Kristina Keneally 2017. Keneally has contributed to "The Guardian Australia" since December 2014 on a range of politico-social issues such as religion in politics, same sex marriage and asylum seeking. In November 2017, Keneally was preselected by federal Labor as their candidate for the Bennelong by-election on 16 December. Despite picking up a five percent two-party swing, she lost to the previous incumbent and Liberal candidate John Alexander. On 30 January 2018, the Labor Party announced that Keneally would fill the vacant New South Wales seat in the Senate left by the previous Senator, Sam Dastyari, who formally resigned earlier that month
Thomas Keneally there. By 1942, the family had moved to 7 Loftus Crescent, Homebush, a working-class suburb in the west of Sydney and Keneally was enrolled at Christian Brothers St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Shortly after, his brother John was born. Keneally studied Honours English for his Leaving Certificate in 1952, under Brother James Athanasius McGlade, and won a Commonwealth scholarship. Keneally then entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly, to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary, after six years there he left in a state of depression and without being ordained to the priesthood.