Teal MP Zoe Daniel vows a re-run of 2022 policy agenda

Hitting out at the Albanese government, teal MP Zoe Daniel claimed Labor had been ‘pathologically unambitious on pretty much everything’.

Teal independent Zoe Daniel accused Labor of being “pathologically unambitious” since it came to office. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Goldstein teal MP Zoe Daniel has vowed to replicate her 2022 election platform, claiming Labor’s agenda to be “pathologically unambitious on pretty much everything” meant she could run on the same issues at the next federal poll.

Ms Daniel was one of five teal independents buttressed by Simon Holmes a Court’s cashed-up political funding giant Climate 200 that ousted Liberal MPs at the last election on an agenda of climate change action, gender equality and addressing public sector ­corruption.

On Sunday, Ms Daniel hit out at the government for failing to progress action on her policies in its first term.

“Has Labor really moved on a lot of those things? … Not enough action on climate, sort of giving with one hand, taking with the other, in terms of new fossil fuel developments and squibbing it on environmental reforms,” she said.

Ms Daniel also took aim at the Coalition, claiming the opposition had deepened its resolve on policies it took to the last election.

“What’s changed in their climate policy? If anything, they’ve walked it back. What’s changed in regard to gender equality, safety of women, women’s economic empowerment?”

Action on integrity also failed to satisfy Ms Daniel, who was “not convinced” by the effectiveness of the recently established National Anti Corruption Commission.

With an election to be held by May 2025 at the latest, Ms Daniel sharpened her pitch to voters in her Melbourne bayside electorate, arguing that independents would make the government, and opposition, “more ambitious”.

“To make them better, to keep them honest, to make them strive, to provide vision for the country,” she said.

The former ABC reporter said she expected that US President Joe Biden would lose the impending presidential election and ­anticipated a tilt towards “isolationism, nativism and division” under a second Trump administration.

“We can make a decision as a country not to do that – to differentiate ourselves with a vision from our future,” she said.

“I’m looking for that from both major parties, and I’m not seeing it.”

Asked whether she would support Labor or the Coalition in the event of a hung parliament, Ms Daniel said she was yet to make a decision.

“I’m not going to make a decision on that eight months before an election, and I would like to call it a balanced parliament rather than a hung parliament.

“Let’s get away from the negative language,” she said.

Ms Daniel will face former MP Tim Wilson, who has been pre­selected as the Liberal candidate.