Michael Moore (Australian politician)

Michael John Moore AM (born 2 April 1950) is an Australian public health leader, academic and former politician. He was an independent member of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly for four terms, from 1989 to 2001. He served as Australia's first independent minister as Minister for Health and Community Care from 1998 to 2001 in the Liberal minority government led by Chief Minister, Kate Carnell and later, Gary Humphries.^[1]

Moore holds a post-graduate diploma in education, a master's degree in population health, and a PhD from the University of Canberra. His master's degree in population health is from the Australian National University in 1997. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, a visiting professor at the University of Technology, Sydney and an adjunct professor with the University of Canberra.^[2]

Before politics, Moore was a high school teacher at Dickson College, and an Army reservist.^{[citation needed]}

In 1989, Moore was elected as a Residents Rally member to the first multi-member single-constituency unicameral ACT Legislative Assembly. No party had won a majority, and Rosemary Follett's Labor Party formed a minority government. He was re-elected for a second term at the single-constituency 1992 general election with Helen Szuty as part of the Michael Moore Independent Group, and at the 1995 and 1998 general elections as Moore Independents. He represented the electorate of Molonglo.

He was Minister for Housing, Corrections and Children's Services and was Manager of Government Business. He chaired the Australian Ministerial Councils for both Health and Corrections.^{[citation needed]}

Moore was a social progressive who was responsible for the legalisation of prostitution,^[3] the decriminalisation of cannabis^[4] and was a strong advocate for trialling the provision of heroin to dependent users.^[5] He was a joint founder of the Australian Parliamentary Group on Drug Law Reform,^[6] the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and sponsored the early meetings of the group Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform.^[7][8]

Since 2006, he has been a political and social columnist with the Canberra City News.^[9] From 2008 until 2018, Moore served as chief executive officer of the Public Health Association of Australia.^[10]