Everything about the way Tara Burnett looks screams sensible. She’s wearing pearl earrings, her hair is loosely up, her pants are beige. She talks softly, calmly – focused on the policies.
If you had to conjure up an image of a renting, queer trade unionist from Melbourne’s inner north, who runs Dungeons and Dragons nights in her spare time and with an ambition to be the first trans MP in federal parliament, Burnett is probably not where you’d land.
The 35-year-old looks almost out of place at Carwyn, a trendy beer bar in the hip Melbourne pocket of Thornbury. Burnett promises she normally wears band T-shirts and sneakers, but has started dressing for the job she wants: a seat in the House of Representatives.
“I want to make history,” she says. “Not for an egotistical reason, but because of what that’s going to mean to so many people.”
The seat of Cooper, previously named Batman, has been safely held by the Labor party since 1906 – only leaving its hands twice in the last century. For the past decade, the Greens have tried, and failed, to claim it.
If Burnett tips it at the next federal election for the Greens, she will become Australia’s first trans MP. Despite it being a deeply private topic, she is happy to talk about her gender. She knows the significance of running.
She’s entering the public sphere at a difficult time for trans Australians. They’ve become targets for neo-Nazis and rightwing extremists. Last year a report found one in two trans Australians have experienced some form of hatred.
Sky News was the first media outlet to cover Burnett’s candidacy, with Peta Credlin saying “the trans activists will be desperate to get someone in the federal parliament”.
As a trans woman Burnett says she was “initially really hesitant at putting myself out there as a candidate”.
She’s “willing to cop the hate speech”, and says she wants to change the narrative around trans lives, and the notion that there is no place in the public realm for trans people.
“‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ is such a cliche,” she says. “[But] being able to break that ground is going to be so valuable for so many people.”
Uphill battle for Cooper
It won’t be easy to take Cooper off Labor.
In 2016 the Greens got the closest. Serial Greens candidate Alex Bhathal, who ran in the electorate six times, lost to then Labor MP David Feeney by just 1,853 votes. It seemed like it was just a matter of time until the seat slipped away from Labor.
After Feeney was ousted amid the dual-citizenship controversy, Labor braced for defeat. But the well-liked former president of the ACTU, Ged Kearney, was preselected and won the subsequent byelection.
At the last election, Burnett’s partner, the prominent Aboriginal feminist Celeste Liddle, clawed back 6.2% of the vote for the minor party, but lost 41.3% to 58.7%.
Burnett’s running has raised some eyebrows around the electorate. For the past several years, the Victorian Greens have had a very public fight over the rights of trans people.
When Burnett is asked if her candidacy means the Greens have moved on, she laughs, saying she won’t say anything as “definitive” as that.
“Someone said to me, ‘your preselection is kind of going to be a big healing moment for the party … because it’s going to allow us to get behind someone who is boldly out there and trans and be able to say, this is what we really stand for. We can’t let the narrative be defined by a noisy minority’.”
‘I would like to own a home’
Burnett grew up in Hobart. She worked as a freelance journalist covering international politics. A politics nerd from a young age, she initially joined the Labor party to help oust John Howard.
As a teacher, she is naturally passionate about education. She wants more funding for public schools, and is worried about burnout n the workforce. She says the government needs to do more to help the cost of living, wants to see a treaty and more movement on First Nations justice. As for the rental crisis, she says it’s “out of control”.
Now doing relief shifts, so she has more time to campaign, Burnett says she would love to buy a home in the electorate – but she just can’t afford it.
Last week a report from Anglicare revealed barely 1% of rentals in Australia were affordable for essential workers. Comparatively, the majority of federal MPs, including six Greens MPs, own more than two properties. Kearney owns three.
“I would like to own a home,” says Burnett. “With what teachers’ wages are and what’s happening to property prices, maybe I could if I denied myself holidays for a decade.”
Burnett runs a music blog and loves live gigs, sometimes going twice a week. She met Liddle in the mosh pit at a Nup to the Cup concert at Corner Hotel seven years ago. “Cosmic Psychos, Amyl and the Sniffers and WÜRST NÜRSE were playing,” she recalls. “We’ve been together ever since.”
She decided to run after talking with Liddle. The couple had dealt with racism in Liddle’s campaign and decided they could handle any transphobia arising from Burnett’s tilt.
“We’ve been accused of being a power couple,” she says. “Which makes me deeply uncomfortable.”
Burnett, who has lived in Cooper for six years, acknowledges there are a lot of similarities between her and Kearney on paper.
They’re both left-wing candidates. They both come from “feminised and therefore very under-appreciated professions”, she says. They’re both strong unionists and “both of us probably own a few too many denim jackets”.
But Burnett argues Kearney will always have to vote with Labor, and having an extra Greens member in parliament will pull government to the left.
“Having that pressure is going to force the Labor government to adapt, is going to force the Labor party to be worried about losing votes to their left and adopt Greens policies,” she says.
“And we would love to see that, right? That’s a win condition for us.”
