Glenorchy Mayor Kristie Johnston runs for Clark as independent

Labor came knocking, the Liberals too – but popular Glenorchy Mayor Kristie Johnston has rejected the party machine to reveal she is running for the seat of Clark in the next state election without any party ties. READ OUR EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW >>

GLENORCHY Mayor Kristie Johnston has vowed not to accept political donations as she runs for state parliament.

The popular mayor, who made her name — and a few enemies — by shaking up the Glenorchy City Council, has announced her intention to run as an independent at the state election, to be held on or before March next year.

Kristie Johnston.

“I’m still mayor and working very, very hard as mayor and I will continue to do that right up to polling day and then we’ll wait and see what the people of Clark decide,” Alderman Johnston told the Mercury.

If she fails to be elected, she indicated she would likely not run again for mayor at the local government elections late next year.

“I have always said that I don’t want to be an old, stale mayor,” she said.

A lawyer and criminologist who wants to bring passenger rail to the northern suburbs, Alderman Johnston said she had deflected a formal invitation to run for Labor and ­informal approaches by the Liberal Party.

“My independence is something I have fiercely fought for. I can’t be bought,” she said.

“I couldn’t run for a party and then put my hand on my heart and say I was there serving the community when the party was telling me what line to toe.”

She and her husband, Ben, an electrical engineer who is also a passionate advocate of passenger rail, will dig into their savings to run the ­campaign.

Although she attracted 15,000 votes at the last council election, Alderman Johnston said there was no guarantee those locals would support her at a state election, where Clark voters routinely deliver two candidates each for Liberal and Labor and one for the Greens.

“State parliament is very different,” she said.

“It’s always been quite a certain seat — two, two, one. But the people of Clark are very used to electing an independent federally.”

Liberal renegade Sue Hickey’s tumultuous relationship with her party and independent MP Madeleine Ogilvie’s fallout with Labor are also likely to complicate the election race.

Alderman Johnston said she grew up as a witness to hardship, with a mother who was an emergency relief worker and a Baptist Minister father who opened up his church to the homeless.

In her late 20s, after a year as a junior lawyer in London where she visited accused criminals in prison in order to write legal briefs for barristers, she returned to Hobart and completed a Masters in Criminology, focusing on the links between public transport access and crime.

“I found there was a really strong correlation between high levels of transport dis­advantage in the northern suburbs and crime,” Alderman Johnston said.

“If people have good transport options they’re less likely to commit motor vehicle theft and other crime because it means they have connections to employment and education and services.”

Kristie Johnston with husband Ben and children Harry and Lucy.

Like her friend and mentor, federal independent MP for Clark Andrew Wilkie, she wants to see fewer poker ­machines and greater transparency around who funds election campaigns.

“With the debate around poker machines last time, the influence that Federal and other donors had on the Liberal Party platform and the backflip from the Labor Party, there’s a whole range of reasons why people might be looking for something different,” she said.

Her mother, Donna Knox, a Housing Tasmania team leader, died in February last year from a rare and brutal disease called corticobasal ­degeneration.

“Mum was very young and her life was cut short in the most horrific way,” Alderman Johnston said.

“That made me appreciate that life is precious and that you have to seize ­opportunities and not die wondering.

“It’s time for me to step up and see what can be done in the state arena for the ­community.”