Election 2022: Curtin rises for blue-blood performer Kate Chaney

When Fraser government minister Fred Chaney learned his niece Kate wanted to contest WA’s safest Liberal seat as an independent, he was concerned before he was supportive.

Independent candidate for Curtin Kate Chaney with her uncle and mentor Fred Chaney, who was a minister in the Fraser government. Picture: Colin Murty

When Fraser government minister Fred Chaney learned his niece Kate wanted to contest Western Australia’s safest Liberal seat as an independent, he was concerned before he was supportive.

“I was very clear in setting out the reasons not to run,” Mr Chaney told The Australian at his home in the heart of Curtin, the suburban Perth seat held by former foreign minister Julie Bishop for 21 years. Mr Chaney, a federal MP for 19 years, said he felt ­protective.

“I didn’t want Kate to be subject to what I think has became a pretty grim operation – particularly for women – and we saw that in the last term on both sides of parliament.”

However, Ms Chaney, 47, had formed the view that many of the issues facing Australia were too complex for the oppositional nature of recent parliaments. She saw a political system beset by “short term-ism”. She is running as a “teal” candidate supported by the Climate 200 political movement that is backing 21 candidates in the May 21 election.

“Climate is one of the issues: it is presented as this choice between the environment and the economy but in fact both depend on us taking a long-term perspective,” she said.

Ms Chaney has worked as a lawyer, a strategy consultant, in the private and non-profit sector, and on various boards. In the leafy suburbs of Curtin between the Swan River and the Indian Ocean, she has been most recognisable as a member of the high-achieving Chaney clan. Her late grandfather Sir Frederick Chaney was a schoolteacher who became minister for the navy in the Menzies government and later the lord mayor of Perth. Her father Michael Chaney is the chair of ­Wesfarmers – the co-operative of primary producers that grew into a retailing giant – and a former chancellor of the University of Western Australia.

 

Ms Chaney’s uncle Fred Chaney, who remains active in Indigenous affairs in philanthropic and volunteer roles, has been a mentor to her over many years. She said he then became a source of wisdom during her campaign, after he decided that she was doing the right thing.

“I saw that her reasons were all the right reasons,” he said.

“The critical point in our conversation was when I saw that it is easy to agree that the system is broken. It’s easy to say that the two-party system is unsatisfactory. But to change that, you have to have good people putting themselves forward who are committed to change.

“Without that, things will go on as they have been … governing for politics not governing for good government.”

Liberal Celia Hammond holds the seat of Curtin on a margin of 13.9 per cent. While it was named in 1949 for the wartime Labor prime minister John Curtin, Labor has never won it.

Curtin has been out of Liberal hands just once: in 1996, conservative Alan Rocher was elected. He had been disendorsed by the Liberal Party and ran as an independent. Political history buffs note that on that occasion, Ms Chaney’s uncle Fred Chaney surrendered his Liberal Party membership to support Mr Rocher’s campaign. Mr Chaney’s support for Ms Chaney is only the second time he has publicly endorsed an independent candidate.