‘We know we have them worried’: 23 min with Victoria Davidson
We sat down with the independent candidate for Lane Cove to ask why she decided to run this election and where she stands on the big issues.
Mark J.: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Victoria: Ah, easy question! I’m a Lane Cove local. I’ve lived here for 15 years. My husband and I run a business here, established in 2000.
I’ve got three children, 16, 15, and 11, so my eldest will do Year 12 next year.
I’m a lawyer by profession, but that wasn’t my first degree. My first degree was Arts (Honours) in History. I wrote my thesis on American History, the American National Myth, through film which was interesting. I can’t believe I wrote 20,000 words, but I did!
When I was 27, I went back and did my law degree. I worked in publishing here and in the UK, and then I came back and I was freelance writing. Then I went back and did a law degree, and I really loved my law degree. It was fantastic. They were a great three years. I met some amazing people and really loved the degree.
I then worked for Blake Dawson Waldron at the time, and I did a summer club program and a graduate program through them. I went on maternity leave to have our eldest child and then when I was on maternity leave, I fell pregnant with our second child, so the corporate world wasn’t really going to fit with two small children 15 months apart. When my youngest was one year old, I went back to work at the Sydney Opera House for a couple of years in-house. That was interesting. Then, I left there and I’ve been running our business for the last 12 years. And I’m also a trained mediator!
M: That goes to the next question. So, you’ve engaged with many different industries —
V: Yes, I have!
M: — in your professional career, and you’ve also been actively involved in volunteering. How do you think those experiences have shaped your understanding of the community and of the world?
V: Yeah, you know, volunteering for the local primary school and other work I’ve done really is that concept of what you put in is what you get out.
If you want to understand your community more and have better engagement with your community, getting involved in it is really important. Just being on the periphery, you’re really not going to get much out. I think that’s actually a good lesson for life — just being on the periphery, you’re not going to get much out.
I think having a look at a whole lot of different industries: running a business, working in a large commercial law firm, working for large publishing companies that I did (Oxford University Press here and Reed Elsevier in London), working at a public sector arts institution. I’ve seen a variety of ways of how to run a business and many different models, but also that public-private divide and how different things can be when you are in a decision-making role and when you have certainty of funding.
There’s a lot of decision-making processes to go through in the public sector, especially with allocation of money. So, yeah, I think I’ve seen a good variety of what makes our society tick.
M: You grew up on the North Shore and you’ve lived in Lane Cove for over 15 years. What are some of the changes that you’ve witnessed in the community over the years?
V: Lane Cove has had a lot more development.
From when we started business in 2000, the Canopy Project was still this dreadful car park. When we established the business in one of those arcades, we were told ‘oh that’s going to be redeveloped soon’, but yeah, it took forever! But, it was a really great development, the canopy, it was community-focused.
Lane Cove has this amazing heart to it with the plaza and then extended out with the canopy. It makes such an incredible difference and having a local school here, it does feel like a village. It does have a heart, whereas other suburbs, they’re cut through by train lines or major arterial roads. That does break a community apart. So yeah, I love that aspect of Lane Cove.
Even though we’ve been here for 15 years as a family, I feel like we’ve got very deep roots here. What I also particularly love about how this suburb has grown is the diversity. I love when my kids went to school, they could go for play dates at completely different ends of the spectrum — big houses in Northwood, with both parents who are surgeons, to an apartment on Epping Rd and the parents are here on 457 visas — and give my kids that exposure to real world. It’s not just all white bread, high-earning individuals; Lane Cove has a great diversity and I love that.
M: What ultimately prompted you to run as an independent?
V: There was not one moment. There were a lot of things that I felt needed to change: a growing frustration with our governments, their lack of engagement with community, their lack of listening.
Always around election time, we’re told what this election is about, rather than coming and asking them what concerns us. The media and the government like to frame an election to suit their purposes.
Lack of action on climate change — what we all went through in 2019 with the fires and then floods. Governments were not listening to what was needed to be done.
The independent wave at the federal election in 2022 was fantastic. To really see and meet other people who are like-minded, who had issues like we have, and understanding you weren’t just alone in getting mad. Lots of people were alone getting mad and we all got together to make change instead. Just for me, being a bit of a democracy nerd, seeing representative democracy play out was really empowering. People around the world fight for this and we should not be complacent.
M: Wow. Plenty of reasons to run!
Let’s move on to some political issues. So, you’ve partnered up with Alex Greenwich and several other independent candidates to speak out against PEP-11, which the Liberals and Nationals now also oppose, —
V: Funny that, isn’t it!
M: — against the Narrabri gas projects, and more generally supporting an end to new coal and gas projects. What should the next government be doing to tackle the climate crisis?
V: We need to legislate emissions reductions targets, that is the first thing we need to do, and we need to have accountability and transparency in the reporting of those. Because it’s very easy to set some targets, but you actually have to make those meaningful.
Stopping new coal and gas projects, stop logging native forests. That can actually be done in the first week of parliament, it’s not that hard. It’s an industry we subside right now, and we’re destroying native forests and biodiversity for a very small industry.
Those things can be done quite, I would say quite easily, but let’s see how easily it could be done. There’s changes that need to be done in planning. We need a whole-of-government approach to climate change.
So, every decision that government makes has to take climate change into account. Planning is a really big part of this, public transport is a huge part of this. Do you know we’re not going to get our electric buses until 2047?
M: Initially, they said 2030, but now they’ve pushed that back.
V: You will have children by then, like it is just ridiculous that we have to wait that long. Efficient and green public transport is a very important part of us meeting our emissions reductions target and becoming a green economy.
We have got to address the hard-to-abate sectors and we have to look at regions that are right now in fossil-fuel industries and help them transition.
This is about a fair and equitable transition for them and for the whole state. No one should be left doing heavy lifting here. What concerns me is with the lack of planning that we have and a lack of strategic overview that things get left almost to the last minute.
We can see this coming. We know this is coming and these coal-dependent regions know this is coming. They’re scared, of course they’re scared, because what are they gonna have employ them? We can’t just bury our heads in the sand. We have to take a proactive approach and help people along the way.
M: The state government of the past 12 years has generally been commended for its commitment to climate action, but less so on protecting nature and biodiversity, as you mentioned. Why do you think this is?
V: Oh, because that’s true! Look, they’ve done some really great work in pushing for the renewable energy zones and they have to be commended for that. But it’s not just about shiny announcements. A good example of that is we have a move for renewable economic zones — we know that needs to happen — and there’s a lot of businesses who have put in huge contracts to affect that.
We have a TAFE system that has been gutted — who’s trained at TAFE? Electricians.
Who are we going to need in an electrified economy? Electricians.
I met an electrician at a door-knock yesterday. He cannot get enough staff for his business. He said they’re not learning what they need to learn in the TAFE system. He’s having to teach them on the job. He also said he can’t find enough staff because they’re all getting sucked up into these government jobs, tunnel building, other things that they’re getting paid so much more than what he could pay them and then charge on, that he is having to not take up work, or work long hours. That is one electrician. We are seeing that across our economy.
So, there’s a couple things there. We’re not resourcing these plans properly and we’re diverting resources and funds away from these absolutely critical projects. We should not be diverted to anything else. It’s like rebuilding an economy after a war. Everything should be going to our renewable energy, we’re not gonna get there fast enough otherwise. Worldwide, there’s a shortage of people and worldwide, there’s a shortage of necessary resources like wind turbines. So, that’s the renewable energy issue.
The environment issue: There has been a significant increase in land clearing — 15,000 hectares — it’s tripled since they changed the biodiversity laws in 2016.
The offset scheme is not fit for purpose. It is an accounting scheme. How do you protect biodiversity with merely an accounting tool? You cannot account for endemic species and already 96% of offsets do not have something to offset against. So, 96% of credit — what a developer takes — is in inadequate supply and demand.
So, the system has failed and that has been acknowledged by a parliamentary inquiry. This is really significant, the fact that we are going to see the koala possibly extinct by 2050. This government does have a green sheen to it, but it is very veneer.
M: The rising cost of living is consistently being named in polls as a top issue for voters. And obviously it’s no secret as why that is. What do you think is the solution?
V: Rising energy prices are causing this, and it is easy to say that if we could have moved to renewables quicker, but we’ve missed some opportunities. We need to move to renewables as quickly as possible and it will permanently lower our power bills. We need to stop coal and gas. It’s old technology and we do not need more supply. It’s just a complete diversion.
I also think that this idea of one-off vouchers is inflationary and they’re band-aid. People want to see long-term structural reform and a government needs to have the courage to take that step.
M: Another top issue for voters is housing affordability. What should the next government be doing to address the severe housing shortage?
V: Yeah, it’s a really big problem. Overall, we need to have a difficult and mature conversation about housing in New South Wales, especially in Sydney. It’s a hard conversation to have because obviously people who have houses have quite an entrenched position.
There needs to be a lot better thinking around re-zoning in the CBD, we could have something more akin to Tokyo and New York. We do have some residential property in the city —
M: It’s very exclusive.
V: — but it’s very exclusive. It is all very high-level or student accommodation. So, there are some creative and innovative ways that we could solve our housing crisis.
Bulldozing tracks of land and putting up houses that are not climate-protective and are not climate-resilient in an area that does not have adequate infrastructure is not the way we can get out of this housing problem.
We have to be more thoughtful, listen to different voices and engage with experts, not just developers.
M: Okay, let’s move on to gambling reform. Why do you support the cashless gambling card? And what would you say to opponents of the card?
V: I support an ID-linked mandatory cashless gaming card with loss limits. All of those parts are important, not just the money laundering. It really is about harm reduction and harm minimisation. So, the ID-linked means that if you have gone over your loss limit, you can’t use a machine again that day. People right now can sit there and feed cash into two machines they are sitting next to, with no limit.
Why do I want to do this? We have 86 000 poker machines in New South Wales. We lose $23 million a day. For every one person who gambles, six people are affected. Just because anyone in our close circle might not gamble, it affects us.
It says so much about our society that we are allowing this to occur, that we call it problem gambling, and it is on the person. They don’t have the problem, the fact is that an entire industry has been set up to create an addiction and keep that person addicted.
How we can continue this and turn a blind eye to it?
I think it’s fantastic that Alex Greenwich raised this at the end of the last year that he would be supporting a cashless gaming card and Perrottet was smart enough to get on board, and he did a great job of wedging Labor. Look where Labor are. They have not been able to move past their really poor policy. I’m on it because I have got absolutely nothing to lose and I am very excited that we could get this change.
M: So, what would you say to certain opponents of this card?
V: I would say, why are you opposing it? What vested interests are you protecting? Because we all know that the only people this cashless gaming card is going to affect negatively are the gambling industry and criminal gangs.
M: Last year, Violet Coco became the first person to be jailed under the new anti-protest laws for blocking traffic as part of a Fireproof Australia protest. These laws had the support of both the government and the opposition. What are your views on these laws and on the right to peaceful protest?
V: I support the right to peaceful protest — it is an inherent part of our democracy and we need to preserve that. An ideology of the Liberal–Nationals government is for limited government involvement in your life, but we see a government that is very keen to pass some very restrictive laws.
I think that we need some perspective over who really is causing the damage here — is it somebody who is blocking traffic for an hour or so, or is it businesses and multinationals that are making a huge amount of money off our resources and not paying tax and doing their best to greenwash their way out of corporate responsibility?
M: You’ve also committed to tackling vaping, which is affecting younger people especially. But it’s not getting as much coverage this election campaign. Why does there need to be urgent reform?
V: That’s a really good question. So, tomorrow night, I’m sitting on a panel by the Cancer Council with Brad Hazzard, Ryan Park and Cate Faehrmann and there are experts from the health industries talking about vaping. Why does it need to be tackled? Because it is, you would know — this is your world. It’s increasing so fast.
We have three shops down the road here that have opened. They call themselves tobacco and confectionary. How can those two products be aligned? They are brightly coloured, they have cool looking American candy and they are absolutely designed to get young people inside.
There’s a shop down the road, it’s almost plain package. You don’t see anything through the window, but these ones, we know exactly what they’re designed to do.
I am really concerned about these ‘non-nicotine’ e-cigarettes on the market. There is absolutely nothing to guarantee that they are non-nicotine. When they are tested, over half of them have been found to contain nicotine. We do not even know what levels they are. So, we are exposing children to one of the most addictive substances in proportions that we do not know, because it just comes in under a banner of non-nicotine. It is a massive loophole.
We know that the tobacco industry are maximising this. You would see, from marketing that’s aimed at your age group. They are marketed at young come. You cannot tell me that someone who has been on a pack of Winnie Blues a day is gonna be taking a raspberry pink vape to try.
To start with, these aren’t even TGA approved as nicotine cessation methods. It is completely unregulated. There’s no TGA approval around it. There are better proven nicotine cessation programs and methods out there and this somehow snuck in through the back door, and it’s massive.
The Netherlands have legislated that their e-cigarettes should be black or white, should not have fancy colours and should not have any flavouring. They could only taste like nicotine. I’d be interested to see the uptake of them if we had these regulations.
M: We know that Dominic Perrottet admitted that he’s a vaper. Do you have anything to say about that?
V: Look, personal choice, if that’s what he wants to do.
We have had really amazing success in Australia with our tobacco regulation. As a child, my mother was a heavy smoker so smoking never appealed to me. It scares me that we have a generation which has very low rates of uptake of cigarette smoking, but once someone takes up vaping, they have a one in three chance of becoming a cigarette smoker.
We know this is incredibly unhealthy and this is dangerous. What are we doing allowing our young people access to something that is causing them permanent damage and possibly a lifetime addiction?
M: What are some other issues that are priorities for you and for the community of Lane Cove?
V: Covered off most of them. The big issue that everybody agrees on is integrity — lack of integrity — in our political system and in our government. Neither Liberal nor Labor are very strong when it comes to their integrity credentials. Even with the existence of an ICAC, we still have John Barilaro thinking it’s okay to set himself up a job for when he leaves parliament. This would not cut it in an ASX-listed company. It would not cut it in everyday business.
It just is appalling that our political class think they are above and beyond and can use taxpayer money as if it is their own. The grants process needs to be overhauled. It needs to be merit-based and it needs to not be done just on what a minister decides.
We need certainty of funding for ICAC and we need to stop the ‘jobs for mates’ culture.
So, integrity is huge. We’ve got so much work to do and it really just stresses me when I talk to people and they go, ah, it’s New South Wales politics. It doesn’t have to be that way.
M: What are your views on the current state of the election campaign, more generally?
V: I think it’s really interesting the fact that we have many independents running and a strong independent in the upper house: Elizabeth Farrelly’s team. It’s added a different dynamic to the election.
I’m really loving the idea that people understand it doesn’t have to be red or blue, that there are options. People are getting to understand that a majority government actually doesn’t suit the electorate, it suits the party. What is really important is representative democracy.
We already have a minority government and we have a strong crossbench. We have some excellent independents, Alex Greenwich as you mentioned, Joe McGirr, Greg Piper. We have a long history of really good independents in New South Parliament. I’m looking forward to seeing a stronger crossbench and holding whichever party forms government to account. Because only a crossbench can do that.
M: Are you committing to supporting either one of them?
V: No. We don’t know how the state’s going to vote. I don’t know how this seat is going to vote. There’s a lot up in the air, but I know that if I’m elected I will judge other than supply, obviously, which depends on which party can form a minority.
I will judge each legislation on its merits and according to what this electorate wants, which is what your representative should do. It shouldn’t just be a rubber stamp because that’s what the party tells you to do. And the amount of information that I have got across and our campaign has got across in this short period of time, no back bencher would’ve got across. What is demanded of an independent is much more than a first-time member for one of the major parties. And that’s a good thing.
M: Do you think you’ll win Lane Cove?
V: I know that we have over 180 volunteers. We have got over 250 corflutes out on people’s houses. We have knocked over 5 500 doors.
M: Impressive.
V: Really impressive, and we will knock another thousand this weekend. So we will be at over six and a half thousand doors.
Anthony Roberts is door knocking for the first time in his career. They have been out in the plaza like they’ve never been before. We know we have them worried.
I’m excited that we are creating conversation. We are creating change. We’ve already made a difference. PEP-11, as you brought up. The fact that vaping is being discussed, the fact that gambling reform is really an option. This is really exciting. So, to change the conversation, to get the incumbent to wake up and take notice of our electorate, that is a win. So I think I’m already winning!
M: What do you think is the most likely outcome for this election?
V: I have no idea. You know, everyone’s talking minority government, most likely Labor. Matthew Guy thought they were going to win and had already set up transition plans and we saw what happened there. I think you gotta be careful with polling. So to be honest, I don’t know.
I myself am living in a bubble. I’m surrounded by people who are all part of this. We hear what we hear on the street. People coming up to me are either with really extreme views, like climate change deniers, or people who want to come up and find out more about me because they’re interested. So, I’m not the one to ask because —
M: Have you met climate deniers out there?
V: Oh, heaps of them. Some of them in Anthony Roberts t-shirts.
M: Wow. Okay, we’re gonna finish this off.
Hobbies?
V: Ah, I do have hobbies. If I can remember what they are! It’s been a while. I knit and I have a piece of knitting that’s sitting very optimistically on my coffee table and it just sits there. Cooking, which again, I haven’t done a lot of lately. Gardening, you don’t want to see the state of my garden. Reading, which again, I haven’t done much of. I’m interested in politics. So tick that hobby, I’m doing a lot of that. Travel. Yoga. Not doing a lot of that, pilates — not doing a lot of that. Spending time with my children, not doing a lot of that…
M: A fun fact about you?
V: I don’t know if there is a fun fact about me … before I went and did my law degree, I interviewed for ASIO and I got to the fifth in a seven-stage process. So there you go!
M: Well, thank you very much for your time.
V: Thank you.
