For nearly six years, Alicia Payne has served as the MP for the electorate of Canberra. And with the Federal Election just over two weeks away, Alicia Payne is making every day count.
“I do enjoy the [election] campaign, because you talk to so many people about the things that matter to them.”
Payne says her parents’ values inspired her to fight for equality and the opportunity to live a good life, and reinforced the importance of democracy.
“My first political lesson was that you should always value your right to vote because, when you look around the world, people are fighting and dying for the right to vote, so you should always take it seriously.”
Before her start in politics, Payne worked in research and public service. Then, in 2006, she realised that “politics is where the decisions are made,” and changes made to Centrelink payments and workers’ rights by the Howard government pushed Alicia to join the Labor Party.
“I joined the Labour Party not because I wanted to be a politician, but because I wanted to just be involved in a movement.”
Payne worked as a Senior Adviser to both Lindsay Tanner and Bill Shorten, and as Chief of Staff to Jenny Macklin, before running for preselection in 2018.
At the 2019 Federal Election she won the seat of Canberra. Soon afterwards, along with other Territorians, she faced the Black Summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020. Although the fires didn’t make it to Canberra, they came close and the ACT Government declared a state of emergency for the first time since 2003. The fires also caused an air quality crisis with readings more than 38 times the threshold considered hazardous.
Shortly after the fires had passed, storms with hail the size of golf balls smashed the city, then the COVID-19 pandemic followed. Throughout it all, Payne was determined to do her best to support her constituents.
“It was really a very strong introduction to the responsibility of an MP and the way that people rely on you for help. And sometimes when you can’t really provide that, it’s pretty tricky, but you’re doing your best.”
In 2022, along with her Northern Territory colleague, MP Luke Gosling, she helped to restored territory rights. Payne lists this as one of the issues she was proudest to champion.
“People had fought for [territory rights] for 25 years. I can’t take credit for it … that was something that we did all fight for [but to] finally get to move that bill and have that debate … that was very tangible thing for the ACT.”
Community and social justice have always been important to Payne and, to that end, she serves on multiple committees. In particular, she chaired the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories which allowed her to make recommendations around what the federal government could do to invest in Canberra.
“I’m really pleased that, just this week, federal Labor committed to putting funding towards a new convention centre, which is about us being able to host international meetings and conferences like a national capital should. This is something [Canberrans] have advocated for for a long time, so I’m really proud that our government is taking our city seriously and values our city.”
While Canberra has long been considered a very safe seat for Labor with a margin of 12.2%, Alicia Payne doesn’t underestimate the contest she faces at this election against at least five other candidates.
While the Labor Party has made many different promises for this election, Payne says one of the most important issues to her is something that her constituents bring up constantly: the need for action on climate change and the environment.
When Payne first won the seat of Canberra in 2019, Labor was in opposition. She recalls the frustration of trying to get the Morrison Coalition Government to act on anything climate related despite learning about the problem in primary school.
“I couldn’t believe that I would be standing in a Parliament in the year 2020, calling out for action on climate change, when we had learnt about it at primary school. And just having a government that seemed not to be acting on so many things, but particularly climate, was frustrating and hard.”
She says the Labor government has made strong progress towards climate change goals in the last three years they’ve been in government.
“I think that this is something that is most at risk if we change government.[Labor] wants to [and] I want to see us continuing our transition to renewables, which we’ve made pretty strong inroads into in just three years. Remembering that we had no action under the previous government, [Labor] is on track to be at 82% renewable energy by 2030.”
Another issue hitting close to home for many Canberrans is the cost of living crisis. On that score, Payne says she is proud to that one of the key focuses of the Labor Government has been to deliver cost of living assistance.
“[We’ve delivered] assistance in a way that hasn’t caused inflation to worsen, and now we’re seeing inflation coming down. Wages are up. We’ve really focused on seeing wages go up, improving minimum wages. And also we’ve focused on particular industries like aged care and early childhood, where we’ve delivered pay increases, we’ve delivered tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer, and we’ve built on that.”
Labor has also promised tax cuts for all Australians, and the recently released budget featured new spending announcements on healthcare, including bulk-billing for GP appointments, more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, funding for public hospitals and additional funding for women’s healthcare.
The 2025 Federal Election will be the first time that Gen Z and Millennial voters outnumber Baby Boomers, and Labor hopes to offer policies that speak to this changing demographic.
“[Labor has] already wiped $3 billion of HECS debts. And if we’re re-elected, we’re going to wipe a further 20%. And we’ve also fixed the indexation so that the debts will never grow faster than cost of living. Focusing on affordable housing, we’ve introduced the Help to Buy scheme, which is about helping people with their deposit to get more first time buyers into the market.”
Although politics can sometimes be difficult, Alicia Payne says she’s ready to continue serving and engaging with the Canberra community.
“It’s been an absolute privilege over the last five, almost six years, that I have been the member for Canberra, and I have worked my hardest to listen to people’s voices and take the voices of our community into the Parliament and our caucus [which] feeds into policies for the whole country.”
Photos by Jessica Menace