One Nation MP Sarah Game lifts lid on the woman behind the political title
The South Australian MP shares with SA Weekend the heartache and pain of raising her three children as a single mum.
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Sarah Game wanted to know if the sound of her crying would disturb her three children. To find out, she placed a recording device beside the baby monitor and took herself to the cupboard in her bedroom and made the loudest noise she could.
When she was satisfied that she was safe, and the kids wouldn’t be able to hear her, she took herself back to the cupboard. And the weight of the day, of her circumstances, was overwhelming.
“You’d go out and present to the world,” she says. “Then you (come home) put them (the children) down and just cry for two hours, just because it was so difficult, it was so difficult, and I should have asked for support.”
The 41-year-old Game is South Australia’s first One Nation MP and is, in many ways, an accidental politician. She was a last-minute addition to the ticket for the 2022 state election after her mother Jennifer pulled out.
Game didn’t campaign. Didn’t think she would win. Didn’t really want to win. And continued working as a vet until the day before she was due in parliament.
But she is also a mother of three young children. And has been a single mother since her husband left her two weeks after the birth of their third child.
“I don’t blame him for that experience, but I think the fact is that it was just a brutal experience,” she says in her office in Parliament House in front of a life-size cardboard cut-out of One Nation founder Pauline Hanson.
“I probably had very serious postnatal depression. I can’t stress that enough. I think I was in a deeply traumatised state.”
When the marriage ended, Game was left to care for the newborn and two other children, the oldest of which had just turned three. The children are now aged nine, eight and six.
Adding to the trauma, Game’s second child was born with a condition which affected her sight, leaving her blind until she was 18 months old. Game was frightened her daughter would be left permanently blind.
She says she didn’t seek treatment for her post-natal depression, she went to see a psychiatrist once and decided not to go back.
Part of her reason for not seeking help was the stigma she thought was attached to mothers who are struggling to cope. “I didn’t have thoughts of harming myself or my baby, and I attached to my baby very well, but I was just deeply traumatised,” she says. “Was I obsessed with my children? Yes, but in a positive way, but it still doesn’t mean you’re coping with it very well. I wasn’t coping with it very well at all.”
Despite all her own trauma, Game says she is proud of the way she raised her kids. That she gave them a “good, happy time” and did not let them see the distress she was feeling.
That determination, she says, was borne of her desire to give them a better childhood than the “chaotic” one she experienced.
Game was an only child, her parents splitting up when she was around seven. She describes herself as a “weird little kid” who would be “wallowing around in her own self-pity” and wondering about the meaning of life.
It was also a childhood spent in a state of constant upheaval. Most of her growing up was done in Sydney, and Game says she went to five different high schools.
“I think the divorce of my parents, the fact that I didn’t have any family around, I didn’t have any other siblings, the fact that I was changing schools a lot, so I didn’t sort of have stable friendships, I think that led to somebody that wasn’t flourishing,” she says.
School was a struggle. Game was failing.
“I was coming towards the bottom of every single class that I was in,” she says.
What saved her was the intervention of a teacher called Mr Weathered. It was year 10 and he was a maths teacher and asked what she wanted to do when she was older.
Game didn’t really have an answer. Mr Weathered pointed out if she didn’t change her ways she wasn’t going to give herself many options in life.
It was a conversation that, she says, turned her life around. She started pestering Mr Weathered at every recess and lunch asking questions.
The result was a startling turnaround. Game says her Tertiary Entrance rank score was 99.7 and she topped year 11 and 12 at different schools.
And she didn’t tell her mother about her improvement until the day the year 12 results were released. “I told her, so then she just fell into her bed and started crying, she was so relieved that I hadn’t completely written my life off, basically,” she says.
Game studied veterinary science at Sydney University. Her ambition was to move to Africa and help save endangered species. She did a year of research into the black rhinoceros.
But she says the fun of uni life passed her by, the parties, the socialising.
She says she was just “so serious”, partly because she was still not convinced she should be there. “I think it takes a long time to overcome your own self stigma, that you’re not very bright,” she says.
The hard work paid off and Game left university with a first class honours degree and after working in Australia for a year, headed to England. There’s a bit of the wanderlust in her. She has travelled extensively, lived in Berlin for a year and became fluent in German.
Game has also travelled through Greece, the Middle East, spending time in places such as Jordan and Egypt. She met her husband in England.
An engineer, they happened to share the same Bed & Breakfast in Surrey where Game had landed to take up a job.
It was only with hindsight, she says, she understood just how difficult it was to be a vet. Looking back now, she can see she spent much of the time feeling stressed.
And it was not necessarily for the reasons non-vets imagine. It was not the trauma of dealing with sick and dying animals and distressed owners that was the most difficult part of the job.
Game says vets “become numb to that”. She says she remembers having to euthanise a German shepherd with liver cancer early in her career.
“I think that sort of experience in the beginning, those things, you would go home and cry. So certainly, we do face those challenges.
“But I don’t think that’s the biggest problem in the veterinary industry,” she says. It is the constant workload, the long hours and the poor pay that grind down most vets.
“I’ve seen a lot of veterinarians and it’s the strain it takes elsewhere in their life,” she says. “Their marriage will collapse, their relationships collapse, they don’t have children, or they have no time for their children, or they can’t afford a home, despite having done really well at school and university.”
It is why Game has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the high rate of burnout and suicides in the vet industry.
In England, Game also did some extra study and became a teacher. She says she made the change because her passion had changed from animals to children.
She taught biology at state schools and is proud of her work and finds a letter from one of the school principals that congratulates her for her achievements.
She had two of her children in England before returning to Australia because she wanted to be closer to family. She chose Adelaide because that’s where her father lived and she had enjoyed visiting as a child. It was also a more affordable option than Sydney.
“I think as soon as I started having my kids, I was feeling that they were isolated,” she says. And that was a sensation she still remembered from her own childhood.
Game’s then-husband moved with the family but she conceded the move “probably contributed to the marriage ending”.
She says her ex-husband, who still lives in Australia, hadn’t been keen on the move. Despite the circumstances and trauma of the marriage dissolving only weeks after the birth of their third child, Game says their relationship these days is “amicable”.
“We’re both very happy with the fact that the marriage has ended. We’ve benefited massively from the marriage, and we’ve got three beautiful children,” she says.
But there is no doubt it was a struggle. Game was a full-time mum with little income. She didn’t even have a car for two years.
Every trip to the shop involved a half-hour walk to the supermarket, packing up two small kids into a pram, with a third hanging off the back.
“By the time I found myself having birthed three kids, with the middle kid having had a problem, yeah, and then the marriage is over. I mean it would be fair to say I was sort of fairly worn out,” she says.
Looking back, she says she can’t imagine how she did it.
“I had three children, all day, all night, all day, all night, for years, for years,” she says.
“Now, every time I meet someone who’s got children, particularly multiple children, if they’re a woman, we just bond over the fact that it’s been an incredibly brutal experience to birth and keep alive multiple children,” she says. “Of course, it’s a joyous experience, but it’s a brutal experience as well.”
Game had returned to working as a vet when politics beckoned. She had been to some meetings as her mum Jennifer had been working with Hanson.
Her first thought was to say no, even though she had been assured there was no chance she would actually be elected.
“I didn’t really want to put myself as lamb to the slaughter. For what purpose do I want to do that to myself?” she asked.
But she finally decided it was a chance to contribute in a broader sense to society. “I had an opportunity to be interested in education, interested in mental health. You’re interested in people living in poverty, interested in homelessness, to be more engaged and maybe have some sway sometimes about some things,” she says.
Game has pursued topics she is passionate about. She was the driving force behind the creation of a parliamentary friends of veterans group and trying to raise the profile of International Men’s Day.
Her father served as a dentist in the navy for many years but ended his life last year. She says while her father had his struggles she hadn’t realised the depth of his pain.
“When I came into parliament, there were people advocating for women’s health and children’s health, but there was nobody talking about men’s health, so I thought I could make a contribution,” she says.
Game has attracted some controversy for her stances on teaching gender fluidity in schools and launching a petition objecting to sculptures in the Art Gallery that she says should be relocated so children couldn’t see them.
While topics such as these fit comfortably in the One Nation wheelhouse, Game says she is trying to break down the stereotypes that the party founded by Pauline Hanson was a racist one, Hanson first coming to prominence in the 1990s by saying Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians” and also calling Muslim migrants to be banned.
“One of the challenges is people saying, ‘Oh, you know is that the racist party.’ I think we’re coming away from that and getting known for lots of other things now,” she says. “I would never hold myself in that way and I’ve made a massive effort I think to try and break down that impression.”
But there are always people quick to judge.
She tells the story of going to an event at a northern suburbs school that was starting up a creative arts program. There were performers there who, when the inevitable pictures were called for, refused to be in a picture with a One Nation MP.
She says most people she meets are polite but being an MP sends out a different vibe to her previous jobs as vet, teacher and mum.
“It does affect you when you do meet the odd person who’s decided that they’re going to not like you.” She laughs and says: “Pauline would tell me to toughen up.”
Game, who has Jewish heritage on her father’s side, certainly rebelled against party orthodoxy when she wrote to Premier Peter Malinauskas asking for city monuments to be lit up in Palestinian colours.
There have been challenging moments for her in adjusting to this new life. Being in the public gaze for a private person takes getting used to. Learning the rhythms and peculiarities of parliamentary life has been another.
She laments she has come out of “merit-based” professions. That’s not a quality she sees in parliamentary life. “It’s about numbers, obviously, it’s about relationships, there’s so much that goes into it that’s not merit,” she says.
Game has also had to become a boss. Last month, she found herself in the middle of a staffing controversy when allegations of a “toxic” workplace and excessive staff turnover were levelled. Unnamed former staffers alleged there was “yelling and screaming” and demands to work long hours. Game denies there is a culture problem in the office but acknowledges she can be demanding.
“I do not get along well with lethargic, lazy people that misrepresent their abilities and feel no obligation in their role to the people that pay them,” she says. “I was straight back at work straight after Dad died. Perhaps that was wrong but the Voice debate was happening. If I’m a workaholic, Dad’s to blame, setting that example to me all his life working out of poverty.”
Game says she is determined to make the most of her time in parliament. Her term does not expire until 2030 and she recognises “she is in a very privileged position”. She also appreciates that for someone who a few short years ago was living in poverty, juggling three kids and post-natal depression that she has been granted a life-changing opportunity.
“I think, well, it is hard, but it’s not really that hard. Because hard is not having enough food, not having enough money to put food on your table, not having a job, not having a house.
“I have to remember in the hard times that I’ve got secure employment for the moment, with good pay, with the opportunity to have flexibility and do things that are meaningful to me – that’s a great privilege.”
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