Lidia Serafina Argondizzo (born 13 October 1960) is an Australian politician. She was the Labor Party (ALP) member of the

Victorian Legislative Council The Victorian Legislative Council (VLC) is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia, the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative Co ...

representing

Templestowe Province Templestowe Province was an electorate of the Victorian Legislative Council. It existed as a two-member electorate from 1967 to 2006, with members serving alternating eight-year terms. It was traditionally held by the Liberal Party, but was held b ...

from 2002 to 2006. Argondizzo was born in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, but immigrated to Australia as a child. She attended Preston Girls' High School and received an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from the

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1887 by Francis Ormond, RMIT began as a night school offering classes in art, scienc ...

. After graduating, she was employed by the Victorian Health Department for several years. It was during this period that Argondizzo was elected as a councillor in the

City of Northcote The City of Northcote was a local government area about northeast of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia. The city covered an area of , and existed from 1883 until 1994. History Prior to the 1880s land boom, Northcote had bee ...

in 1987.Member's Biography at Victorian Parliament website
She left the Health Department the following year to take up a position as an electorate officer for Giovanni Sgro, an ALP member of the Legislative Council was also in the Party's left-wing. In 1989, Argondizzo was elected mayor of the

, and got a job as an electorate officer with ALP Senator

Barney Cooney Bernard Cornelius Cooney (11 July 1934 – 9 February 2019) was an Australian politician. Cooney was born at Currie on King Island in Tasmania. His family moved to the regional Victorian town of Culgoa in 1937, and subsequently moved through se ...

. She continued on as a councillor until 1993. During this period, she made several unsuccessful attempts to secure ALP preselection for a seat in either State or Federal parliament. At one time she was a member of the splinter Left faction the Pledge Left, where she appeared likely to obtain preselection partly due to the support she received from her brother Frank Argondizzo, a then official at the Vehicle Builders Union. Tensions emerged within the Pledge Left about her candidacy and she was not selected as a result. She returned to the Socialist Left faction soon after. In 2002, she was chosen as the ALP candidate for the seat of Templestowe Province at the election due later that year. Templestowe was held by a margin of nearly six percent by Deputy Liberal Leader in the Upper House and Shadow Minister for Natural Resources and Energy Carlo Furletti. There was a large swing to the Labor Party at the state election and Argondizzo won as a result, making Furletti one of the major casualties of the election. She was appointed as the Government Whip in the Legislative Council after the election. She has served on the Library, Legislative Council Standing Orders and Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committees. The Legislative Council was substantially reformed in the leadup to the 2006 state election, and Argondizzo was one of eight incumbent Labor members forced to fit into one new, larger, electorate which would only return a maximum of three for Labor. As a relatively junior member of the government, she did not have priority for one of the winnable Legislative Council seats, and attempted to shift to the Legislative Assembly by contesting the Liberal-held marginal seat of

electoral district of Doncaster The Electoral district of Doncaster was a metropolitan electorate of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, located approximately 13 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. It was part of the Upper House Eastern Metropolitan Region and sat entirely ...

, then held by the retiring

Victor Perton Victor John Perton (born 2 December 1958) is a former parliamentarian in the Australian state of Victoria, and formerly the Victorian Government's Commissioner to the Americas, based in San Francisco, USA. Early life Perton was raised in Melbour ...

. She was defeated by

Mary Wooldridge Mary Louise Newling Wooldridge (born 29 July 1967) is a former Australian politician. She was a Liberal Party member of the Parliament of Victoria from 2006 to 2019. She was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, representing the seat ...

References

External links

Parliamentary biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Argondizzo, Lidia 1960 births Living people Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Victoria Members of the Victorian Legislative Council Australian politicians of Italian descent Mayors of places in Victoria (state) Women mayors of places in Victoria (state) 21st-century Australian politicians 21st-century Australian women politicians Women members of the Victorian Legislative Council