The shadow minister for trade and investment will help mark the dinner’s 30th anniversary held each September to honour Bathurst’s former Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley. 

The dinner will be held at Panthers on September 20, and with 350 to 500 attending past dinners, organisers are expecting a large turn out this year. 

“Penny Wong is enormously popular and respected, not just among Labor Party supporters, but among women and men across the entire spectrum of political views,” Bathurst Labor senior vice president and former senator Sue West said.

Before entering parliament, Ms Wong was a barrister and solicitor in Adelaide and had worked as an adviser to the Carr Government in New South Wales. 

Ms Wong was first elected as a Labor senator for South Australia in November 2001. Between 2007 and 2013, she held the positions of minister for climate change and water, minister for finance and deregulation, and leader of the government in the Senate. 

In a 1949 speech, Prime Minister Ben Chifley coined the phrase “light on the hill” to describe the goal of the Labor movement to bring better standards of living and happiness to Australians. 

Past Light on the Hill speakers have included former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, past treasurer Wayne Swan, and current leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten. 

Ms Wong was educated at Scotch College and the University of Adelaide, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law prior to entering federal parliament.

While at university, she became involved with the leadership of the Adelaide University Labor Club in 1988, and has been a delegate to the South Australian Labor Party State Convention every year since 1989 (with the exception of 1995).

She also worked part-time for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). Ms Wong graduated from the University of South Australia in 1992, and continued her association with the CFMEU as an industrial officer. She was admitted to the South Australian Bar in 1993.

Tickets to the dinner go on sale later this month at Bathurst Panthers.