Shockingly, Inga Peulich, a former Liberal state MP from Victoria, has passed away at the age of 67.
The news of her unexpected passing has reverberated throughout Australia.
Catholic and conservative, Peulich was an outspoken critic of the Safe Schools curriculum, which taught LGBTIQ+ issues, and of Melbourne’s contentious supervised injecting room for illicit drugs.
Peulich was an ardent supporter of the Liberal Party, ethnic groups in Melbourne’s southeast, and all of Victoria.
After holding positions as a teacher, local councilor, and president of the Victorian Parents of Children in Day Care, Peulich won her first election in the Bentleigh District in 1992 as a member of the Kennett Government with a 9.7 percent swing, defeating Labor.
From 2010 to 2014, she was a member of the Baillieu/Napthine administration, where she was the Secretary for Education.
During her time in opposition, she held the position of Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Wastewatch, Education and Communities, Multicultural Affairs, and Scrutiny of Government.
Current and past members of parliament were shocked to hear of her death.
She was a staunch opponent of euthanasia and abortion decriminalization and a vocal critic of drug-law reform efforts by Jeff Kennett, even while serving on the government benches.
Along with her opposition to social housing projects and anti-discrimination laws, she was also against expanding access to in vitro fertilization for single women and homosexual couples.
In her first public statement to Parliament in 1993, Peulich discussed how her family fled to Australia from a socialist country when she was ten years old. Her parents fled Bosnia in 1967 with just a few bags, a few little children, and nothing else. They departed from Yugoslavia because they despised a government that put state interests before the people’s rightful needs.
The cause of Peulich’s death is unknown at this time.