Australia’s youngest senator has told parliament in her first speech she battled depression and bullying before her election, and has dealt with misogyny and Pauline Hanson since.
Labor’s Charlotte Walker, a South Australian who turned 21 on election night, delivered the speech on Monday night.
She said when she was 18, she was trying to work out why she had trouble sleeping – but the truth was she was in denial about having depression.
“The effects had been long lasting, compounded by guilt,” she said. “I often wondered if I wanted to go on – if there was any point in me being here.”
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Only a handful of people previously knew about her experience, she said, because she felt “deep shame” and was worried about “the perception of being damaged goods”.
“During my term in parliament, I want to shine a light on how childhood experiences like mine can continue to affect your mental health into adulthood – and to explore meaningful ways to address this,” she said.
Walker celebrates her 21st birthday on election night
And she said while people have accused her of being privileged because she went to a private school, her mum scraped together the money because she was being bullied so badly she was forced out of her local public school in year four.
She said she will focus on issues such as the housing crisis and generational inequity, domestic violence, healthcare, youth mental health, climate change, regional opportunities and workers’ rights during her term.
Young people, she said, “live with the ever-present threat of climate change”, from both current events such as fires, floods, and SA’s algal bloom, and from future scenarios.
“In 2050 I won’t be in my late 90s, like some who want to abandon net zero,” she said. “My friends and I will be in our 40s, and we demand an inhabitable planet.”
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Walker also talked about the scourge of domestic violence, and pointed to findings by the SA royal commission into domestic, family and sexual violence, including that gen Z is the first generation to grow up exposed to violent pornography and misogyny online.
She said while it was technically her first speech, it wasn’t the first time she has spoken in the chamber – and the results from previous outings have been “whack”.
That may have been a reference to her feud with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson who referred to her as just being “out of her nappies”, after Walker criticised Hanson’s position against net zero. She has also copped misogynistic comments on social media, including on an Instagram reel that she was forced to remove anyway, because she’d breached parliament’s strict rules about where filming is allowed.
On a lighter note, Walker said that her mother had suggested she tell parliament how she got her cat, Gerald. The story was that Walker and a friend “heroically” rescued two abandoned kittens they found in a national park, each keeping one.
Only, that story wasn’t true.
“I just really wanted a cat,” she said, adding that they got the kittens from a colleague.
Addressing her mother, she said: “I only lied because I thought that if you knew the truth you’d make me take him back.”
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14
