Australia’s new government sworn in yesterday includes a record 13 women, including the first female Muslim to serve in the role and the second indigenous person named indigenous affairs minister.
The ceremony conducted by Australian Governor-General David Hurley in the capital, Canberra, came 11 days after new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese led the center-left Labor Party to an election victory over the incumbent conservatives.
“Proud to lead an inclusive government that is as diverse as Australia itself,” Albanese wrote on Twitter. “Welcome to all these new Labor members.”
Photo: AP
Australian Minister for Youth Anne Aly and Australian Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic are the first two Muslims to serve in the Cabinet.
Linda Burney became the first woman and only the second indigenous person to serve as minister for indigenous affairs.
Albanese and Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) were sworn in early last week so they could fly to Tokyo for a summit with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Of the 30 ministers appointed to the new government, nearly half are women.
Women also hold a record 10 spots out of 23 in core Cabinet roles.
With some votes still to be counted from last month’s election, the Labor Party has secured enough seats to hold an outright majority in the 150-seat Australian House of Representatives.
Albanese’s Cabinet includes some new faces, as well as some lawmakers who served in the previous Labor government that last held power nine years ago.
“We have an overflow of talent on our side of the parliament,” Albanese said, adding that “it’s the most experienced incoming Labor government in our history since federation.”
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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