The 2025 federal election is about people who understand what’s right for Australia and its people, according to Labor candidate Louise Miller-Frost.

She is running for re-election in Boothby, an electorate in Adelaide’s south and one of two South Australian marginal seats at the 2025 federal election.

Boothby had been a Liberal-held seat since 1949; held by father-and-son team John McLeay Senior and Junior for more than three decades between them and a slew of successors, including former South Australian premier Steele Hall.

But this blue-streak changed in 2022, after Miller-Frost became its first Labor MP in 73 years.

Miller-Frost beat Liberal candidate Rachel Swift in 2022 by a 3.28 per cent margin, a win that Miller-Frost believes reflects a generational change.

“We’re now getting more young families where both parents are, perhaps university educated or both working. Kids are going to school, and they care about things like climate change and gender equity,” Miller-Frost says.

Miller-Frost says she was approached to run for Labor “at the right time”, after “awful” comments were made by Scott Morrison on International Women’s Day in May 2019.

Speaking to the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia, Morrison said that he did not “want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.

“That’s not in our values. That is an absolutely Liberal value, that you don’t push some people down to lift some people up, and that is true about gender equality too,” Morrison said at the time.

Miller-Frost says that her political career was the best thing she could do to make a difference.

Over the past three years, she says the Thrive Endo Clinic at Glenelg has been one of her favourite projects.

“There’s women who don’t have a social life because they’re in so much pain they can’t go out, they can’t have an intimate relationship. They struggle with work … and now we’ve got this clinic there that does a multidisciplinary plan workup of women,” she says.

“The women who go there just tell me it’s life-changing, it’s really making a difference.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Boothby on March 31 to announce the Flinders HealthCARE Centre, a university hospital to provide locals with 10,000 health appointments each year.

“We always hear these sorts of dramas about the health system, but our health system is world class, and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Miller-Frost says.

“Medical bills used to be the number one cause of bankruptcy is in Australia, and they still are in America. That turned off overnight when we got Medicare.”

Medicare was introduced by Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1984 and it remains a focus of the 2025 Labor campaign.

“We’ve got the promise of the Medicare Mental Health Clinic … where people can get bulk-billed [and] actually get the care they need quickly and responsibly before things spiral downwards,” Miller-Frost says.

If elected, an Albanese government will invest $225 million towards 31 new and upgraded Medicare Mental Health Centres, including one in Boothby.

The Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass is another major issue contested in Boothby for the 2025 federal election.

Miller-Frost has been campaigning for the freight bypass since 2012, when she was the general manager for the City of Burnside.

“I feel like I’ve been talking and talking for so long and then it’s like, oh my god, it’s in the budget!” Miller-Frost says.

The project is stage one of the High Productivity Vehicle Network (HPVN), a development that includes a duplication of the Swanport Bridge, a bypass of Truro, and other upgrades between Monarto and the Sturt Highway.

The Albanese Government has said that if re-elected it will invest $525 million over 10 years to build the bypass, alongside additional funding from the state government.

“This is not only about getting the freight off the roads, which will be a fantastic road safety exercise for us in the city, but it’s also about giving the freight a cheaper option to get around,” Miller-Frost says.

“Cheaper freight means cheaper goods for us. So, it’s a win, win, win.”

Removing trucks from Cross Road has been a long-term discussion in Boothby, with the former federal and state governments committing $202 million for a Truro bypass north of Adelaide in 2021.

The project was defunded by the current Labor government in 2023, following an infrastructure review.

“The funding that was there previously was for a plan that was not feasible, not safe and also not adequate,” Miller-Frost says.

“It needed to be at least two lanes each way … and $200 million is not going to get you there.”

Both Labor and Liberal governments promise to invest in the new Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass, with the Coalition promising to  commit $840 million.

Miller-Frost says the opposition has very few policies, and nothing that you would say is big, big thinking, except for its policies about nuclear energy.

“The places that they’re looking at where there are nuclear plants already have a nuclear industry. So, they have all the regulators and all the knowledge and various workforce you need — we have none of that,” Miller-Frost says.

“I can only assume that they’re doing it because they needed a solution that made them not look like climate change deniers, but also didn’t buy into the renewable thing.”

Under an elected Dutton government plan, Australia’s energy mix in 2050 would consist of 54 per cent renewables, 38 per cent nuclear and the rest storage and gas.

Energy policies dominated discussions in the third election debates between Albanese and Dutton on Tuesday.

Dutton said the Liberal Party is “committed to nuclear not because it’s politically popular,” but “because it’s in the best interests of our country”.

Miller-Frost believes Labor has policies “that go to the things that make our lives in Australia better”.

“Things like fully funding public education, fee-free TAFE to increase our workforce, but also to get Australians those sorts of qualifications where they can have good quality, well paid, secure jobs,” she says.

During “turbulent times”, Miller-Frost says the Labor leaders “are very good” at a measured response.

“We don’t want flip-flopping, knee-jerk reactions or shooting from the hip. We need people who understand what’s going on … It may not be exciting, but you know what? It’s the way forward.

“Australia has come through some very challenging international times … at the end of the day, it’s the Australian people who are working together to achieve this.”