Katie Allen (politician)

Katie Allen FAHMS
Member of the Australian Parliament for Higgins
In office 18 May 2019 – 21 May 2022
Preceded by	Kelly O'Dwyer
Succeeded by	Michelle Ananda-Rajah
Personal details
Born	Katrina Jane Stephens (1966-02-24) 24 February 1966 Albury, New South Wales, Australia
Political party	Liberal
Spouse	Malcolm Allen
Children	4
Alma mater	Monash University University of Melbourne
Occupation	Medical researcher
Signature

Katrina Jane Allen (born 24 February 1966) is an Australian politician and former medical researcher who was a member of the House of Representatives from 2019 until 2022. She is a member of the Liberal Party and represented the Division of Higgins in Victoria.

Early life

Allen grew up in country New South Wales and went to boarding school at Melbourne Girls Grammar.

Her father was born on Ocean Island in the British colony of Gilbert and Ellice Islands (present-day Kiribati). She held British citizenship by descent until March 2019 when she renounced it to run for parliament.

Her mother was secretary of the Albury branch of the Liberal party. Her mother's side of the family are one of the most prominent winemaking families in Australia, with six generations making wine in Rutherglen. Allen's uncle is Mick Morris.

Allen studied medicine at Monash University, also undertaking research at the University of Cambridge, and subsequently trained as a doctor at the Alfred Hospital. She completed a Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne in 2002. Her doctoral thesis, titled "Liver cell transplantation using a mouse model of Wilson's disease", was on the use of liver cell transplantation to treat Wilson's disease.

Allen was one of eleven MPs in the 46th Parliament of Australia to hold a PhD, the others being Jim Chalmers, Fiona Martin, Anne Aly, Andrew Leigh, Daniel Mulino, Jess Walsh, Adam Bandt, Mehreen Faruqi, Anne Webster and Helen Haines.

Career

From 1998, Allen was employed as a paediatric allergist and gastroenterologist at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. After completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne in the development of liver cell transplantation as an alternative to whole organ transplantation, Dr Allen undertook Australia’s first liver cell transplantation in 2004, which was unsuccessful. She subsequently provided scientific evidence that liver cell transplantation was not yet ready for long-term clinical application. She has held professorial rank at the University of Melbourne and University of Manchester, and in 2013 was appointed director of the Centre of Food and Allergy Research at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI). Allen was the principal investigator for the MCRI's "HealthNuts" study, which is "the largest single-centre population based study of food allergy in children ever mounted". The study tracks 5,300 children who were diagnosed with food allergies as infants.

Allen has advocated for a wide range of preventive health care initiatives including better food labelling to help keep people with food allergy safe, dubbing Melbourne as “unfortunately the food allergy capital of the world”. Allen also led the national standardisation of Infant Feeding Guidelines in Australia.

In 2016, Allen was involved in research undertaken at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute which described a link between Asian migration to Australia and increased risk of food allergy. In 2017 she was featured on SBS Insight when she undertook Australia’s first paediatric Faecal Microbial Transplant.

Outside of her research, Allen has served as chair of the Melbourne Girls Grammar school council and as a director of Cabrini Health, a non-profit Catholic healthcare service.

In 2015 Allen was elected an Inaugural Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Politics

Allen was the Liberal candidate in Prahran at the 2018 Victorian state election, losing to the incumbent Greens MP Sam Hibbins. In February 2019, she won preselection for the Division of Higgins, replacing the retiring MP Kelly O'Dwyer. She retained the seat for the Liberals at the 2019 federal election despite suffering a six percent swing–enough to drop the Liberal majority to 53 percent, making Higgins a marginal seat for the first time. Notably, she was the first Liberal candidate in Higgins to come up short of a majority on the first count, like several blue ribbon Liberal seats in inner cities around Australia.

Allen was sworn in as the Member for Higgins at the Opening of the 46th Parliament in Canberra, making her First Speech on 29 July 2019, where she spoke about ensuring a healthy and educated start to life for the next generation, an environmentally and economically sustainable future for all, lower taxes and a strong economy. Allen also noted familial ties to Margaret Bondfield – a British suffragette and the UK’s first woman cabinet minister as Minister for Labour.

Allen sat on the Parliamentary Standing Committees for Trade and Investment; the National Broadband Network; the Parliamentary Library; Industry, Innovation, Science and Resources and Communications and the Arts, and was a member of the National Redress Scheme Implementation Committee and Working Group on Indigenous Recognition. Allen visited PNG in August 2019 as part of a Parliamentary tour hosted by the Save the Children and Gates Foundation in the context of the Morrison government Pacific Step.

Allen was also co convenor of the Parliamentary Friends of UNICEF, Parliamentary Friends of Child and Adolescent Health, Parliamentary Friends of Hemochromatosis, Parliamentary Friends of Young People and Parliamentary Friends of Cancer Care and Cure.

Allen was a member of the moderate faction of the Parliamentary Liberal Party.

2022 Federal Election Defeat

Allen was defeated at the 2022 Australian federal election by Labor's Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, with a 4.67% swing away from Allen.

Allen was the first Liberal candidate to lose the seat of Higgins since its creation in 1949, making Ananda-Rajah the first Labor MP for Higgins.

COVID-19 response

Allen served on the National COVID-19 Health and Research Advisory Committee, working to provide advice on Australia’s health response to the COVID-19 pandemic to the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer.

Policy interests

Beyond health, Allen advocated within the Liberal Party for stronger action on climate change. She is an advocate for nuclear energy in Australia. In 2019, she wrote an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald called "Keep an open mind about nuclear power for our carbon-neutral future".

Allen has been vocal on the need for education reform to support high achievers, support for rural GPs, Labor’s Medevac law, the prospect of tax on sugar-sweetened beverages the Liberal Party's Job Ready Graduate program, and support for LGBT rights.

Allen is a Zionist, and visited Israel in 2019 on a study trip paid for by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

On 10 February 2022, Allen crossed the floor with four other Liberal MPs for an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act to include protection for transgender students. However, reports said that Allen, together with fellow Liberal MP Dave Sharma, agreed to only cross the floor if their votes would not be decisive in defeating the Government on the issue. Allen did not join fellow Liberals Trent Zimmerman and Bridget Archer in crossing the floor against the bill’s controversial statements of belief clause. Ultimately Allen voted in favour of the final reading of the bill.

Personal life

Allen moved to the Higgins electorate in her teen years, and has lived in the affluent inner-city suburbs of Melbourne ever since. She grew up swimming at the Prahran Pool. Since 2004, Allen has lived in Toorak with her husband, Malcolm, who she has been married to for over 30 years. She met her husband in 1988 at the Melbourne Cup. She has four children, Monty, Jemima, Arabella and Archie.

Four generations of Allen's family went to Melbourne Girls Grammar, including Allen herself and her own children.

Allen and her husband own a holiday house in Point Lonsdale in Victoria. She is a member of the Point Lonsdale Tennis Club, the Point Lonsdale Surf Lifesaving Club, the Royal Children's Hospital Alpine Ski Club, the Albury Ski Club, the Lyceum Club of Melbourne and the Royal South Yarra Tennis Club.