Zali Steggall reveals her plans for Warringah after defeating Tony Abbott
Following her victory over Tony Abbott, new Warringah MP Zali Steggall has revealed she is looking further ahead than ‘just one term’ as she outlines her plan for the electorate.
Warringah’s new MP Zali Steggall says she’s not planning on being a one-hit wonder and is in politics for the long haul.
Some have compared her with Wentworth’s Kerryn Phelps, the fellow independent who lost her seat at the weekend after winning a by-election just six months ago.
She said she was looking further ahead than “just one term” as she released her plan for Warringah to the Manly Daily readers.
And Ms Steggall, a former Olympic skier and barrister, said she was now fully focused on a career in politics.
She said she was in the process of resigning from her position on a number of boards and closing her offices at the family law courts, a “bittersweet” moment after 10 successful years.
She said while it was tough running as an independent without the backing of a national party, she was confident in her incredibly devoted, multi-generational fan base.
Ms Steggall said unlike Ms Phelps, she had won over a wide cross-section of the community, something that she deliberately set out to do from the outset.
Her devoted and active 1000-strong “turquoise army”, named after the colour of Ms Steggall’s campaign T-shirts, include teenagers, the silver surfer generation and everyone in between.
Some of them were back in their turquoise T-shirts on Monday jumping up and down at The Spit, waving and thanking voters passing by in cars and buses.
“They’re still so enthusiastic even after a long campaign,” Ms Steggall said. “They say they want to keep going, they don’t want to stop.”
A number have told her they want to travel en masse to Canberra for her maiden speech and she was looking at hiring a convoy of buses.
But her first job this week was to start building a strong team around her to help deliver on her promises.
Despite a Coalition majority, Ms Steggall said she still believed she could make progress on her number one campaign issue, climate change.
After her win on Saturday she stated she wanted to be a “climate leader”.
She told the Manly Daily that while the Liberal Party had traditionally been split on the issue, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a climate change believer.
She argued now that Mr Abbott was no longer in office there was a better chance of progress. She pointed to his stance on previous climate change policy.
“He was the circuit breaker,” she said.
She also said that Mr Morrison was family orientated.
“He has two young daughters and he says what he does is for his children,” she said.
“In that case he can’t ignore the environment and what it will look like in the future.”
Ms Steggall added that the Prime Minister was also ambitious and would be looking to leave a legacy, like the former Labor leader Bob Hawke, who died last week.
Ms Steggall, a self-called “moderate with a heart”, said she hoped for a more collaborative, cleaner and positive form of politics going forward.
Although she unseated a Liberal giant in Mr Abbott, she said she was aligned with some of his party’s policies, including the economy.
She pledged to help boost small and medium businesses.
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