He was Assistant Private Secretary to Barry Cohen, a minister in the Hawke government 1983–84, and Editor of the Australia-Israel Review (published by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) from 1986 to 1993.
In 1997 he won a hotly disputed Labor Party preselection battle for the right to contest Melbourne Ports, where the sitting member, Clyde Holding, was retiring, defeating Tim Pallas, who would later become the Victorian State Treasurer.
"[2] Soon after the 2010 Federal Election Danby drew attention to the fact that for various reasons 1.4 million eligible Australians had not voted, and criticised the Government for not having acted during its previous term to ensure greater voter turn-out.
"[9] In July 2009 in his role as Chair of the Parliamentary Group for Tibet, Danby led the first-ever delegation of Australian MPs and Senators to Dharamshala,[10] India, the base of the Central Tibetan Administration.
[12] From July 2011 to March 2013 Danby was Chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade,[13] a role which saw him represent the Prime Minister at the inauguration of the new nation of South Sudan in 2011.
In a letter to the Australian Jewish News, Danby called on the book's publisher, Melbourne University Press, to "drop this whole disgusting project."
Danby was an outspoken supporter of the Australian National Academy of Music, opposing Arts Minister Peter Garrett's decision to cut funding for the institution, which is in his electorate, in October 2008.
[16] Following a wide outcry the Government changed its decision to close the academy and announced an additional $500,000 for the elite classical training centre.
[19] In September and October 2010 Danby wrote a number of articles critical of Australian National University academic Hugh White's Quarterly Essay entitled "Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing'".
However it seems Danby had the last word in the debate, publishing another article in the Australian Financial Review, which attacked White's thesis as advocating "unprincipled appeasement".
Danby also accused White of holding 'cold-blooded, Kissingerian views', 'treating China and the United States as if they were no more than a pair of traditional great-power rivals competing for territory or markets, like the Habsburg and Ottoman empires'.
[22] In a parliamentary speech in October 2010 Danby pointed to calls for reform from within the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party as reason not to follow White's approach.
[34][35] In October 2017 Danby ran attack ads in the Australian Jewish News against Sophie McNeill, the ABC's Walkley Award-winning Jerusalem correspondent.
Danby accused McNeill of pro-Palestinian bias and double standards, alleging that she filed "extensive coverage" on the September 2017 eviction of the Shamasneh family from East Jerusalem, while falsely claiming she provided "no report" on the July 2017 Halamish stabbing attack.
[36] The ABC strongly rejected the allegation, calling the ads "part of a pattern of inaccurate and highly inappropriate personal attacks on Ms McNeill by Mr Danby," and complaining directly to Labor leader Bill Shorten.
from previous election In February 2008 he and his longtime partner, barrister Amanda Mendes da Costa, were married at Parliament House, Canberra, the first Jewish wedding held in the building.