Election 2025: Indigenous advocate Megan Krakouer aims to be Senate voice of change
Megan Krakouer is an Indigenous advocate with a formidable reputation. Police commissioners and premiers make time for her. She now wants to be in the parliament with the decision-makers.
Megan Krakouer was 19 with two toddlers and a job as a kindergarten assistant when she told her GP in the tiny West Australian farming town of Mount Barker that she wanted to learn how to speak and write like a lawyer.
“I wanted to be a lawyer so I could write good parole board letters. So many of my family was in jail,” she said.
Nick Silberstein, the doctor who cared for three generations of Krakouers, immediately urged her to move to Perth and enrol in a bridging course for university aspirants who did not graduate high school.
Ms Krakouer said Dr Silberstein gave her $2000 for books and expenses as well as the emotional support she needed to help her change the direction of her life.
Almost 35 years later, Ms Krakouer is an Indigenous advocate with a formidable reputation. Police commissioners sit down with her. Premiers make time for her. She now wants to be in the parliament with the decision-makers. After a spectacular falling-out with the Greens – Ms Krakouer called the party machine racist – she is on the WA Senate ticket for Australia’s Voice founded by Labor defector Fatima Payman.
Most strategists agree that out of the six Senate spots up for grabs in WA on May 3, Labor will get two, Liberals will get two and the Greens will get one. Senator Payman’s chief of staff is famous preference harvester Glenn Druery and he says Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is in a strong position to take the final WA Senate spot based on current polling.
Mr Druery says if One Nation’s lift in the polls continues, it could pick up a Senate spot in every mainland state and possibly Tasmania, where Senator Hanson’s daughter is on the ticket for the first time. This would give One Nation seven senators in parliament, a scenario Mr Druery describes as a great concern. “If there is a bolter it could be Megan Krakouer. I wouldn’t write her off,” Mr Druery said.
Ms Krakouer’s profile in the west may become a factor. Her campaigns against the Labor state government – including exposing 24-hour lockdowns at WA’s juvenile detention centre – have made her a hero to many on the left. But Ms Krakouer has contacts everywhere. More conservatives seek her counsel than will say.
Her work with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse took her to remote communities and prisons where she witnessed pain and stigma that have stayed with her. She saw the nation’s Indigenous suicide crisis through her work with a federal taskforce supporting grieving families. Now she runs a national suicide prevention project with her mentor Gerry Georgatos.
Ms Krakouer is the youngest of 13 children to Phoebe and Eric, a Noongar couple who began married life in a tin shack with no electricity or running water on the edge of Mount Barker’s sheep sale yards. Locals called that row of shacks Hollywood.
When Ms Krakouer was born, the family had moved to public housing in town. It was a wonderful life and a home filled with love, she said.
The Krakouer men love Australian rules football – Ms Krakouer’s brothers Jimmy and Phil are the North Melbourne champions.
Jimmy’s son Andrew Krakouer played for Richmond and Collingwood. His death aged 42 in March cut short a redemption story that had made the family very proud. Andrew was jailed for assault mid-career, returned to the AFL and became a mentor and role model. He spoke about the futility of violence and published the picture book My Dad’s Gone Away to help children whose fathers are in prison.
Every night in WA, one in every 15 Indigenous men is incarcerated. Andrew was growing into a statesmanlike figure when he died from a heart attack.
In primary school, Ms Krakouer was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, a silent killer in Aboriginal communities long after it was eradicated from most developed countries. On the day of a school sports carnival, Ms Krakouer was weak and just out of hospital but her friends – some Noongar, some wadjela meaning non-Aboriginal – made her feel part of events by decorating her wheelchair in faction colours.
“That was our kind of community – tight-knit, generous and full of heart,” she said.
Ms Krakouer said it was later that she saw division in her hometown. “I still remember the top pub – non-Indigenous people drinking freely inside while Noongar families like mine were served out back, through a tiny window,” she said.
One of Ms Krakouer’s non-Aboriginal schoolfriends was Nat Cordon, now a teacher in the farming town of Ravensthorpe on the southern edge of Liberal Rick Wilson’s rural WA seat of O’Connor. Mr Wilson got 72.6 per cent of the vote at the Ravensthorpe booth in 2022 but Ms Cordon has asked her farmer friends to consider voting for Ms Krakouer in the Senate.
“She listens … she is passionate about change that helps all us Aussies,” Ms Cordon said.
Ms Krakouer said her upbringing prepared her for the work she did now. Her parents told her there was good and bad in everyone, black and white. She said they taught her to begin every conversation with humility.
“I’ve lived both sides of the system. And I carry my people’s pain, but also their hope, into every room I walk into,” she said.
Senator Payman was the accidental senator – third on Labor’s ticket and not expected to win in 2022 – when she triggered a crisis for her party by voting with the Greens on Palestinian statehood in July 2024. She refused to call Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on Israel an act of terrorism, was suspended and quit.
How would Senator Payman deal with a dissident senator? According to Mr Druery, this has been discussed at length.
“We are committed to the essential nature of having a conscience vote,” he said.
Ms Krakouer said she believed in Senator Payman and admired her conviction. In the event of disagreement, Ms Krakouer predicted there would be “robust discussion but ultimately a way forward”.
If it could, Australia’s Voice would block Australian investment in what it calls illegal Israeli settlements. The party’s policy platform aligns with independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who has been criticised by Indigenous leaders including Olympic gold medallist and former senator Nova Peris for conflating Aboriginal rights with the pro-Palestinian movement.
Ms Krakouer has joined a party forged out of support for Palestine and says she is on board with its goal to “keep fighting to end injustices everywhere, including the genocide in Gaza”.
However, her experience and expertise is in helping the poorest Australians.
“I see this low bar in politics where the major parties are not creating economic relief for people,” she said.
“I’ve sat with politicians. I’ve heard the promises. But too often, I’ve watched them walk away when it mattered most. That’s why I’m stepping into this arena – not just to talk but to act.”
“If you want to uplift the vulnerable, you need more than good intentions. You need grit. You need backbone. I’ve got both.”
As Ms Krakouer staffed the pre-poll booths in Perth this week, she thought of Dr Silberstein’s encouragement and the cash gift that put her on the path to university, then a homeowner and ultimately a person fully in charge of herself.
“When I graduated years later from Deakin University, I invited him to the ceremony … he said it would be an honour,” she said.
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