Andrew Bragg

Bragg was born in Melbourne[1] and grew up in Shepparton, Victoria.[3] He played for the Congupna Football Club.[4] He attended local Catholic schools before going on to study accounting at the Australian National University.[3] Bragg's father and three of his grandparents were born in the United Kingdom, and he was a British citizen by descent until renouncing it in December 2017.[1]

Bragg is a trained accountant who worked in internal audit at Ernst & Young.[5]

He then served seven years at the Financial Services Council first in superannuation and asset management policy and later as head of policy.[3]

From 2014-2016, Bragg served as Director of Policy & Global Markets at the Financial Services Council. He worked to establish two key pieces of industry self-regulation: a superannuation governance standard and the Trowbridge Review & the inaugural Life Insurance Consumer Code of Practice.[6][7]

In November 2016 he became the policy director of the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal Party think tank.[8] He became the executive director of the Business Council of Australia in August 2017.[9]

During the period he worked for the Financial Services Council, Bragg completed a Master of Financial Regulation from Macquarie University.[10]

Prior to the 2016 federal election, Bragg was an unsuccessful Liberal preselection candidate for both the Senate ticket in New South Wales and the Division of Murray in Victoria.[3][4]

In April 2017, following the resignation of Tony Nutt, Bragg was appointed as the acting federal director of the Liberal Party. He was considered an ally of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. However, he was not chosen to fill the position permanently.[3] Later in the year, he was the national director of the Liberals & Nationals for Yes campaign during the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.[5]

Bragg was a candidate for Liberal preselection at the 2018 Wentworth by-election, caused by Turnbull's retirement from parliament. He was considered the frontrunner for a period, but withdrew from the race due to concerns that the preselection of a male candidate would be poorly received. He stated that "the Liberal Party should preselect a woman and my withdrawal can pave the way".[11]

In 2018, Bragg won preselection on the Coalition's Senate ticket.[12] He was elected to the Senate at the 2019 federal election.[2]

Bragg contributes to the The Australian Financial Review, The Daily Telegraph and The Australian and appears on the ABC and Sky News.[13] He is the author of Fit for Service (2017),[14] the essay "Scrap Iron for Japan" in Paul Ritchie's Forgotten People Updated (2018),[15] and Bad Egg: How to Fix Super (2020).[16]

In March 2020 Bragg tested positive for coronavirus as part of a cluster of cases associated with a wedding.[17]

Bragg is a Grand Commander in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia's Order of Christ-loving. He was awarded the honour by Archbishop Makarios after assisting the archbishop to obtain Australian permanent residency. He is reportedly "the first non-Greek and non-Orthodox person to receive the highest honour that the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia can bestow".[18]

• Andrew Bragg on Twitter