New England Online > Government & Politics > First Minister > Cassandra Yee
Cassandra Yee
| Cassandra Yee | |
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| Date of Birth: | 13 June 1985 |
| Place of Birth: | Manila, Philippines |
| Political Party: | United (2020-23) Dem Con (2023-26) SDLP (2026-32) |
| Religion: | Roman Catholic |
| Profession: | Civil Servant |
The Right Honourable Cassandra Gloria Yee KM EC (13 June 1985 - ), was First Minister of New England between the 3 - 20 August 2024 following the sudden death of Phillip Corbett. As the senior Deputy First Minister in the Corbett government, the King was obliged to offer a commission of office to Yee until the National Party could find a replacement. To date, Yee's term as First Minister is the shortest in New England's history.
Yee remains the youngest person ever to become First Minister, and was the first person born outside Australia or New England to fill the role of First Minister.
Early Life
Cassandra Gloria Yee was born to unknown parents in Manila on or about the 13 June 1985. The child was abandoned to a Roman Catholic monastery. Raised for six months by the church, the child was adopted by a Jim and Nancy Yee, a Chinese-Australian couple who had migrated to Australia from Hong Kong in the early 1980s.
The child was brought to Australia in 1986, and was raised as an Australian. In 1999, the Yee family moved to Coffs Harbour where they owned a small newsagency. Cassandra was educated at Coffs Harbour Primary and Orara High School between 1991 and 2003. In 2004 she enrolled to study a Bachelor of Business Studies at Southern Cross University in Lismore. Graduating in 2007 during the Civil War, Cassandra moved to Brisbane and was employed by the Queensland Department of Transport as a policy analyst.
In 2011 she married Joshua Harrison from Toowoomba. The couple relocated to Toowoomba after the wedding and Cassandra was employed as project officer with a the University of Southern Queensland between 2011 and 2015.
Early Political Career
In 2015, Yee and her family returned to New England, and settled in the Coffs Harbour hinterland at Coramba. Yee began working for Southern Cross Polytechnic as a Business Project Officer. She resigned the following year and began a long career in politics. In March 2016, Yee joined the United Party of New England and was prominent in the conservative faction of the party from the beginning. Within a month of joining she had assumed the leadership of the Coramba branch of the party and once her three month probation as up, Yee sought election to the party county executive. As part of this meteoric rise, in late 2016, she was elected to Fitzroyshire as a Thegn for Orara Valley.
After four years as a Thegn, Yee sought election to the House of Assembly in the 2020. She was elected as the Member for Orara Valley by a sizable margin. Yee served as a backbencher in the first government of Antonia Davidson. In 2023, disillusion with the coalition led to a split in the United Party, and Yee led a number of conservative members of the party on to the cross-benches. In the lead up to the 2024 general election, a majority elected to form the Democratic Conservative Party. In the election, the DCP won 14 seats and held the balance of power in the House of Assembly.
After protracted negotiation with both Davidson and the National Party leader Phillip Corbett, the DCP announced they would form a coalition with the Nationals. Yee was named Deputy First Minister and Minister of Conservation in the Corbett government.
First Minister
Corbett's time in office was brief. His health had been not been good for some years, with cancer having been diagnosed in 2022. But in desperation to get back into office, Corbett was the best chance for the National Party and so was made leader against the wishes of many, including Yee. After just 152 days as First Minister, Corbett died of a heart attack, likely brought on as a result of the desperate attempts by his doctors to treat the worsening condition. Corbett was the first leader to die in office, and the constitutional repercussions were instantaneous.
As the senior Deputy First Minister, Yee was the natural choice for the King to act as First Minister until the National Party could elect a leader. It would also free up the responsibilities of the other Deputy, Yvonne Gates and allow her to seek election without the animosity that would come from her being anointed by the King. The downside was that Yee was not popular amongst many National MPs who resented her extreme economic views, she also only commanded fourteen seats in the 75 seat House, and a Motion of No Confidence by the the Social Democrat opposition could have potentially brought the government down. It was only after guarantees by the National MPs to respect her leadership for the interim could King Michael appoint Yee as First Minister, which her did in the afternoon of the 3 August, some ten hours after Corbett's death.
For the next seventeen days, Yee led New England as First Minister. She was the youngest person ever to serve as First Minister, and the first person born overseas to fill the role. Her time in office was uneventful from the point of view of policy, with Yee acting in almost caretaker convention mode. The hostility of the National Party was obvious at the two Executive Council meetings held during Yee's time in office, with a number of scheduled policy initiatives deliberately shelved to avoid the credit being given to Yee.
On the 19 August the National Party elected Yvonne Gates as leader. Gates had the junior Deputy First Minister in the Corbett government. The following day, Yee traveled to Saumarez House and resigned as First Minister. Gates was sworn in as the seventh First Minister of New England an hour later.
Later Political Career
After the rancour of her time as leader, Yee resigned as Minister of Conservation on the 22 August. She demanded to remain Deputy First Minister, but under the constitution she could not automatically sit on the Executive Council without first filling an Executive Ministry. Yee was not offered a place on the council, and immediately withdrew her support for the government. However, before the matter could come before a vote in the House of Assembly, Yee was challenged for the leadership of the party by her deputy, Peter Cunningham. Cunningham won the subsequent ballot 9 vote to 5.
Yee retired to the backbench to defend herself against attacks from both inside and outside the party. She survived an attempt by members to have her expelled in late 2025, but worked hard in the background to undermine the leadership of Peter Cunningham. The relationship between Yee and Gates was extremely strained throughout the various disasters of the second National government.
In late 2026, a scandal broke involving a number of senior members of the government (including Cunningham). It was revealed that the MP's had been involved in plans to allow Australian banks to buy out their New England competitors and had on several occasions allowed Executive Council documents to be stolen or leaked in return for financial kickbacks from the banks. Despite her low standing with many in the party room, Yee was still able to engineer a revolt against the leadership of Gates and Cunningham. However, the challenge to the leaderships of both parties failed, with Yee failing by the same margin that had deposed her as leader in 2024. The following day, on the 21 December 2026, Gates stood before the House and denied the accusations made by the opposition and the media.
Despite this, the Leader of the Opposition, Antonia Davidson, led a motion of no confidence in the Gates-Cunningham government. Unbeknown to Gates and Cunningham, eleven moderate MPs from both parties had met the night before with Davidson and agreed to support a vote of no confidence if it was put before Christmas. The following day, the 'Black Eleven' crossed the floor and brought the government down. All eleven MPs were offered positions in the new SDLP government, which they accepted pending their re-election.
On the 24 December, with Parliament in recess until March and party expulsion hearings in the pipeline, Yee, along with the other ten rebel DCP and National MPs resigned from their respective parties. With party-hopping laws preventing the rebels from keeping their seats, all eleven MPs were forced to a by-election, which was to be held on the 13 February 2027.
Yee won her seat of Orara Valley for the SDLP at the subsequent by-election, which vindicated her decision to bring the government of her old party down. She was offered the Ministry of Treasury in the second Davidson government, but declined and chose to see out her career on the backbench as the Member for Orara Valley.
Retirement
In 2032, having had one of the most turbulent political careers in history, Cassandra Yee announced she would not seek re-election at the upcoming general election. Instead, after the election she returned to private life and started a consultancy as a political and business advisor. She was just 47 when she left the Parliament. In her new life outside Parliament, Yee was responsible for many of the internal reforms made to the county administration in Fitzroyshire, Clarence and Raleigh in the 2030s and 2040s. In 2040, Yee was appointed as an advisor to Jane Keely, the 6th Earl of Fitzroyshire. After Keely's defeat in 2048, Yee has not spoken out in public again.
Since leaving office, Yee has not sought to regularly participate in public discourse. On just three occasions has she spoken out, and this has only been to defend the actions of the Black Eleven. In 2041, Yee was made a member of the Order of Merit. It was an appointment that provoked an outcry from the opposition National and Democratic Conservative parties, but was widely seen as fitting for a person who has served as First Minister of New England for a period of less than two terms.
Ministry
The Yee Ministry was the seventh Executive Ministry, and ran from the 3 - 20 August 2024.
First Ministers of New England
Braddock · Olsen · Meyer · Davidson · Corbett · Yee · Gates · Tudor · Howlett · Gordon · Jones
