#6 Talking with Zali Steggall

Zali Stegall, an Olympic medal-winning skier turned lawyer, discusses her journey into politics and her concerns about climate change. She ran as an independent in the 2019 federal election and defeated Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister. Stegall's victory and her focus on issues like climate change and gender equity inspired other independent candidates in the 2022 election. The rise of independent voices reflected a dissatisfaction with party politics and a desire for better representation. Welcome to the Voices of Franklin podcast. I'm your host, Steve Williams. Today I'm talking to federal independent member for Rohingya, Zali Stegall, who famously was an Olympic medal winning skier, went on to become a lawyer in Sydney and then defeated Tony Abbott in the 2019 federal election. Abbott held Rohingya with an 11% margin, making it a safe seat. But lo and behold, in 2019, Stegall ends up with 57, just over 57% of the vote. That's a massive swing against former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Then in 2022, Zali Stegall not only held her seat, but increased her margin. Well, Zali Stegall from Rohingya, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Hi to everyone in Franklin. Now, first things first, Zali Stegall, will you be going skiing this winter and where? Well, look, I've perished. I still have a run called Zali's Run. So I do tend to go down there every year. My time is a little limited, but I do try and still go skiing. You know, it occurred to me just today that maybe your interest in climate change could be related to your skiing to some extent, because we're going to have less snow, presumably. In fact, the entire ski industry could be gone by the 2100s, skiing as a sport, unless you move to indoor skiing, for example, because of the predicted trajectory of global warming is two to three plus degrees of warm, which means it's all gone. I think it was, look, I guess my exposure to climate change was seeing the acceleration and melting of glaciers in Europe very much over the course of my career and then obviously being aware of that continuing and those conditions changing and the reliance of the industry more and more on artificial snow and man-made snow and snow cloud seeding, for example, to get more precipitation. So yeah, obviously, look, skiing is the livelihood of many, many countries and communities and it is incredibly weather reliant and climate reliant and definitely will be at risk from global warming. We'll circle back to climate change in a minute, but first of all, how does a skier, Olympic skier like yourself, end up as a federal politician? Or David Pocock, I could ask David Pocock the same question about rugby, but I mean, engaged initially, I suppose. My journey, obviously, being a professional athlete and sports person is one thing, but you always need plan A and plan B. So I always studied while I competed. So I did my HSC by correspondence and did a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communications by correspondence during my skiing career, which meant that I obviously was working on what would my career be after skiing, after sports. I always wanted to study Arts Law, but you couldn't do Arts Law by correspondence at the time. So I did Arts by correspondence and then I did Law when I retired from skiing in 2002. I then had a career at the bar as a barrister at the New South Wales bar, working in advocacy around a lot of areas, a little bit of land environment court and commercial equity and sports. I was an administrator and an arbitrator for the International Court of Arbitration for Sports and actually got to go to my fifth Olympic Games as an arbitrator for that. But I was also on a number of boards and always just been very engaged in social issues, good governance, fairness and integrity of processes, gender equity, especially when it comes to organisations and opportunities, but also then of course climate and environmental concern. I'm also a mum, so I had teenagers and very worried about the future they are inheriting. So in late 2018, 2019, I felt that it was time for change locally in Warringah. I think to take on, you know, I'd had a career in sports and then a career as a lawyer as barrister and to go into this third career of politics, I felt like my two earlier careers had prepared me well for an adversarial contest and arena, but also where you have to be very determined to get through, be prepared to work hard and obviously as a barrister, that diligence around legislation and understanding issues. So all of that combined with a community that was frustrated with the status quo, we've had Tony Abbott had been a member for 25 years and a high level of concern around a number of policy areas where good merit-based, fact-based policy was being ignored for the sake of ideology and politics for the sake of power instead of for the sake of good outcomes. So I decided to run as an independent in 2019 and had the support of an incredible movement in my community of local people wanting change, wanting to be represented by someone that shared their views and values. Yes. So I think in the previous election, which went in 2016, James Matheson ran against Tony Abbott in Warringah as an independent. So maybe that embryonic voices movement was starting around him. I'm not too sure of the details. Look, yeah, there's been an appetite for independent representation locally. We hadn't had it at federal level and yes, James ran in 2016 and we also had the Nick Senefond party at the time, which was sort of those alternatives to the major parties. We had had local independent mayors at local government level and we had had state MPs who were independent. So Peter MacDonald was the local mayor of Manly. He became the independent member for the state seat of Manly, followed by David Barr as an independent as well. So we've had that level of exposure to independent representation, just not at federal level because Tony had been the member for so long. But obviously that kind of waxed and waned over a number of elections and absolutely, James, there was a strong showing for him and there was already a real brewing dissatisfaction with Tony Abbott and really his unwillingness to represent the community on issues and putting his own views and the Liberal Party before the community values. There's also Ted Mac going back further in North Sydney. In North Sydney, yes. But just as another example, yes. So I guess it's good in a way to have somebody like Tony Abbott as a kind of focus, a kind of nemesis. And maybe in the same way that Scott Morrison was in 2022, something for the voters to react against or at least enough voters to react against. That must be a factor, surely, a polarising figure. And maybe John Mayer was the same when Maxine McHugh toppled him. Well, I think when Maxine, she was a member of the Labour Party and that was the Kevin O'Severn election. I think it is for independence to come through for community organisations. It is, I think, a polarising local member, can be the catalyst, especially where there is deep dissatisfaction at the conduct of the current, I guess, member, especially on key issues. And we had definitely a concern around it was the same-sex marriage equality vote and the plebiscites. But it was also around climate change. Obviously, Tony Abbott had a number of different policies and changing and being very destructive in opposition. And when he was elected, very destructive on those policies. And that was a classic example of putting personal political power and gain over good policy outcome. He mischaracterised policy and really used it for his own needs rather than looking at the long-term benefit for Australia. And then there was also the gender equity piece. Everyone can remember that Tony Abbott had one woman in his cabinet out of 20 and made himself the Minister for Women. And that is a problem in a modern-day society with an engaged electorate and a high level of professional women that does not represent us. So, again, that was a motivating factor for me in getting into politics. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. So women need to be at the table. And that needs to change. And if me, for myself, someone that's got, I had 13 years of international sporting career in the media. I had 10 years as a barrister with a certain amount of skills. If I wasn't prepared to step up for that challenge, well, there's no problem yelling at the TV if you're not prepared to do something about it. So, ultimately, it was about getting in there and trying to change the system. And I think your fellow TEALs would all say similar things about being encouraged to run, but hesitant at first. Maybe you wouldn't say that. Yeah. Look, I think Warringah showed the blueprint of how to do it in an urban electorate in terms of being a very professional and organised campaign with strong messaging, strong local presence, very strong on marketing and visibility in the electorate, engaging, really representing the values, getting a very big volunteer base. But also what was interesting in 2022 was whilst you had an overarching polarising figure like Scott Morrison nationally, a lot of the people that were defeated in the rise of more community independence, I guess by fellow TEALs, as were being dubbed by the media, in urban seats, were all actually replacing individual members that were not per se offensive characters, right? They were not all in themselves contentious characters, the way maybe my opponent had been. But I think what we saw was in 2019, being able to show how effective and independent can be around climate policy, around integrity and holding the government to account, showed to all those electorates, regardless of how moderate or sensible you might say, or what nice guy or girl your MP might be, the reality of the way party politics works is they are completely ineffective and voiceless and unwilling to stand up for their community. As soon as you come to the crunch of community values versus party policy, every member that was defeated had been guilty of putting party politics and party pre-selection above representing the community interests and values of the issue. So I think that was a major catalyst for the 2022 election for the growth of the crossbench, because we could show that you could get better representation. And look, I think it was also an election that reflected the March for Justice and the women's movement in the sense of a deep dissatisfaction with how Scott Morrison and the coalition government had engaged with women's issues and professional women, their absolute inability to get women at the table. And so a number of incredibly capable and credentialed women stood up for their communities and were elected. Yeah. We often look at people like yourself, the Teal movement, as we try and understand it, come to terms with it. We often divide it into the social policies, which are very progressive and I think really easy to understand, easy to communicate with the voting public. We constantly see very strong support for integrity and stronger democracy. That's the easy stuff, it seems to me, where you're not getting too much. I mean, you'll get blowback from the Liberals and the Nationals, but generally speaking, it's something the community can really get on board with. You start talking about truth in advertising, political donations reform, strong integrity commission, transparency. If you can't sell that, you can't sell anything to the voting public. Well, and I think this is where the status quo of the major parties have relied on incumbent advantage and inertia. They've relied on communities, you know, they get called upon to vote and then they kind of get forgotten for three years and, you know, sort of, don't you worry about this, we'll take care of it, we'll go down to Canberra and then come back. And people are very disillusioned with those politics because there's no engagement, there's no consultation. And I think those politics are over. The current day media, social media opportunity to communicate with your electorate means that level of accountability is much greater, it's higher, and it requires more work to be done, right? The idea of the political staff that gets put into a seat, which a number of them that were defeated by my fellow independents were, and then kind of presume they had that, that was their career plan, without having to actually do the work to represent their community. We definitely challenge that model that there is a better way to do it. It's also the question, Australia has a fantastic system of compulsory voting, right? Everyone has to vote, which means the norm and the median, kind of the sensible, sensuous voter is a greater proportion than the activated extremes, which is what you get in a non-compulsory voting system. But also we have preferential voting. So it does mean you get sensible outcomes, more often than not. But the problem is people still need someone that they recognise on the ballot paper, right? You can only vote for what's on the ballot paper. And so that's why it's really important to have viable alternatives stand for elections, so people have choice. We expect choice in our day-to-day lives when it comes to us as consumers. You need the same thing when it comes to political representation. If you don't have choice, how can people really pick someone that best reflects their values and view on issues? So I think that was probably an important element in our electorates. If I think of Warringah and then I think of my neighbouring electorates, you know, if I think of Mackellar and North Sydney and Wentworth, we have similar electorates of communities of interest, people who work and play sport and travel amongst our electorates. We're looking for good governance and merit-based, fact-based policy. And then once we start looking at economic policy, things can get a bit tricky because it very much depends on which textbook you're using. And if you know anything about economics, you know it's a very contested discipline with different schools competing with each other because so much depends on your values, not on empirical evidence. Economics simply doesn't work like the hard sciences do. So would you say that your economic policies are broadly similar to the other teals? You're often called economic conservatives. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I would say conservative per se as sensible, maybe. I would argue our electorates are fairly non-Labour electorates in the sense of a high amount of small business, a high amount of aspirational small businesses that want to, you know, are really looking to do well, not a high level of, I'd say, unionism and blue-collar work in that sense. So that's why it's probably been traditionally a non-Labour seat because of that kind of business nature of our electorates, especially of Warringah. But from there is also the question of, you know, we want competitive business. We want opportunity in business. So it's conservative. I guess I support a fairly lean system that encourages and supports business, aspirational business, and the opportunity to, you know, to develop, to do well without the constraints of too much administrative burden and government red tape and, you know, an overly burdened electorate. Yeah, there is a lot of good stuff on your personal website about not wasting money, say, on pork barrelling, not wasting money on consultants, the big four. Accountancy firms come to mind, first of all, but then there are other consultants. Not wasting money on fossil fuel subsidies, and the list goes on. There's a lot of, a hell of a lot of wastage. But then people of good faith can then disagree on a whole bunch of economic stuff, which we won't go into today. This is why I like... Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that for me the focus is, as a barrister, you know, and I came across, I experienced this mostly when I was an arbitrator for the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, is you're not going to please everybody with every decision, right? You can't, not everyone's going to always agree with the outcome or the final decision. But if you're very transparent as to the process in how you come to your decision and what are the factors that influence the decision, then people can respect the outcome rather than, you know, feel disenfranchised because it's not the outcome they may have chosen. So everyone can, in a very mature way, recognise there might be different facts or priorities. But if there is a sound and balanced reason for an outcome, people are a lot more willing to accept an outcome that might be different to the one they would have chosen. So for me, that's a really important part of that economic management and decision making, is the transparency and the accountability piece, which, as you say, translates across, you know, government spending, accountability, anti-corruption, all of those aspects. This is why I like your idea for a sustainability commission, federally, that would be an independent body of experts who can look at these tricky questions of whether decoupling is possible, and that's decoupling economic expansion from environmental harm. Yeah, look, these are really difficult aspects of we can't have endless growth without consequences. And I think nature will bring us all back in check eventually. So those aspects of the circular economy and sustainable growth is really important. But also, you know, getting to that conversation of quality versus quantity, I think, becomes really important. And how do we assess and value quality of life, you know, job satisfaction, all of those tangibles, which are important measures of are we, you know, as a modern society, are we succeeding or not? This is why I've been a promoter of this kind of commission myself, a sustainability commission. It would be the modern version of the Hawke Government's Commission for the Future, which Barry Jones, a science minister, helped run. The UK had a Commission for Sustainable Development for, I think, 11 years, instituted by Tony Blair, got axed by the Conservatives, produced a very important report called Prosperity Without Growth by Professor Tim Jackson, widely cited left, right and centre. This is the sort of thing we, as sensible human beings, facing a climate emergency and a broader, much broader environmental social crisis, we should all be able to get behind this kind of thing, even though it would still be very difficult, because who do you appoint and all the rest of it. But surely, given the emergency we're in, it's not too much to try and do this sort of thing. And I'm glad you're supporting it. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was really interesting when I launched, when I campaigned in 2019, was how people were really positioning climate concern with, you know, left or right leaning, that only left leaning politicians would be worried about environment and climate. And I know that's traditionally because Labor has had stronger policies in the coalition and the Greens have been further left as well, and they are environmental. But what I would argue is there's no such thing as saying, caring about climate action and this future, this should not be a left or right issue. I know that's what it's been made out to be, but it shouldn't be, because ultimately, it is an issue that will impact everyone equally. And so this should be a bipartisan issue. And unfortunately, we've seen in other countries, like in the UK, where they were able to act on climate. Back in 2008, they passed their Climate Change Act in a bipartisan way, because they recognised that ultimately, climate is not a nice to have policy area. And this is, it goes fundamentally to your national security, the safety of your communities and your future as a nation and as a planet. And it actually goes to the core, ironically, for the more conservatives around the question of intergenerational equity and debt. It is one of the greatest intergenerational debts we are leaving behind is the overspend on global carbon budgets, right? The fact that we have not reduced emissions for way too long. So Zoli Stegall, if a government was serious about climate change, which means getting greenhouse gases down as quickly as practical, why wouldn't they set caps on total greenhouse gases, not just the safety mechanism they have at the moment, where a handful of big polluters have caps, then they buy carbon credits if they can't get below their caps. Why not? Why would you not legislate caps across the board? It decreases every year. Everybody knows where the greenhouse gas emissions are going to be into the future. Why don't we do that and then we won't have these arguments about, oh, maybe we can have decoupling, maybe some nuclear fusion is going to come along, some new technology. Just legislate the caps and then we're at net zero whenever you want. Well, I think there's a couple of elements to that. I think we've been caught up in energy wars in Australia because of Tony, you know, thanks to Tony Abbott in terms of and climate wars around, in the true out of the tobacco playbook of doing everything you can to deny the problem and then delay the solutions to the problem. So I would say the coalition has been hard at work for many, many years in delaying any action or any true acknowledgement of the scale of the problem we face. We also have the issue that under the Paris Agreement, ultimately, we only deal with scope one and scope two emissions. And so Australia, as an exporting country of fossil fuels, we are major contributors globally to climate change. But we are only really accountable for, I would say, proportionally a small amount of our true emissions because of the way it's calculated on the Paris Agreement. So that's another bigger problem. I think what you're talking about is the need that we need sectoral targets. So the problem we've had is this, you know, overarching the focus on our national emissions. But what we need is every sector to pull their weight because we know our emissions come from many, many sectors. Overwhelmingly, energy and energy is very much the focus of government. But we need to look at transport, right? Transport, 20% of our national emissions and a growing sector as the population grows. We know it needs to look at agriculture. We need to look at our built environment and our building codes. But it's been really interesting. Whilst we've had this denial of the scale of the problem, you've had this delaying from the real conversation, which is how does every sector do it? So, you know, even though we don't even have a domestic car industry, you saw Scott Morrison, you know, talking about EVs like it was going to ruin the weekend. They're ridiculous arguments, but they are all based towards denying the urgency of the problem, which is our emissions as a whole and the need for climate action. Because obviously that puts into question ongoing approvals of coal and gas projects and continuing to make the problem worse for our exports. So, and I think this is where the major parties are conflicted. They still take a huge amount of donations from the fossil fuel sector. Their advisors are very much from the fossil fuel sectors. You're saying even the Albanese government was better than the Morrison government on climate. You know, better does not make good. Being less worse does not make you good. And we are still saying a fairly meek and very politically safe targets rather than science-based necessary targets. And we're still seeing too many approvals of very large gas projects, which put at risk everything else that might be done. And an inability to really endorse and recognize that we are moving away from coal and that, you know, coal and gas, gas can only play a very small part and coal has to go out of the system. And so you have to transition communities and everything else. You know, the Labour Party is still very conflicted in its messaging on that. So I think that's the role of the crossbench and independence in really holding both sides to account. It is not in the benefit of the major parties to ultimately, you know, there's a willingness to acknowledge the problem now, but they are still not acting fast enough. And it's often two steps forward, one step back. Like we recently had legislation in the chamber that was very contentious because it's for offshore oil and gas, the environmental assessment and approvals will essentially be done by the resource minister instead of the environment minister, which is just wrong, wrong, wrong. On so many fronts. It's a massive fail for the Labour Party on climate. That's my opinion. It's extremely disappointing what they're doing. We're going to wrap up very soon, Zali Steggall. I did see an essential poll published in the last week that said only 35% of Australians think the Australian government is not doing enough on climate change. In other words, 65% either don't know or think it's all fine. Well, I think we still have a highly concentrated media ownership situation in Australia. And so there's a very strong messaging that, you know, that we have to overcome in Australia. I think we also have a multiple of crisis at the moment with obviously geopolitical risk and other wars happening, as well as inflation and cost of living. The piece that doesn't get cut through in the media, that's constantly trying to, but obviously need community groups to do as well, is ultimately every aspect of cost of living is exacerbated by climate change. And so if you think things are expensive now, they're only going to get more expensive. A very real element I'm focusing on with my community and small businesses is around insurance premiums. You know, we are heading towards an unaffordability cliff when it comes to insurance and whole areas of our communities that will be uninsurable. And that creates mortgage risk, like a subprime issue, and a huge risk for banks as well. So, you know, we have major challenges ahead, but getting the cut through is hard. But one of the things that's been amazing about the community movement is we have smart, educated, engaged community. People that understand the risk, are worried about it for the future and the environment their children will live in, and are prepared to, you know, take a stand and be visible. And that's what the community independent movement has done amazingly well. I see thousands of volunteers willing to wear a t-shirt when they're doing their grocery shopping to show their colors, have the conversation with your neighbor and your family member, challenge complacency when it comes to accepting the status quo of the major parties, and think of competition. You know, I think this has to be the Kodak moment of political parties, or the traditional political parties. And, you know, we really can disrupt this system. And just finally, then Zali Steggill, what's your prediction for the next federal election in terms of independent representation? Oh, look, it's very hard to say. That comes down to communities, right? Communities can't sit back in their armchairs and go, I'm not happy with the status quo, but I'm not prepared to do anything about it. It ultimately comes down to being motivated locally to make a difference and to change things. And whether you have an opportunity to get behind a local independent candidate, or maybe a state independent senate candidate, or there are ways of getting involved. Inertia and, you know, complaining in your living room, shouting at the TV is not good enough. You've got to get out there and get involved, right? You can't just be a silent bystander and be unhappy with the outcome. So I know it's hard, and sometimes the opportunities aren't the same in every community, but you can build the tribe. The ingredients to succeed, I think, for community independence are three things. I think first, you need the tribe. You need locally people to be engaged. So I hope there are many people in Franklin looking, watching, getting engaged, right? Having the conversation. You do, then, need the organization. So you need a handful of people that have particular skills to come together, to put the business. It's like launching. You are a small business when you are an independent candidate. And so you have to launch that business and have a business plan and manage it like a business. And then you need the right candidate. You need someone locally who reflects the views and values of your community to be willing to step up. And keep in mind, when that person steps up, they step up to be a spokesperson, but they can't do it on their own. And so the community has to have buy-in and come on board for that journey, which I've been incredibly lucky that for the last, you know, we're coming on five years now, the Warringah community has been, and the broader Australian community, has been amazing. Zali Stegall, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.