Kate Chaney on duty to family, falling into politics – and not putting up with crap
We’ve secured a table perched atop the dunes at Clancy’s Fish Bar in City Beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, but Kate Chaney has a tight schedule and won’t be indulging in more than a small plate.
She’s still running on the celebratory pancake breakfast the family held for her daughter’s 13th birthday, which has since been followed by back-to-back meetings at her Floreat office.
Independent Member for Curtin Kate Chaney, talking to Jesinta Burton in City Beach.Credit: Ross Swanborough.
Spotting the photographer hovering around the restaurant table has catapulted her back to the 2022 election, when she made her first on-screen appearance.
“I was eating pho, and it was the messiest possible thing I could have chosen to eat with the TV cameras on me. I’d never really been in front of the camera before, and I just thought ‘What am I doing?’” she says.
It’s been more than two years since Kate Chaney was headhunted to stand as an independent at the 2022 federal election and wrestled the blue-ribbon stronghold of Curtin from the Liberal Party her family name was once synonymous with.
Just 20 weeks passed between Chaney being approached and her becoming Western Australia’s first female independent federal MP, one of seven “teals” to oust sitting Liberal MPs in a movement that swept the country.
The world of politics wasn’t exactly foreign to Chaney, the granddaughter of former Menzies government minister Fred Chaney Sr and niece of the former WA Liberal senator who shares his name.
Despite hailing from one of the state’s most powerful political and business families, the 49-year-old says the decision to abandon a “nice life” for the halls of Parliament House wasn’t an easy one.
Chaney says she took counsel from both her father and her uncle Fred Chaney Jr, but it was her then-11-year-old daughter’s vote of confidence that cemented the mother-of-three’s decision.
“Not long after we talked [about her running], my daughter said, ‘Mum, I think it would be bad for me right now because I will miss you, but I think it will be good for Australia’, and I still get a bit teary,” she says, reaching across the table for a napkin to dry her eyes.
“There are sacrifices that you make, and you miss out on things, but being a mum you do look at your kids, and think about the challenges they’ll be facing in 20 years’ time, and you think about what you will tell them — and I felt like I needed to be accountable.”
Independent Member for Curtin Kate Chaney, talking to Jesinta Burton in City Beach.Credit: Ross Swanborough.
Kate Chaney grew up in the affluent suburb of Nedlands and is the eldest of prominent WA businessman and former Woodside chair Michael Chaney’s four children.
In fact, almost all of the now-115 members of her well-known family, from her grandparents down, are still in Perth, she informs me.
Chaney was raised with a strong sense of duty to family, but also of service to community, and credits being in the orbit of her successful father’s associates with not being easily intimidated.
She attended John XXIII College and studied arts at the University of Western Australia before joining her then-boyfriend, now-husband, by switching to law.
After finishing her degree, Chaney says she mulled going into human rights or family law, but it was her father’s advice that underpinned her decision to venture east and work for a major firm.
“It didn’t feel like it was entirely me,” she admits on reflection, but she says those years were among her most formative.
She spent the duration of her final year brainstorming ways she could have more of an impact before making the switch to strategic advisory.
Chaney went on to serve as general manager of business development at Perth Airport in 2007 before later joining Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers – the company her father led as managing director between 1992 and 2005 – as its Aboriginal affairs manager.
It was there she was charged with aiding the development of the company’s first reconciliation action plan, an initiative spearheaded by then-chief executive Richard Goyder.
“I learned so much, including the art of making an impact without having control,” Chaney says.
“It was slow, messy and imperfect, but we did get there, and I think I’ve gone into politics in a different way after seeing change happen like that.”
It was that experience that underpinned her support for the Voice and her belief that the only way to shift the dial on Aboriginal disadvantage was to empower those affected to be part of the solution.
Chaney’s seat was one of just two federal electorates in WA to record a majority in favour of a constitutionally enshrined voice in the October 2023 referendum, which was ultimately rejected.
Kate Chaney at a ballot box in Curtin ahead of the Voice referendum.Credit: Jesinta Burton
But the result hasn’t deterred the Curtin MP, who announced she would run for reelection after deciding she had not yet conquered the issues she set out to.
The home of Perth’s elite is shaping up as a key battleground in the upcoming election, with the Liberals determined to regain the seat via former Uber boss Tom White.
However, Chaney rejects running for reelection had anything to do with her eleventh-hour decision not to back a ban on live export.
She is adamant the public should have the choice to be represented by people outside the major parties to drive issues beyond the three-year election cycle, from climate policy to tax reform.
“The great thing about [winning the seat] was that it seemed really unlikely, and you go into the role thinking ,‘what else seems unlikely that we can address?’” she says as our meals arrive – charred brussels sprouts and stracciatella for her, grilled barramundi for me.
“It wasn’t an obvious decision [to run for re-election] because it is a pretty crappy lifestyle from WA, but we have seen the larger crossbench change the tone of the parliament by nudging issues in a different direction and keeping things on the radar.
“Both sides have said to me and other crossbenchers that actually the parliament works differently with us [Independents], better, and I think part of that is having a bunch of strong women who aren’t going to put up with any crap and call out behaviour in parliament.”
At the top of her agenda is the rising cost of living, housing, and more transparency, including around political donations; something she made a point of declaring during her campaign.
Chaney tells me it took her team one week to build a website disclosing the $1 million in donations that poured into her campaign war chest in real-time, a large portion of which came from climate-independent backers Climate 200.
“There is so much advertising and social license being bought by oil and gas companies, and the direct economic impact is not nearly as big as people think it is.”
She believes greater transparency on political donations is a minimum requirement on the electoral reform front.
“It seems really obvious to me that anyone who was choosing whether or not to vote for me should be able to see where my funding was coming from,” she says.
“We need to believe that politicians are making decisions in the best interests of their communities and the country, and the secrecy around that funding undermines that trust.”
Independent Member for Curtin Kate Chaney, talking to Jesinta Burton in City Beach.Credit: Ross Swanborough.
Despite the sentiment in the resources-dependent west being different to that on the eastern seaboard, Chaney maintains climate change, decarbonisation and environmental protection are issues of the utmost concern to her constituents.
She believes the deep connections between the WA government and the fossil fuel industry have translated to “not a lot of boldness” in policy, with the WA climate change bill absent of an emissions reduction target for any year before 2050.
Chaney concedes addressing the issue would require a huge transformation of the economy, but says the exposure from coal, gas, and iron ore being our three biggest exports should be the necessary motivation.
“The big thing that makes no sense is our approach to fossil fuels, and it’s hard: the reality is we do need some gas in the transition, but we know we need to use as little of it as possible for as short a time as possible,” she says.
“We have the opportunity to shift our focus to building the industries that will provide the jobs in 20 years time, or we can focus on holding on to gas for as long as possible, which is effectively betting against humanity.
“The work that I think needs to be done is focusing on how we build renewables, critical minerals, and make sure that we have export industries in the new economy.
“There is so much advertising and social license being bought by oil and gas companies, and the direct economic impact is not nearly as big as people think it is.”
Chaney says the investment community is “getting wise” to inaction too, referencing the shareholder rebuke of Woodside’s climate plan in April that landed her former boss Richard Goyder in hot water.
It’s 1.01pm, and I’ve kept her longer than I promised her media minder, but I sneak in a quick-fire question as she gathers her things about what she hopes her legacy will be.
“Showing that there’s a different way is probably the thing that’s most important to me because I think there is so much disengagement with politics; especially younger people,” she says.
“Just understanding that it doesn’t have to be point-scoring and short-term perspectives, that we can be represented, accommodated and listen to both sides. Good ideas can come from anywhere.”
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