Federal Election 2022: Incumbent Wentworth member Dave Sharma warns fellow Liberals: ‘We could become the Republican Party’

Dave Sharma, the sitting Liberal MP most under pressure from a progressive independent, says the outcome of the federal election will define the Party’s identity for generations.

Dave Sharma, the migrant kid whose real name is Devanand, was only 12 when his world crumbled.

“I knew Mum was unwell. I knew she had breast cancer, but I think I just had this expectation of, you know, she’s sick but she’s going to hospital and so the doctors will fix it,” Sharma says.

“So it was a real shock to me when she died – I just couldn’t believe it. I remember coming home from school one afternoon and it was just devastating.”

So when the NSW government suspended breast screening during the height of the pandemic, the father of three was deeply worried.

“It (Mum’s death) forced me to grow up quickly and forced my dad to figure out how to become a hands-on parent, which men of his generation didn’t really do,” Sharma says.

“The stuff I did, like learning how to go and use the laundromat because when we moved we didn’t have a machine … I remember vacuuming the house, I used to pay the bills and do the banking when I was 12 or 13.

Wentworth MP Dave Sharma as a child with his late parents Diana and Bholan and his twin sisters Melanie and Belinda.

“There were no universal breast screenings back then for Mum. It’s something I got quite concerned about during the pandemic and I raised a few times with NSW Health.

“The NSW clinics basically closed their doors for a while so a lot of women were missing their screening and mammograms. It wasn’t just for breast cancer, it was all sorts of things, and I’m still worried now that we’re going to see a post-pandemic bump because people who would have been diagnosed earlier didn’t get to those appointments.”

Sharma, 46, says the plan for leading Wentworth out of the pandemic is one of the issues constituents have quizzed him on the most.

Dave Sharma is facing a fierce contest for Wentworth. Photo by Renee Nowytarger.

The contest for Wentworth has been under way for months, since independent Allegra Spender threw her hat in the ring in November.

Between the Coalition being 10 points behind Labor on a two-party-preferred basis, according to the last Newspoll in late February, and Spender’s well-resourced campaign – she has spent more than $62,000 on social media ads alone in the past three months – Sharma has reason to worry.

After all, he was unseated by fellow socially progressive, economically conservative independent Professor Kerryn Phelps in the 2018 by-election.

Spender’s army of volunteers and war chest only continue to grow as the east races towards the polls.

It’s a busy time in the Edgecliff electorate office. Photo by Renee Nowytarger

Sharma argues independents like Phelps and Zali Steggall relied on Greens and Labor preferences to get them across the line and voted with them about 90 per cent of the time.

“They say they’re independent but they’re only standing against Coalition candidates,” he says.

“They’re, generally speaking, standing against the most diverse of the Liberal candidates.

“I mean, I’m the only Indian Australian in the parliament, Josh Frydenberg is a Jewish Australian, Trent Zimmerman is a gay man in the LNP, as is Tim Wilson, so I sort of think their actions belie their statements.

“If this movement succeeds in a broad sense, and it may, you’ll end up, I think, with a Liberal Party that’s less progressive and less moderate because those people will all be gone and it looks more like the Republican Party in the United States.

“Do people really want that? Or do they want progressive, thoughtful, economically conservative, socially liberal members of the Liberal Party in parliament? That’s what people really have to grapple with here.”

Sharma with his children on one of their many diplomatic assignments

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential impact on Australia’s national security has also been a hot topic discussed with the former diplomat on the campaign trail.

Canadian-born Sharma immigrated to Australia at age four to be closer to his Aussie mum Diana’s family in Sydney.

The son of barrister Bholan Sharma, a man of Indian heritage who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, spent the majority of his formative years in Australia before studying at Cambridge in the UK and joining the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade soon after.

“Even though I’m very Australianised, I think I still have the perspective of a migrant because I wasn’t born here, because my dad was ‘different’ growing up, because I’ve got a strange first name: Devanand. I never felt like a kind of ‘insider’ Australian when I was growing up,” Sharma says.

“So even though I speak with an Australian accent and I get the jokes and the idioms and sport and everything else, I still have a lot of, I think, the migrant sensibility within me. I do identify as a diverse Australian or, if you like, a person of colour.”

It was at DFAT the then adviser to Alexander Downer met his wife Rachel Lord, a lawyer by training who was advising Philip Ruddock, and the pair maintained their relationship long distance despite a lengthy assignment to Papua New Guinea for Sharma.

Together with his three girls Diana, 15, Estella, 13, and Daphne, 8, the family travelled the world with postings including Washington DC and Israel.

Sharma was doted on by his mum Diana with older twin sisters.

They lived through the 2015 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, which involved regular dashes to the bomb shelter.

“It was exciting, it was a privilege to go and represent your country overseas and deal with the highest levels of other governments,” Sharma says of his time with DFAT. “I met both the US presidents when I was there, Bush and Obama, did meetings in the Oval Office, dealt with the Israel prime minister and president, dealt with the PNG prime minister when I was there, and dealt with lots of Australian prime ministers from Howard onwards. It was a great insight into senior decision-making and foreign policy at the highest level.”

“I still take a keen interest in these issues and I’m still very involved in the decision-making, for example, with what’s going on in Ukraine right now with the Russian invasion. I’m heavily involved in the discussion because I’ve still got the networks overseas and I’ve got a lot of experience operating at that level.”

Dave Sharma says the Liberal Party could become “more like the Republican Party in the United States”. Picture: AFP

Spender and Sharma’s other rivals, including recently announced Labor candidate Tim Murray, have criticised him for running a campaign hinged on climate action while representing a party they say is moving too slowly.

Sharma points out that neither Labor nor the Liberal Party went to the 2019 election with their current net-zero commitments while acknowledging he would like to see the goalposts moved.

“I think we can move quicker toward net zero than 2050 and I’d like to see us invest more in the technology that would allow us to do it,” Sharma says.

“But I don’t understate the extent of that achievement because the climate wars in Australian politics, for want of a better term, are finished now because the conservative or centre right side of politics is basically no longer having an argument about the destination.

“There will always be arguments about what’s the best policy lever to get there. Do you use taxation or regulation or government purchasing power?

“I think we’ll have to end up having a more accelerated timetable than we’ve currently got and I’m certainly making the case for that. I accept, though, there are technological and commercial limitations on how fast you can make that transition, but I’m still keen to make sure we’re moving toward there as quickly as possible.”

Another of the family’s diplomatic assignments.

The Sharma family recently put down more roots in the east, buying a house in Centennial Park about a year ago which is currently undergoing significant renovations.

The girls and their parents arrive home carefully navigating the building site in the monsoonal downpour and discussing a broken laptop and what on earth they’re going to make for dinner.

While her parents examine the contents of the fridge, Estella talks about how much she loved their life as a diplomatic family but is fully behind her dad’s change of pace to politics.

Sharma has been in contact with eastern suburbs sexual consent champion Chanel Contos and recently posted a selfie of the pair at Parliament House to social media, which greatly impressed Estella and her mates.

“I think it’s really great. She is someone a lot of people look up to at my school,” Estella says.

Lord is another of Sharma’s ­biggest fans, her own policy ­background informing her support for the platforms on which he stands.

Dave Sharma at home in Centennial Park. Photo by Renee Nowytarger.

However, she did point out the sacrifices the families of politicians make.

“It does come at a cost for the rest of the family,” Lord says.

“At school people do know the kids and they know me. Sometimes people come up and will say things and I think, ‘hang on, I’m not ScoMo’.”

Fortunately for Lord, the recent feedback has been of the overwhelmingly positive variety with regards to Sharma’s stance on the Religious Discrimination Bill.

“So many people have come up to me and said, ‘please tell Dave thank you so much for crossing the floor – it really means a lot’,” Lord says.

Whatever the future holds for Sharma, he is driven by the lesson taught to him by his beloved late mother.

“It’s not that I was ever someone who was going to coast along, but it (her death) gave me a sense of there’s a bit of an impermanence to life and it’s what you make of it. It’s in my hands.”