Lucy Muringo Gichuhi (/ɡɪˈtʃuːi/; née Munyiri; born 23 September 1962) is an Australian politician who served as a Senator for South Australia from 2017 to 2019. Born in Kenya, Gichuhi worked as an accountant before entering politics. Gichuhi is a social conservative who has been vocally opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage.^[1][2][3]

Following a special recount ordered by the Court of Disputed Returns, in April 2017 she was declared to have been elected at the 2016 election for the Family First Party. This followed the court's decision that Bob Day had not been eligible to stand for election. She was Australia's first African Senator.^[4] Gichuhi originally sat in the Senate as an independent, after refusing to join the Family First Party in merging into the Australian Conservatives. She joined the Liberal Party in February 2018, but failed to win re-election at the 2019 federal election.

Gichuhi grew up in the rural village of Hiriga, Nyeri County, Kenya Colony (present day Hiraga, Nyeri County, Kenya).^[5] Between school, she worked to gather food from the garden or help milk the family's cows.^[6]

Gichuhi is the first of her father Justus Weru Munyiri's ten children. Her father and brother still live in her ancestral home in Hiriga village in Mathira East sub-county Nyeri.^[7]

She moved to Nairobi^[8] where she trained as an accountant at the University of Nairobi. She was an accountant with various auditing firms before moving to South Australia in 1999 with her husband William and three children. She worked at Ernst and Young and the South Australian Auditor-General's department developing programs for migrants and international students. She completed a Bachelor of Law from the University of South Australia in 2015. Prior to her appointment to the Senate, she was volunteering as a lawyer for the Women's Legal Service.^[9]

Family First leader Bob Day had been his party's lead Senate candidate in South Australia at the election on 2 July 2016, with Gichuhi the second and only other (a ticket—with its advantage of attracting votes above the line, which is how most electors vote—requires a minimum of two candidates). The party received 24,817 votes above the line; below the line, Day received 5,495 votes and Gichuhi 152.

Day resigned on 1 November 2016 after the collapse of his homebuilding business, and was retroactively disqualified on 5 April 2017 for having an indirect interest in a building where the Commonwealth was paying rent for his Commonwealth-funded electorate office. At the High Court's direction, the Australian Electoral Commission performed a special recount of Senate votes in South Australia. The Court envisaged that this would result in Gichuhi replacing Day.^[10] With Day excluded, all Family First votes above the line flowed to Gichuhi, and she was elected in the recount.^[11][12][13] Her election and term were dated from 1 July 2016, in common with all Senators elected in 2016.^[14] She was elected to serve the balance of Day's term, which was set at three years rather than the usual six owing to the 2016 election being a double dissolution; as a result, her term was due to end on 30 June 2019.^[15]

Despite having grown up in rural Kenya, Gichuhi says that the concept of poverty never entered her mind, and she is firmly against government handouts as she believes "they create victims and nobody wins".^[6] She said her Christian faith was the backbone of her political beliefs, but strongly supports freedom of religion.^[6]

She is a public opponent of same sex marriage, and stated that she would vote against any proposed bill, regardless of the results of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.^[3] On 29 November 2017 when the bill was voted in the Senate, Gichuhi was one of twelve senators who voted against it.^[30]

In January 2018, Gichuhi visited Kenya and was the guest on television talk show Jeff Koinange Live hosted by Jeff Koinange on Citizen TV.^[31] In June 2018, a clip from this interview was widely reported in Australia quoting that she had said that her $200,000 salary in Australia is "not a lot of money".^[32]