The upstart: How some Seoul searching led Tom White to the fight of his life

Navigating the corflutes and a-frames scattered outside the Claremont polling booth on Wednesday, a voter makes a beeline for Liberal Curtin candidate Tom White.

He mentions his daughter studying at uni and asks the 37-year-old why his party doesn’t support Labor’s plan to cut 20 per cent of student debts.

Liberal candidate for Curtin Tom White meeting candidates at the Claremont polling booth on Wednesday.Credit: Colin Murty

White fires back that the $16 billion policy will add to the already ballooning generational debt contained in the budget papers and that it was a “cynical attempt to buy votes”.

“Might have to agree to disagree”, the voter retorts before shaking White’s hand and heading inside.

White walks back over, acknowledging his responses were “forthright”, but there was no point in telling him something he wanted to hear.

“I’m not gonna tell them what they want to hear just to convince them at the last minute as they walk into the booth. I think we owe them more than that,” he says.

It’s the most testing conversation White has with a punter in the hour or so that WAtoday is with the former Barnett government staffer and Uber executive at the busy booth, but one he relished in these final days of what has been a gruelling campaign for both him and his opponent, independent Kate Chaney.

With the help of significant funding from Climate 200, Chaney created history at the 2022 election as part of the teal wave that wrested control of Curtin from former Liberal MP Celia Hammond, who happened to be handing out how-to-vote cards for White while we were down there.

Chaney’s grip on the seat is the second weakest for an independent in the country at 1.3 per cent, and both candidates have likely already spent north of $1 million on their respective campaigns.

While some in the Liberals lament the party’s continued focus on formerly blue ribbon seats at the expense of fertile outer suburban areas, it is widely agreed, including by opposition leader Peter Dutton himself, that the Coalition’s path back to government requires them to win back teal-held seats like Curtin.

Seoul searching

White’s roots in the western suburbs and work with Uber made him a standout candidate within Liberal circles to take on Chaney.

He left his role as a political staffer in the Barnett government in 2014 to work in the Uber Perth office as the business was establishing itself in WA, and within six months was running the place. Within another six months he was also running the company’s Adelaide operations.

“I came to the realisation that I was on the wrong path, that I’m not a financially motivated person.”

Liberal candidate for Curtin Tom White

At the age of 27 he was in the melee erupting with taxi companies and governments as the business battled court cases and protests in the taxi industry.

By 2017 he moved to Vietnam to help establish the business there before moving to Japan in 2018 to start the business from scratch.

It wasn’t until late 2022 when he was running Uber’s joint venture in Seoul, South Korea that his mind turned to politics.

White at the polling booth with his corflutes.Credit: Colin Murty

“I went back to Seoul and was sitting at my desk one day, and this sounds dramatic, but it’s true, I came to the realisation that I was on the wrong path, that I’m not a financially motivated person,” he says.

“What I realised is the time at which I was most passionate and energetic at Uber was in the first few years, when I was on a crusade. I was part of a mission that happened to be a business.

“As time wore on, I found myself feeling like I was more and more just in a business and I came to this realisation that I need to be doing something meaningful. Making money is not enough for me.”

In early 2023, White spent two weeks in Perth gauging interest in his tilt at politics and on his return gave nine month’s notice.

He said there was no plan B if he didn’t win this weekend.

“I haven’t even contemplated what I’m going to do if it doesn’t work out on Saturday. That’s a realistic possibility. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but yeah, I’m going all in,” he said.

Does Dutton drag?

It was widely agreed in Liberal circles in WA that the Coalition’s problem at the 2022 election was tethered to the unpopularity of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Insiders in both major parties suggest that Dutton’s leadership has not corrected that issue in any great way.

None of White’s material at the booth has any obvious imaging of Dutton but White says when it comes down to it, voters in Curtin will choose Dutton.

“People understand that he’s vastly superior to the alternative. I don’t think I need to convince many people of that in Curtin,” he says.

Tom White and 98-year-old Joan.Credit: Colin Murty

“Either Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese will be the prime minister after Saturday, and when you put it in those such stark terms, I think the people of Curtin understand that it’s an obvious choice.”

Climate change was also considered a major voting factor in the 2022 election that got Chaney over the line.

White has vehemently backed gas and contentious projects like Woodside’s North West Shelf extension proposal and disagrees that climate is an issue this time round.

“Frankly, climate change has tumbled down the list of concerns and demands,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s any secret, but just look at Kate Chaney’s website.

“She doesn’t talk about climate change nearly as much as she once did because she can read the tea leaves as well as anyone.

“When you’ve got a record number of small businesses going broke, you’ve got a per capita recession, anemic productivity and virtually non-existent economic growth, the conversation all of a sudden becomes a lot more real and fundamental.”

Chaney’s website includes a list of priorities around climate and environmental reform, including phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, creating an ambitious emissions target for 2035 and supporting renewable energy.

On the booth, White is called over by a punter to meet his 98-year-old mother Joan who was there to vote.

When she meets him she says: “I hope you get rid of those bastards.”

White is delighted at the interaction.

He says with sincerity the best part of the campaign has been meeting residents of the suburb and hopes they don’t just see him as a robotic figure whose face is plastered over countless corflutes.

“I just hope that in the last 12 months, I’ve been able to present myself with a bit of humanity to people,” he said.