Federal Election 2019: On the hustings with Sturt Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon

She’s a member of one of Australia’s artistic dynasties, the daughter of a bricklayer, a former farmer and a family mediator but one thing Cressida O’Hanlon never thought was she would be is a politician.

Labor candidate for Sturt Cressida O’Hanlon.

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She is a member of one of Australia’s artistic dynasties, the daughter of a bricklayer, a former farmer and a professional family mediator — but one thing Cressida O’Hanlon never imagined being was a politician.

Despite the endless grind and long days, the Labor candidate for Sturt and mother of four is thoroughly enjoying the experience of a first campaign. And she’s upbeat about winning.

“Even when Christopher Pyne was still the member and likely candidate I thought it was possible,” she says.

“There’s an ‘It’s Time’ factor in Sturt and right across the country.

“I’ve been concerned about the direction of Australia losing our fairness and egalitarianism so I thought I would give it a red-hot go.”

It’s 10.30 on a wet, windy miserable day less than two weeks out from the May 18 poll and she’s already been at the Sturt pre-poll station on Payneham Rd for two hours.

She’ll be there until the poll closes in another seven hours.

O’Hanlon vs Stevens corflutes in Sturt.

O’Hanlon has been in South Australia for just six years and is evidently not from the Labor Party machine, with a diverse life a long way from the traditional pathway for a candidate.

The granddaughter of artist David Boyd hints at a bohemian childhood, including living in France and on a boat on the Mediterranean.

She features in several artworks, including her grandfather’s Cressida and Rousseau the Cat in the Garden Collagraph.

Married at 20, she has been a member of the Labor Party for more than 20 years — ever since, as a mother of two young children on a NSW farm, she lived through the extremes of drought and flood.

She named her second child Noah in the hope of rain, but the Millennium floods saw her and her first husband sell the farm and return to Sydney.

Later she moved to Newcastle and met her second husband, an army officer.

At the conclusion of a two-year posting in SA, living at Mawson Lakes, they took one final trip into the city and knew they couldn’t leave.

“We fell in love with Adelaide and we’d never been wedded to any place before,” she says.

“My husband was discharged from the army after 25 years, set up his own business and we settled down.”

Her father, who died when she was still a teenager, had wanted her to do law — and she began studies as a mature-age student.

“You think you need to do what your dad wants but I found I didn’t enjoy the adversarial aspect of law,” she says.

“I think I was born a mediator and helping people to come to agreement is always best.

“This is what I can bring to politics — the ability to negotiate and bring people to a point of agreement, that’s my skill set.”

The O’Hanlons, with two children at home aged six and 12, live in Walkerville.

It’s 100m outside the Sturt electorate, so they have been looking for houses in Joslin.

She says climate change is the biggest issue in the electorate and close to her heart after the perfect storm of weather catastrophes that changed her life when living on the farm.

“Just the other day we had extraordinary warnings out of the United Nations saying the dangers we are facing,” she says.

“The policy stagnation around climate change has to end.”

Her work in family mediation has seen her work dealing with families struggling with cost of living pressures and underemployment.

“There’s a multiplying effect with climate change around social justice and making sure people can live with economic dignity,” she says.

“It affects all aspects of our lives and we need to get on and get it done and then move on to other things.

“We should judge ourselves as a society by how we treat the least fortunate among us and focus on their needs.”

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She’s might have become the accidental politician, but Cressida O’Hanlon will be playing a straight bat if she gets to Canberra.

“What you see is what you get with me and I’m not going to be a politician to make promises I can’t deliver on,” she adds.

“If I win I am nothing more than an elected representative and it’s my role to listen to my electorate deliver their message to Canberra and take the answers back.

“I’m not special or more knowledgeable but I am trained to be a good communicator and negotiate solutions. And that’s what I’ll do.”