‘Nobody knew’: how Emily Suvaal came to recount her fight with anorexia in NSW’s parliament

‘She’s a real person, she’s had real jobs. When we characterise the political class, she’s the opposite to that’: NSW upper house Labor MP Emily Suvaal. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Emily Suvaal vividly remembers the smell of the adult psychiatric unit to she was admitted at age 16 for treatment of anorexia.

She recalls the lino flooring, the metal-framed bed, the hole in her door where the lock had been removed, the 12-foot-high metal fence she attempted to climb over during a desperate and futile escape plan and the fear.