert Antony Green stated that Frydenberg would not get more than 43% of the two-candidate vote. At 10:30pm, Ryan delivered a speech to her supporters, saying: "Kooyong, our climate has changed". Frydenberg stated he would not concede defeat because it was still "mathematically possible" for him to win. On 22 May, with around 71% of the vote counted, Ryan was projected to win with 54% of the two-candidate vote. On 23 May, Frydenberg telephoned Ryan to concede defeat. Ryan described the telephone call as "respectful" but stated in The Teal Revolution Frydenberg refused to say "congratulations" and told Ryan her campaign "was not really run in the right spirit". Frydenberg was the first treasurer to lose his seat since Ted Theodore at the 1931 federal election.
Ryan won the seat of Kooyong, receiving 52.9% of the two-candidate vote. Ryan said her first priority would be action on climate change.
In June, supporters of Ryan in Kooyong received letters containing threats and abuse in response to Ryan's election. Ryan reported these to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
First term (2022–2025) Ryan's election made her the 1230th member elected to the House of Representatives, the eighth member representing Kooyong, and the first woman to represent Kooyong.
Ryan gave her first speech to Parliament on 28 July 2022. In it, she called for strong action on climate change, the establishment of a national integrity commission, legislation to enforce truth in political advertising, transparency in political donations, and other measures to strengthen integrity in the political system.
After winning the seat of Kooyong at the 2022 election, Ryan hired Sally Rugg as chief of staff. Disagreements about Rugg's working hours and responsibilities arose. Further incidents, which Rugg alleged amounted to hostile conduct in the workplace, also arose. In January 2023, Rugg resigned as Ryan's chief of staff and a court application was lodged alleging a breach of Fair Work Australia's (FWA) general protections. Rugg stated she had been forced to work excessive hours and that Ryan had justified this by saying she wished to be prime minister one day. Ryan publicly disagreed with these statements and stated she was joking about becoming prime minister. After failures at mediation, the case was set to proceed to trial. Justice Debra Mortimer denied an injunction for reinstatement. Legal academics anticipated the case as potentially of precedent value for Australian employment law; Ryan argued her court case with Sally Rugg demonstrated the crossbench required more staff. Staffing numbers for the crossbench were reduced in June 2022. On 8 May 2023, the dispute was resolved when Rugg accepting a settlement of A$100,000 with no admission of fault and all parties paying their own costs.