Peter Khalil (born 23 March 1973) is an Australian politician and the Labor Member for Wills in the Australian House of Representatives. Prior to entering parliament, Khalil worked as a consultant, the Victorian Multicultural Commissioner, the Director of Strategy at the Special Broadcasting Service, and a national security policy adviser to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Early life, education and tennis
Khalil's parents migrated to Australia from Egypt in 1970. Their experience, he says, shaped his later political outlook: "They were striving to seek a better life in Australia. They were seeking a life of security, and opportunity and prosperity." He gave credit to Prime Minister, Bob Hawke for the opportunities that opened up for his family once they had settled. As a child, he lived in public housing. After leaving school, Khalil competed on the international tennis circuit and was once ranked No 25 domestically for singles. In 1996 Khalil gained the degrees of BA and LL.B. from the University of Melbourne and in 2001 graduated as a Master of Laws in the field of international law at the Australian National University. He is a Coptic Christian.
Professional life
Prior to his time in Parliament, Khalil worked as a political risk and strategy consultant to government agencies and the corporate sector. Khalil worked as the Director of National Security Policy of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and as the assistant director of the Iraq Task Force of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He was executive director for SBS, and a Victorian multicultural commissioner where he worked to promote cultural diversity.
He then worked as National Security Adviser to Kevin Rudd while Leader of the Opposition and later as Prime Minister. Senior Adviser to Minister for Defence Joel Fitzgibbon in 2008. On the issue of asylum seekers coming to Australia, reports from the US Embassy in 2009 show that Khalil actively advised Rudd to "calmly and rationally put the issue in perspective", specifically "that there were about 60,000 cases of visa over-stayers per year, while only 1000 asylum seekers entered Australian waters by boat by that stage in 2009".
Khalil was a visiting fellow at the Centrist think tank, the Brookings Institution and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Centre for International Security. While working at the Brookings Institution, Khalil was an informant for the Embassy of the United States about internal Labor Party disputes surrounding refugee policy.
After leaving the private sector, Khalil worked as the Executive Director for Corporate Affairs, Strategy and Communications for the Special Broadcasting Service and as the Victorian Multicultural Commissioner.
Parliamentary service
Khalil was preselected as the Australian Labor Party candidate for the federal Division of Wills at the 2016 federal election. At the time there was some controversy that the party's affirmative action targets were not being reached. He won both the nomination and the election, becoming the new member for seat in the 2016 Australian federal election, succeeding Kelvin Thomson, and became the first Coptic Christian to be elected to Federal Parliament in Australia.
He was re-elected in the 2019 Australian federal election increasing his primary vote by 6%, despite a campaign against him from the Australian Greens, where he was labelled as a "war criminal", due to his involvement in the Iraq Task Force.
In the 2022 federal election Khalil strengthened his margin, by 0.1% to 58.6%, campaigning on his record of constituency work and the prospect of being a member of the next government. Joining Government benches for the first time, Khalil was appointed chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee for Intelligence and Security.
Political views
Housing
Khalil is proud of having been raised in public housing, writing in 2020 of how "affordable housing helped level the playing field, it offered us real equality of opportunity" and "helped me and others rise out of disadvantage". He is critical of federal government that it has allowed the level of public housing stock to slip since the 1990s. Equally, he was critical of state government authorities for the heavy handed lockdown that seemed to target public housing estates in Melbourne in July 2020 would only "entrench disadvantage".