- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Daniel Mookhey has created history by becoming the first person of Indian origin and Hindu to become treasurer in the political history of Australia by taking up the post in the province of New South Wales on Tuesday (28).
The 41-year-old took his oath on the holy Bhagavad Gita and his wife Tamsin Lloyd, a communications specialist and director of communications for Australian minister Tanya Plibersek. Mookhey also became the first Australian minister to swear on the holy scripture. He also became the minister for the gig economy.
In a statement, Mookhey, a Labour leader, said, “I am incredibly honoured and humbled to be the first Australian Minister, state or federally, to take my oath of allegiance on the Bhagavad Gita. This is only possible because Australia is so open and so welcoming to the contributions of people like my parents, who I was thinking about a lot as I took my oath earlier today,” The Australia Today reported.
Mookhey was also among six ministers who took oath along with Chris Minns who was sworn in as the 47th premier of New South Wales.
Deputy Labor Leader Pru Car was also sworn in as the deputy premier of NSW.
Mookhey, who was born to immigrants from India’s Punjab in Blacktown in New South Wales, was elected to the province’s legislative council in 2015 and at that time, too, he took oath on the Bhagavad Gita during his swearing-in ceremony.
In 2018, he was appointed as the shadow cabinet secretary and he served in that post till July 2019. He then became the shadow minister for finance and small business and shadow treasurer in 2021.
The new New South Wales parliament will have the most number of Indian-origin members ever in its history. Indian-Australians currently constitute around three per cent of Australia’s population. According to the latest ABS census, India was the birthplace of the second-largest group of overseas-born living in Australia (710,000 India born) while 783,958 said they had Indian ancestry, The Australia Today reported.
Australia is also home to more than 680,000 Hindus with Hinduism being its third-largest faith.
