I'll get a team.
Welcome to another installment of the Bloody You Project. Tiffany and Cooker's over there. I'll briefly say a loo to her because she's got self esteem issues and she's an only child.
Hi, thank you, Harps. I'm just keeping a float with the self esteem thanks to.
That, emotional issues being kept in check. You all right, just just thank you. Therapy still with doctor Bill or.
Have cooked tomorrow? Actually, oh god.
Doctor Bill. Osie's beach ause to you. Yeah, I know, Zohey, have you ever thought about therapy? Maybe that's we can't talk about that overtly, but you probably need therapy on a constant base basis with your life.
You know, when I was a phone correspondent, the ABC used to offer counseling after traumatic assignments, but I gave up having it because often when I would speak to the counselor, they would spend the whole session going, oh my god, that's so.
Terrible, Oh my god, Oh I don't know how you dealt with that. Oh that's shocking.
And me, in the end, I felt like I was counseling them, so it wasn't overly productive.
Yeah, I'm not sure that it's great when the therapist is coming out more traumatized than the patient.
But well done, that's a good effort by you.
Yeah, thanks, And not to denigrate the efforts of the counselors, who I'm sure were giving it their best effort, but some of the stories were a little bit extreme.
Did that in all seriousness without being specific? Like, is that stuff you still live with?
Do you had?
I mean, there's no when you talk about stress and trauma and going through things like that, there's no three step plan. How did you navigate and manage that?
I think it's still with me for sure.
I Mean when I was a journalist, I covered lots of immense trauma in climate disaster situations, particularly with a big hurrican or typhoon, bushfires, you know, covered mass shootings, of plane crashes, terrorist attacks.
So this stuff's really and it stays with you.
And look, I think in many ways it's made me a more empathetic person actually, And you know, everything that happens in your life.
Becomes part of you.
But there's no doubt that I don't like being in big crowds, for example, and confined spaces because I've covered mass shootings and I have that sort of in the back of my mind. So you can't just shake these experiences off. In many ways, being a front correspondence kind of like being a paramedic or you know, an emergency responder because often you're there very early in the piece and what your witness is stuff that other people don't see.
Were you compelled to be a journal like did you fall into that? Is that something you wanted to do, Were you fascinated with it? How did you end up there?
So when I was fifteen and I wanted to be a horse vet because I grew up riding horses.
Yeah, as you do.
My science teacher said, look, you'll get through vet science, but you're a really good writer, and maybe you should just play to your strengths. And so from the time I was fifteen, I decided I was going to be
a journalist. And then I went and did an arts journalism degree, and through that I decided I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and I just set about building the skills that you need because you need to be a really good multitasker, and especially in the modern media world, you need to be able to do everything for yourself.
You need to be really self reliant.
So I just said about ticking those boxes so that I could test myself internationally.
I feel like.
Being a politician, being a journal is it's about many things, but maybe one of the commons denominators is how do I build trust and respect and rapport and connection with a group of people that are going to be paying attention to me and my stuff?
Is that true?
Like that is one of the one of the skills that you need is to be able to share what can be uncomfortable or complicated messages in a way that's resonant.
Yeah, So that's sort of the outward facing part of it.
But I think actually the main thread between the two things is listening and also listening without judgment. So you know, when I was covering Donald Trump, for example, during the first Trump administration, I covered the twenty sixteen election and then lived in Washington and covered the White House, I spent a lot of time talking to Trump supporters trying to understand why they were supporting him despite his obvious flaws around treatment of women and a whole range of stuff.
And you know, you just learn to have conversations differently, and I think that's really useful in politics.
As well.
That's a really interesting Stephen Covey wrote a book which you've probably heard of or maybe read one hundred years ago called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, And I think chapter four maybe or one or is you know, seek first to understand, then to be understood.
And I feel like that's really how do you do that? And how do you.
Because we're all emotional, right, doesn't you know unless you're a complete sociopath, But how do you try to tone down the emotion and your subjective kind of feelings and just not let that come through the objective reporting or messaging.
Yeah, so you're going to have your own personal reaction to things, I think, and you've got to accept that.
Your background, your upbringing, your life experiences, your current circumstance may influence the way that you interpret something. But then to be able to pause that and try and literally put yourself in someone else's shoes, or often describe it as looking through the other side of the prism to think, well, how would this affect a person that I'm talking to?
And I think that when you're talking about policy and legislation, that's really useful because you can go, well, what are the unintended consequences of this, or what are the things in this.
That might not occur to me.
And then you sort of go digging around for real world impact of whatever it is that you're trying to develop in terms of structural changes that affect people's lives. I mean, that's what we do in the parliament. We make laws, we make policies that affect people, and they have to just keep bringing it back to that all the time.
I'm really interested in I said to you before we started rolling, I'm not a particularly political person, so we're not going to have a political conversation, which may or
may not be good to good news to you. But my PhD is around a thing called metaperception, which is, in simple terms, your ability to understand the Zoe experience for others you know, or my experience to understand what's it like being around Crag or listening to gregor being in an audience or you know whatever, And to also, I guess, understand how other people think and see things, which is theory of mind. This is a weird question, but it's interesting for me. What do you think? How
do you think people? This is not loaded by the way I ask a lot of people this, how do you think people see you? Because on the one hand, we go some people will go, I don't give a fuck how people see me. But at the same time, it matters how people see us, Right, how do you do How do you feel about that?
Yeah?
So I guess the way I speak to it is around sort of my aspiration of who I try to be. You know, no one is ever perfect, right, but if the starting point is treat people as you want to be treated, be respectful, be empathetic, but also be direct, be honest. You know that it's never going to be perfect for all people. And I think that's one of the problems with politics if that, you know, our political leaders just don't want to say, well, you know, some
people are not going to be happy with this. It's never going to be one hundred percent perfect. There's always going to be sort of winners and losers. So to just try and be that good faith actor and also call stuff out like be real yes, and you know again, be the listener, like.
Do that really.
Direct community work here, talk to people, listen to people, try and hear people out, even if the experience of life is totally different to mine. I mean that's sort of the whole point to try to then come up with solutions which are broadly beneficial to most people. I think that's sort of the best that you can hope for.
Yeah, because I guess like what I find interesting is and even for me, like we've got we go into ninety countries, we don't have I mean, we're in terms of Australian kind of personal development kind of show. We
have a lot of listeners, which is good. But you know, I'm always like, I genuinely want to be the most you know, without being inappropriate, the most authentic, real version of me that I can be for people, right, not because that's good pr or not because you know, but just that that's how I am, and that sometimes that works well and sometimes it's a fucking nightmare, right, But that's okay. But at the same time, I still want people to like me and like my brand and come
to my workshops and listen to my show. So there's this kind of like there's this challenge where you want to be real and authentic and you don't want to be a kind of a manufactured facsimile or a persona.
But at the same time you've got a brand and an image to maintain.
How do you kind of be authentic because you've got people who as as which you should, you know, who help you create a brand and pr and all that. Of course, how in the middle of all of that do you not just become a PERSONA.
Yeah, it's funny because when I first started doing this, well after I was selected as to be a candidate a community organization back in twenty twenty one, and I had my ad team and they described me as the product.
I was like, I'm not a bloody product, you know, like I'm a person.
But you know, of course, advertising people are trying to sell something, so in this case, they're trying to sell me. The thing is, though, that I'm still in control of that, like I still have my red lines, and I'm like, well, you have to portray me as I really am, like you know, as I do think of myself or try to aspire to be the honest broker, the person of integrity, the one who's direct he'll call stuff out, who thinks independently,
you know, all those things. So it's sort of different to you know, selling a can of coke but not telling people it's sugar. It's actually trying to be authentic with that branding, like trying.
To sort of draw out the pieces of me that.
Me and my team think people need to see in order to understand what I can do for them in the Parliament that's different to what they've previously had.
What about being in the media and journalism broadly helped you in politics?
Was?
I guess obviously the fact that you're talking all the time and you're a good communicator. Is there anything else that kind of was a nice preparation for your four A MS politics more than a four A, but you're entrein into the world of politics.
Yeah.
So I think one thing is that with all the stuff that I've done, like covering Trump and politics around the world and Wall Street and refugee camps and terrorism and plane crashes and climate disasters and all those sorts of things, that a lot of that stuff provides really good context for the kinds of decisions that I.
Have to make or the understanding of the world that I need.
But I also think that, you know, getting back to this who are you kind of peace, the mental toughness of being a foreign correspondent, you know, I mean, I've had to keep myself safe and my team safe in all sorts of really hairy situations.
I've had to be a problem solver.
I've had to be you know, sort of tenacious and nimble. And also as a female journal you know, you get a lot of flat from people, and that's very similar as an MP, not only for female lamps, but I think it's you know, higher for female MPs. So that degree of understanding that if you're in the public eye, you know you're going to get sprayed all the time, and a lot of people won't do it for that reason, to be fair, and I totally hear that.
But you know, so I didn't go into it blindly.
Obviously, I knew what to some degree what that was like, and I knew what that would be like. And also getting back to sort of having conversations with people who don't necessarily agree.
With me or pissed off with me for some reason. Yeah, then I'm up for that.
You know, I'm up for people to tell me that they're not happy with me. It's not comfortable, but I'm up for hearing that.
Wow, And I mean it's inevitable, it's unavoidable. I mean, I have you know, we have a really loyal following, but I get at least one or two emails a day from someone going you're a fuck.
With or whatever.
Right.
I had a bloke who sent me an email that said he wanted to put me in a plane, fly me over an active volcano and drop me in it. I'm like, dear Brian, thanks for your feedback. You know, really that seems extreme, Brian.
But anyway, yeah, I.
Find you know, as from the outside looking in, I find politics really interesting from a human behavior point of view and from a psychology point of view and a sociology point of view. And sometimes when people are talking about political this or political that, or this candidate or that candidate, or this person or that person, and I feel like the reason that they don't like that person is purely emotional. It's like they don't like how they look.
I'm like, what what or that? What about his wow? What about his fucking annoying voice? I'm like, well, that's a good reason not to vote for him, I mean, or to vote or it just seems like it's got not a lot to do sometimes with any kind of awareness or understanding policies or yeah, is that a hard thing to contend with? When you know that people are forming hard opinions of you based on let's be honest, fuck all.
Yeah, it can be frustrating. There's also this kind of oh, what would you know, missy that kind of thing, and it's like, well, I used I was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years, you know, so what have you been up to over that time?
That kind of thing.
And you know, look, while I say I'm up for the conversation, I mean I'm not up for abuse.
I think there's there are lines, and you know, a lot of.
Those lines get crossed, particularly in the digital world, but increasingly on the street, where people feel, you know, quite enable to scream at me and swear at me for no reason that has any particular foundation. But I think that you have to kind of just be able to let that go to some degree. And also I think there's some level of de escalating and having those conversations with people to say, well, what's your actual issue here? Like what do you what are you say angry with me?
You know, and if you can at least sort of draw that thread out, often there's something else entirely that's going on in that person's life that means that they're generally furious with everyone or all politicians or or people in leadership, and you know, sometimes we can help with whatever that thing is. You know, they might be having great difficulty navigating you know, the centerlingk system or whatever it might be some government system, in which case sometimes
we can support them through that process. So yeah, I think it's just, you know, while not sort of tolerating that over the top abuse, trying to draw out those conversations that can be had to try to find that common ground.
Yeah.
When I when I did my when I went to UNI for the first time, one of my lecturers, who was a professor, he said to.
Me, mister Harper, what did you say, something like.
If you don't want to basically, if you don't want any piss anyone off or then say nothing, do nothing, be nothing, and stand for nothing. I'm like, that's true, because the moment that you get a bit of a tention or profile, someone who's never met you, never had a conversation with you, doesn't know you, is going to hate you or at the very.
Least you know. So I guess that's part of it.
And so like, obviously you're very resilient, you've been through a lot of shit in a lot of different environments and scenarios and challenges without giving away anything you don't want to give away.
Or state secrets. How do you?
How do you manage you? How do you manage your mental and emotional health?
How do you? How do you?
Because you, apart from all the other amazing shit that you are, you know, in a loving, caring way, still a human, how do you manage you?
Yeah? So I think I'm pretty blessed with my family.
I've got a sixteen year old daughter and an eighteen year old son.
Husband is just a superstar in terms of.
His very active involvement with the kids and the running of the house and you know everything, all of that sort of functional stuff in our life and has been for years because you know, as a foreign correspondent, who would get a call and I'd be on a plane next minute, not back for two weeks. And so he works full time and has his own career, but he's really involved, and so the structure of our life keeps running, you know, the routine of our life keeps running, even
though I'm like a ping pong ball. And also the kids are really supportive of this work, and it was actually them, my son, particularly the older one, who said when I was asked to run, and I was pretty reluctant because politics can be pretty toxic, and he said, Mum, someone's got to do something for us, you know, someone's got in get in the room for the young people and actually space up for us. And now when I have my bad days, when I'm like, why the hell
am I doing this? You know this happened, that happened, someone said X y Z and he's just like, oh, come on, mum, you know, stop being a woos. So you know they're good, like they keep it real. You try to have good family time. Like when we can have family time, we try to have it. And my other good outlet is running.
I just like to go for a run.
I'm in my own head when I run, I blast my you know, motivational confidence tracks in my headphones and that's kind of my escape.
So so if you if you couldn't be a politician or a journal would it have been a vet?
Would that would that have been the path?
Yeah?
I mean I really wanted to be an Olympic equestrian, but my family were not moneyed enough to support that kind of pathway.
Because horses are very expensive.
But that was sort of my dream, and yeah, look I do. I yearn for it a bit because you know, I grew up in Tazzy in that sort of ear and seventies and eighties where I'd be dropped off at the horses at seven o'clock in the morning Mum or dad had picked me up after dark in the freezing cold. I would have been out all day. You know, if you fall off the horse, you get back on. If the fence is broken, you fix it and build a lot of resilience. But also a love of the outdoors.
And you know, we're so lucky in Australia, the open spaces that we have, and so I like when I can get out into nature, I can breathe. And if I can get out, you know, down the grad ocean road occasionally and go for a run or get down to the beach, you know that that gives.
Me a lot of energy to keep moving forward.
The has the also the exercise physiologist asking you here, excise scientists, I should say, how's the body holding up? At whatever you are fifty ish? Has it holding up?
Oh God, it's so boring, isn't it.
Yeah, like a few niggles, A few niggles like a bit of plant fascy it itis, a bit of the sore heap here and there. Took up swimming to take the pressure off from the running. Got a frozen shoulder, so then went to running.
Yeah, this side of.
Fifty is is annoying because you don't kind of realize that you've aged, but your body likes to tell you that you have.
And that's very dull.
It starts, shit starts to fall off, doesn't it, Tiff.
I wouldn't know. I'm not there yet.
Well, we know you're not fifty, but you're forty two and you're bearing down.
And it is starting to fall off. The wheels are getting wobbly.
Yeah, well that's because, as we were talking about before Zoe got on, you're riding motorbikes and you got your you got your shoulders pointing one way and your head pointing another way, and you're in severe neck extension and you're fucking up your neck. But anyway, that's why you need a naked bike, not a sports bike. You can sit more upright, but that's for another day. Zoe, back to you.
Tell me about like I was talking to one of your team. I won't mention his name.
Francis the other day and he was telling me that you've got I don't know if I'm meant to say this will cut.
There's out like a thousand volunteers or something. Is that right?
Yeah, yeah, we have, and that's fine to talk about that, but they I mean, we've got more people coming on every day at the moment, which is just awesome.
I love this point in the campaign.
So we've had hundreds of volunteers throughout the time, and then of course, so closer it gets to the election, that team builds and yeah, when you get up to pre pole, because there's two weeks of pre pole before the election day, everyone who hasn't had.
The time to volunteers like, okay, I'll do pre pole.
So you just have hundreds of people jumping on board and it's really exciting.
It's so fun.
Yeah, I had no idea. Like I caught up within the other day briefly.
We've been friends for a long time and he's like, yeah, we've got to I'm like, what, Wow, that isn't so what is what does that feel like? Is that is that a good weight or not a weight at all? Or a bad weight, Like is that the level of I would feel with that level of expectation and pressure. Maybe not in a bad way, but where you know, you've got to lead these people, care for these people.
I guess inspire these people a bit. What's that like to deal with?
Yeah, I mean, look it's there.
There's that sort of thing of you know, god, you know, don't fuck it up basically, but.
You should use that in your campaign. I like, if you want to be real, you want to be grounded.
Do you know that you don't know this? And bout story. I've written seven books. The first book was called stop Fucking.
Around right Now. Everyone told me not to call it that. This was pre all the other fuck books. This was in twenty ten, and that has that one book has outsold all my other books.
So I think you should.
You know, maybe you need some slogans or some posters that say, don't fuck it up, Zoe Daniel, don't fuck it up.
You know you'll get the Bogan vote.
Yeah, but I get school teachers ring in my office to tell me off.
And I do like to be a good role model for the kids.
So but I'll say this, the volunteers carry me I don't carry them right, Like, obviously I am there to try to energize them, and we have big events where I give like big speeches and really try to create that inspiration. But I'm inspired by what they're doing, like I take energy from them.
It's a really two way thing.
And at this point in the campaign, you know, three weeks out, less than three weeks out from the election, I feel great because I've got all these amazing people, you know, door knocking and doing everything that you can think of, riding bikes, walking dogs, with my T shirts on running.
I had a crew of people who ran the.
Entire boundary of the electric at thirty five kilometers as you know, to bring publicity to the campaign. Like they're just everywhere and they're so beautiful and positive and hopeful, and so that gives me energy.
Yeah, when I talk to people about, you know, what they want to do, be create, you know, we talk about goals and we talk about people's what, and then then I talk to them about what's your why, Like what's your driver, what's your compelling force, what's your reason? And maybe you touched on it before with your kids, but what's like seems to me, politics does not seem attractive, not that I'm a political mind, but fuck politics, Like, what's what's your why.
To provide a better future so the kids or at least the same prosperity that we've had, you know, the failings of the political system in providing good housing policy, good climate policy, good tax policy. Like there's an infinite number of things that I could reel off where the major parties just throw the ball between them and never actually make any progress on these things.
And I think independence can take more.
Risks because at the end of the day, if I don't get re elected on one person, right, but I can go out harder on things for the kids.
And you know, I do so much work in schools.
Our kids are weighed down by so much pressure around how the climate looks, the fact that they can't buy a house, that the tax burdens, student debt, gambling, advertising, a million things, and someone's got to be in there standing up for them.
You know, someone has to do it.
And if there's one central reason to do it, it's that to try to only gives them a voice.
But really fight for.
Better policy settings that actually enable them to thrive and have the life that they deserve.
I'm sure there's a million answers to this question, but what is something that the average punter like Tiff and I and I would think most of our listeners might not understand about being a politician, like.
Where you go a bit in?
Never thought of this, or you know, is there something that you go if people only knew. I'm sure there's I'm sure there's fifty things.
But look, I think that there's there's two obvious things. And I'm not going to go, oh for politicians, but because everyone's like, oh politicians, they've just got those snouts in the trough and it's all really easy. I mean, basically, you go into politics, you work twenty four seven, you spend For me, I spend six months of the year away from home, five or six months away from home up in Canberra. And then when I'm out on the street sometimes people scream at.
Me, and you know, it can feel hard. But the thing is that you balance that up.
With the really satisfying elements of it. When you crack through on something that is important and you've been really pushing hard for it, and it makes a difference and you think that's the reason to be there, and you know the.
Earlier things I said are the reason that a lot.
Of people won't do it, but some people, some people have to do it. You know, you've got to get in there with the backbone and try and stand up for good decision making, because you know, you can't really complain if you're not going to participate in it. And luckily for me, with the sort of background that I have, I have the capacity to do that.
So what's on the excessive to do list between now and the election? Like, is it's still as it may hem right up to the day. What's your focus for the next couple of weeks.
Just being out in community as much as possible.
So the big thing that I have and the other independents have, as we've already talked about, is the ground game with so many volunteers, and because I'm prosecuting the case for people to vote for me as an individual, not for a major party brand, the main thing that I have to do is get in front of as many people as possible and have the conversation before election day, and also for my volunteers to do that for me.
If I can't be physically in front of one hundred plus thousand people who are voting.
In this electorate.
But it really is being out there having conversations, pushing the for doing politics differently, and it's all of that. It's leaf lining, it's door knocking, it's pop up officers. Got an event politics in the pub tonight, so all those sorts of things which will do right up until the last votescast.
Well, it's been great talking to you.
I know I could talk to you for a long time, but I know you don't have a long time because you're an incredibly busy woman. Hey, thanks for taking some time in your schedule and having probably what is for you a somewhat unconventional chat to somebody in the kind of in the media social media will call it.
But hope things go great for you.
And really nice to meet you, and thanks for being raw and real and honest.
Thanks Craig. Thanks, thanks for having me.
Enjoy the rest of your day and good luck with a campaign.
Appreciate it.