Marjorie O'Neill one term in to her massive career shift to politican

Marjorie O’Neill one term in to her massive career shift to politician

Marjorie O'Neill

Dr Marjorie O’Neill won one of two new seats for NSW Labor exactly four years ago on Thursday, at the 2019 state election, having left a career in academia to pursue political life.

Now she’s campaigning to retain the seat of Coogee where she holds a 2.3 per cent margin, and is providing a powerful example of how women can make the successful shift into politics within major parties — a story that, over the past year at least, has been typically reserved for women running as independents.

“I’m not a career politician, that’s the first thing,” she tells Women’s Agenda on Thursday afternoon, just two days out from NSW going to the polls this weekend.

“I left academia to enter politics because I was unhappy with the world around me,” she said.

Four years later, O’Neill says it’s been a whirlwind ride so far.

“It’s been a baptism by fire. We got in [won the seat]. We had the drought. We had the bushfires. We had COVID. As a new politician — and finding yourself watching a pandemic hit your community — it’s pretty difficult. You’re learning to support the community and navigate the different issues. I have learned a lot in a really short period of time,” she says.

She says her family’s long been involved in advocating and fighting for the community, but that she ran as a Labor candidate because she believes in the movement and the ideas of fairness and equality. “I believe in access to education, access to housing, access to healthcare, I see these as core fundamental rights,” she says.

Further, she saw the shift into politics as an opportunity to address some of the issues that her previous work in academia raised, particularly her research on how public policy shapes people’s careers and how they interact with the world. For example, her undergrad thesis examined how the baby bonus shaped women’s careers, compared to the role of maternity leave. She’s also researched how late-life career decision-making affects women’s economic security, as well as trends around what influences career decision-making. Her research also had a keen focus on female healthcare workers, which she says provided her with a grounding on the issues impacting the health sector particularly.

“Looking at the healthcare sector more broadly, we see that more people are leaving because they are burnt out, not being paid property — so how do we attract people, when we’re failing to retain them?”

She says it comes back to the proportion of staff on the floor, remuneration, as well as the access they have to housing, especially given the tight rental market across most parts of NSW.

O’Neill is also seeing how the cost of living, and a lack of access to housing, is impacting career decisions. “I often meet nurses, teachers and essential service workers who say they’d love to stay in the area here, but they can’t afford it. So they move up to the coast, where they have a close by, and where they can afford to rent or buy.

One term in — with another one potentially on the way — O’Neill noted some of the shifts she’s seen in recent years, including growing hate and violence towards politicians, as well as from the past week in Victoria, with growing concerns about far-right extremism and the use of Nazi symbols and actions in protests.

“It’s really important that we call out hate of all kinds. When we see it, we have a responsibility to call it out and ensure we can all live in a safe and harmonious community.

“We also need to have a conversation about social media and the ability for information and false information to be shared and spread so widely.”

×

Stay Smart! Get Savvy!

Get Women’s Agenda in your inbox