I am a Mum, a midwife and a former journalist. My whole career has been centred around connecting with people in the midst of real life – the mucky and the profound – and advocating for better systems. The same motivations brought me to politics as a community Independent – working together with the Bean community towards having impact at the Federal level on the issues that matter to us.

I was selected and endorsed by Voices of Bean after more than a year of going out and listening to our community about what we wished politics would do better on. Through a community process, I had the honour of being selected to be the community Independent candidate for Bean, announced in late November 2024 and launching our campaign in December.

We ran a grassroots, low cost, people-powered campaign, building a movement around the community representation and the impact our own Independent could have from the cross bench holding the government to account and pushing for stronger action on issues like gambling reform, housing affordability and environmental protections and climate action.

And as you may know – we came so close! After a week and a half of close counting we fell short by 351 votes, taking Bean from one of Labor’s safest seats to its most marginal seat at 0.3%.

And in 2028 we will go again.

Between now and then, we will be out listening to community, joining up to advocate on the issues that matter to us, and building connections. The issues remain, as does the need for stronger action and stronger representation of the people of Bean.

Please keep an eye on our events page and social media for opportunities to connect and work together for better representation for our community.

I started my career as a journalist and subeditor in Hanoi, Vietnam, at an English-language finance newspaper for foreign investment firms. I chose journalism because I wanted to make a difference for people by shining a light on injustice and highlighting people’s courage in the face of challenges. 

In Australia I worked for Rural Press, and then returned to Asia to the Thai/Myanmar border to volunteer with an Indigenous Karen refugee women’s group, who continue to provide to this day the most incredible services and programs in the border region refugee camps and inside Kawthoolei/Karen State in Myanmar. 

One of their projects supported traditional Karen midwives in the camps and inside the conflict zone in Myanmar. I loved everything I saw about midwifery and I wanted to make a difference with my own hands. I came back to Australia to enrol in the degree. I took breaks for the birth of my own children, including my first son born at home in Samoa with two local midwives, where we were living at the time for my then-husband Cam’s work with local farmers. We moved up to this region, again for Cam’s work restoring wetlands and degraded water tables. I graduated and came to be catching babies here in Canberra during the 2019 fires. 

Twice in my lifetime, we have experienced in Bean, our national capital, our home, on fire.  

The first time in 2003, I was living in Hanoi. One of my sisters was up on the roof of our house in Kambah, putting out embers falling from Mt Taylor and my other sister was running round the yard putting out spot fires with a hose. They saved our house but as you would all know, tragically four Canberrans died, hundreds of people were injured, more than 500 properties were burned down, and we were brutally confronted with the realisation that our cities and our nation are not somehow magically safe from natural disaster.

Only 16 years later in 2019, I was catching babies in rooms that smelled of smoke.  To have new babies being born into my hands as the fires crept closer, while the hills were ringed in fire, for weeks on end – it was surreal and it was terrifying. 

Our government’s inaction on climate change just floored me. I felt a huge sense that unless ordinary, passionate people stepped up, politics would never change. But I wanted to get political together, as a community.

The individual changes we all can make are important – but it’s not enough. We all need to do what we can – write letters, sign petitions, make donations, swap our fruit and veg and eggs over the fence with our neighbours – and we need system change. 

I got active advocating for community power projects with Electrify Canberra, a brilliant community group advocating for electrification, such as suburb-scale batteries and solar panels for every type of housing, including rentals. I am completely in love with the idea of communities coming together and getting on with what’s needed. But we also need bold and visionary action at the highest level. Bottom up and top down.

As a journalist, I know our stories matter and that telling our stories can be a powerful force for change. With Voices of Bean we listened to community across Bean for more than a year, sharing stories, concerns and excellent ideas for solutions together. 

As a midwife, I take a holistic, human understanding into politics. I know how capable, resilient, creative and brilliant people are. I now work in projects at a whole-of-system level to improve maternity care in the ACT. I know that health includes secure housing and affordable healthy food and time to connect with friends and family, and a sense of purpose, safety, and joy in our lives.

I will stand again as our community-backed Independent to take our stories and the diverse ideas and solutions of our community into Parliament and hold the government to account. I believe that being a politician means stepping up for visionary and courageous leadership, anchored in the values of our community. 

First time round, we made our safe seat marginal. It is absolutely possible we could get our own Independent up in 2028.

Getting active inspires hope and it creates change. The anthropologist Margaret Mead said we should “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”. 

I want to do politics together. We all have our strengths and our skills and our talents. I have had a 20-plus year career of connecting with people about the things that matter, including during emergencies and times of the most profound joy, of advocating for improvement and of facilitating working together for best outcomes. I deeply care about a future where everyone can thrive in all the aspects of their lives. But I believe our elected representative is just one piece in our ecosystem and that we all have a role, together, towards positive change. I would be honoured to come together with you all and work hard again to get into Parliament in 2028 as our strong, Independent, community-based representative. We have a newfound sense of what we can achieve together as the electorate of Bean to have our voices heard. I would love for us to make Bean a leader for positive change. 

It takes a village. Let’s do this, together.