Promise of a senate seat for Labor’s Charlotte Walker on her 21st birthday
It was a double celebration for Labor’s youngest candidate, who was blowing out candles for her 21st as she moved to a winning position for a federal senate spot.
SA News
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Charlotte Walker was blowing out candles on her 21st birthday cake on Saturday as Labor votes climbed – and tipped her into a winning position for a federal Senate spot.
It would be a shock win for the SA Young Labor president and Australian Services Union staffer who grew up in Yankalilla.
With more than 42 per cent of the vote counted, Ms Walker is poised to win the sixth senate spot for South Australia behind Labor’s Marielle Smith, Liberal’s Alex Antic, the Greens Sarah Hanson-Young and Labor’s Karen Grogan.
The Liberals’ Anne Ruston was poised to take out the fifth spot and Ms Walker the sixth.
State Labor Speaker Leon Bignell can remember first recruiting Ms Walker to work in his Yankalilla electorate office after she completed year 12 at Investigator College in Victor Harbor.
“I caught up with her at the Yankalilla Show in 2022 and when I talked to her she seemed bright and interested in politics so I said ‘ how about you come and do a few days a week in my office’,” Mr Bignell said.
“I remember she had to take a day off for schoolies.”
Ms Walker lives in Adelaide and has been actively campaigning for Labor candidates including in what was believed to be a marginal seat in Boothby, since taken out convincingly by Labor sitting member Louise Miller-Frost.
Mr Bignell said it would be great to see more diversity in the Labor Party in Canberra with a young woman like Ms Walker who understood country issues in the senate.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said “the parliament is best when it represents all of Australia, including our young people”.
“Charlotte is an intelligent and principled woman who would add to the diversity of the sentate.”
Liberal Party’s Anne Ruston was knocked off the top spot on the Liberal senate ticket by backbencher conservative Mr Antic at a meeting in March last year.
Long-term Liberal senator David Fawcett was likely to lose his seat in Canberra, he was first elected to the senate in 2010 and has contributed extensively to defence policy.
Ms Ruston was the third most senior woman in the federal Liberal Party behind deputy leader Sussan Ley and deputy senate leader Michaelia Cash for the Opposition, and has been a high-profile campaigner leading up to the election.
She was the coalition’s health spokeswoman, the manager of opposition business in the senate and a former social services minister who sat on Scott Morrison’s expenditure review committee.
Mr Antic hoped to see conservative commentator Daniel Wild beat Labor’s Matt Burnell in Spence, appealing to disaffected young men and patriotism as he campaigned with Mr Wild and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the northern suburbs seat.
Mr Burnell has held the seat with a swing.
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