Parliamentary Friends of Microbiology - Written by Peter Traynor

I had the great pleasure of being in the Australian Parliament House in Canberra on Monday this week for the inaugural meeting of the Parliamentary Friends of Microbiology. This has been a pet project starting six years ago; not without a couple of hiccups along the way (including the emergency response to the pandemic, where all Friends groups meetings were suspended. Irony was not lost on us all). It was enormously satisfying to see this finally come to fruition to this next stage.  

Co-Chairs Steve Georganas (Member for Adelaide) and The Hon. Warren Entsch MP (member for Leichardt) were on hand to address and welcome numerous Federal Parliamentary Members and Senators (and their staff and advisors) to the gathering, which included three microbiology professors from the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) and myself as the organiser. A great visibility for the discipline, an enormous wealth of support for the science, and a great appreciation for the work done by microbiologists - especially as reflected in the visibility of the response to the pandemic.  

Prof. Mark Schembri (Uni Queensland, President ASM), Prof. Dena Lyras (Monash University, immediate past President ASM), Julian Cox (Uni New South Wales), Sarah Aspinall and myself mingled with esteemed guests including Minister for Trade Senator Hon. Don Farrell as well as multiple Members and Senators and their staff, plus the Parliamentary co-chairs. A dozen others had provided their apologies that they could not be there on the night....sitting days in Parliament, there are a hundred and one things going on, so we were very pleased to have the presence of those who could attend.  

All in all, a great and wonderful promotion of microbiology, with the warmest congratulations to the microbiological discipline from our Federal Parliamentarians and their staff.

Convenor’s welcome speech

ASM President Mark Schembri’s speech