Teal independent to take on Liberals in WA’s South West
Western Australia’s second federal teal independent candidate has been revealed as Bunbury urologist Dr Sue Chapman.
Chapman will take on Liberal candidate Ben Small in the seat of Forrest and said she had decided to take the plunge into politics after volunteering with the Voices for Forrest campaign for 12 months.
Voices campaigns are aligned with teal independent movement which helped sweep MPs such as Curtin’s Kate Chaney and Kooyong MP Monique Ryan to power at the 2022 election with the help of funding from Simon Holmes à Court’s fundraising giant Climate 200.
Bunbury Urologist and teal independent candidate for Forrest Dr Sue Chapman.
Chapman said one of the biggest issues to arise from the campaign’s 12 months of consulting was people felt let down by the two-party system.
“They feel that there’s too much antagonism, that there’s too much short-term decision-making, and they really feel that when people are tied into a party system, they’re not actually allowed to make decisions that might be in the best interest for their own electorate,” she said.
“I think I do genuinely think that it’s time for change in Forrest, and it’s time for our community to feel like their representative works for them and not for some faceless party room and people who make decisions without any community representation.”
Chapman works out of St John of God Hospital in Bunbury and has regularly travelled to Africa to volunteer her skills.
Ahead of her campaign launch in Bunbury on Sunday Chapman said she was a member of the WA Greens for a short period and had voted for both the Liberal and Labor Party in the past.
She said she left the Greens because it was not representative of what her community wanted.
“I felt that once again, people were being pushed to follow a party line and they were being pushed into positions as Greens candidates, as Green senators, as Green members of Parliament and, again, there was no true independent representation of what this community is after,” she said.
Winning Forrest as an independent will be no easy feat with the Liberal Party holding the seat since the 1970s.
Retiring Liberal MP Nola Marino retained Forrest with a two-party margin of 4.3 per cent in 2022 but in 2019 she held the seat with a margin of 14.6 per cent.
Chapman said big issues she would focus on was the need for housing in the South West and cost of living.
She said the other big item that arose from the Voices consultation was the conflict between development in the South West and environmental protection.
“We’re in a biodiversity hotspot in the South West, and people are really concerned about land clearing, about loss of biodiversity, and obviously in the longer term, climate change and the implications for our future generations,” she said.
Chapman said she had not yet sought funding from Climate 200 but said election campaigns were expensive exercises so it was still open they may approach them for funding.
“We’re hoping that our community will get behind us and that they will provide the vast majority of our funding,” she said.