Naomi McQueen is not your typical politician. Unlike many Australian MPs, the Labor candidate for Fairfax does not have a background in law or policy. Still, McQueen believes she has what it takes to oust long-time Fairfax incumbent Ted O’Brien and represent the Sunshine Coast at the Federal level.
“I’ve been in this community for 21 years working at the Sunshine Coast Airport, my children go to school here, my husband works here,” McQueen says. “I’m involved in a lot of community groups, and I’ve got a lot of support from volunteers as well. I’m ready to do the work.”
Queensland Labor leader Steven Miles agrees with McQueen’s self-assessment. “What we have in Naomi is a really committed Sunshine Coast local, one who knows this community and one who’s ready to stand up for it and make sure the Sunshine Coast gets its fair share,” Miles said at McQueen’s campaign launch in March.
McQueen began working as an air traffic controller at the Sunshine Coast Airport in 2003. She moved from Brisbane to the Coast in 2011 and has since become a volunteer at a number of local organisations, including the Sunshine Coast Reconciliation Group, OzHarvest and BushCare Sunshine Coast.
McQueen also started the young aviators’ group at the Airport. “That’s one of the things I’m really proud of, starting the young people’s group at the Sunshine Coast Aero Club,” McQueen says. “Starting the women’s network at the airport there, too. They’ve all been things I’m proud of.”
McQueen is a very busy woman. Before attending her campaign event in Coolum, she donated plasma, something she does regularly. Speaking at an office space in Kunda Park, McQueen says she has just come from a tour of Camp SMEAC, a Landsborough facility that offers support for veterans having difficulty re-adjusting to civilian life.
The 44-year-old says being a shift worker and having a blended family has taught her to be organised. “We have kind of three households in mine, we’ve got my husband’s ex-partner and my ex-husband and our household, and the children are changing places where they are, the children have part-time jobs,” McQueen says. ”My husband does shift work at the moment … so it’s all just about the communication.”.
McQueen became involved in politics in 2020 while studying a Bachelor of Social Science (Majoring in Security and Counter Terrorism) online with Swinburne. “My first two subjects were Australian politics and sociology and that led me to join the Labor Party,” she says.
“One of my first assignments was about ‘Is the Australian Labor Party still a worker’s party?’ and, basically, I came to [the conclusion that] ‘Yes, it is, but what a worker is has changed over time’. That brought me to engage a lot with the party policy and platform documents of the Labor Party and read a lot of commentary around the political landscape in Australia, and I decided that I wanted to join the Labor Party because that’s actually where my values and ideology sat.”
The Labor Party’s re-election campaign is centred around easing cost-of-living pressures for everyday Australians by delivering tax cuts and energy bill relief, as well as wiping 20 per cent off student debt. The party has also promised to strengthen Medicare, reduce the cost of PBS medicines and increase bulk-billing rates to 90 per cent so that more Aussies have access to affordable healthcare.
“As the Labor Party, we put a huge value on healthcare,” McQueen says. “To me, if we’re not healthy and we’re not looking after our most vulnerable in society, then we’re not doing a good job. Nobody should have to miss out on healthcare just because they’re worried they can’t afford it.”
McQueen says inclusivity is another of the Labor Party’s core values. As of April 2023, women made up 52 per cent of the ALP’s caucus. This was in stark contrast to the Liberal Party, where only 27.9 per cent of their parliamentarians were women. “The way the Labor Party has ensured that women are represented in politics is really remarkable and is something that hasn’t been done well across the board,” McQueen says.
While women’s representation in politics is improving, young people continue to be underrepresented. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, people between the ages of 20 and 40 comprise 28 per cent of the Australian population yet only make up 7.6 per cent of Federal parliamentarians.
McQueen is a strong advocate for young people’s participation in politics. “It’s one of the great things about our democracy that anybody can run,” she says. “I would encourage any young people with an interest in politics to consider that. But also keep it in the back of their minds, because maybe they’re not ready yet, but maybe that’s something they’ll be ready for or want to do further down the track.”
But McQueen says being politically active does not mean you have to become a political candidate or even a member of a political party. “It could be something like getting involved in your local community group so that you can actually have your interests better represented in your community,” she says. “So, it might even look like, if you’re a university student, getting active in some way in a certain area of university life to make improvements for people that come after you.”
McQueen’s first foray into campaigning as a political candidate came in 2024 when she ran for the seat of Maroochydore in the Queensland State election. Maroochydore is considered a safe Liberal National Party seat, having been held by Fiona Simpson since its inception in 1992. McQueen lost the two-party preferred vote to Simpson by a margin of 21.84 per cent. In an Instagram post published the day after the election, McQueen said she had been expecting to lose but was proud the loss had not been as “catastrophic” as predicted.
Fairfax is similar to Maroochydore in that it has historically been an LNP stronghold. However, things have changed since the last Federal election. This year, for the first time in the history of the Fairfax electorate, people like McQueen and O’Brien, who represent Australia’s two major parties, will have to contend with a “teal” candidate in the form of Francine Wiig.
The community independent movement Wiig is part of has received growing support as voters across the country become increasingly disillusioned with the major parties. But former Federal treasurer and senior Labor figure, Wayne Swan, is not convinced that independents are the solution to the frustration many Australians are feeling.
“A lot of people want to see some fundamental change and some of them think that that can be achieved by independents,” Swan says. “But history tells us that doesn’t work that way. What you need are strong grassroots movements behind parties with a strong platform.”
Although the community independent movement has made its mark on the Sunshine Coast, the LNP’s Ted O’Brien remains the biggest threat to McQueen’s chances of winning Fairfax. O’Brien won in 2016 and currently holds the seat with a margin of 9 per cent, which means he will be difficult to beat at the polls.
So, in the face of all these challenges, does McQueen really believe she has a chance to win on May 3? “Yeah, I do,” she says confidently. “I’m excited.”
