Deputy Labor Leader offered a uni student a lift home but the young woman got scared

IF YOU are ever walking alone at night, never fear, Tanya Plibersek is near. With all the other jobs she holds down, she also has time to drive home strangers.

A state funeral for Minister of Australia, the Right Honourable Malcolm Fraser AC CH. Service in ScotsÕ Church, Melbourne central business district. Labor MP Tanya Plibersek. Picture: Josie Hayden

IF YOU are ever walking alone at night, never fear, Tanya Plibersek is near.

Besides going toe-to-toe with her Liberal counterparts and looking after her own family, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition also has time to drive home strangers.

But it seems the Labor MP’s gesture to give a young woman a lift was at first misconstrued.

Student journalist Summer Lea was initially frightened by Ms Plibersek’s offer to drive her home, believing she was safer on her own.

Writing in last week’s University of Sydney student newspaper, Honi Soit, Ms Lea told of how she was approached by a smartly dressed blonde woman in a black four-wheel drive as she walked from Redfern to Camperdown a few years ago.

She said the woman asked if she wanted a ride but she refused.

“I didn’t,” she wrote. “I was safe on my own, and her approach frightened me.”

She said she told Ms Plibersek that she didn’t accept lifts from strangers but the Labor MP wouldn’t give up.

“I walked away, wondering what kind of person would genuinely, generously want to give me a lift,” she wrote.

“It wasn’t over yet.”

The Deputy Labor Leader insisted she get in the car saying she would never want her own daughter walking alone at night.

She then produced said daughter, as well as her son.

Supplied. Deputy leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Tanya Plibersek with husband Michael Coutts-Trotter and children Joe, 8, Anna, 12, and Louis, 3.

Ms Lea got in the car but she still thought she might be in danger.

“I got in and chatted to the couple, they seemed happy,’ she wrote. “I thought s***, I’m gonna get kidnapped, they’re definitely acting, to reel me in.

“I told them I was a University student, unsure of what to do in my life. The man said he worked for DOCS. I was intrigued as I’d spent some time in foster care when I was younger, but I didn’t ask any more questions.

“The woman said that she worked in politics and I asked if it paid well. She said that it “paid the bills”.

It wasn’t until a month ago that Ms Lea realised who her good Samaritan was and subsequently wrote to her to thank her.

The Labor MP responded and Ms Lea subsequently wrote about the ‘scary’ experience.

Ms Plibersek then tweeted the story jokingly referring to it as “the time I scared a student journalist”.

AKA 'the time I scared a student journalist' https://t.co/ESYKfudVQg

— Tanya Plibersek (@tanya_plibersek) April 19, 2015