Politics Is Personal

A Poem for Ali France

In 2011, Ali France and her younger son were at a shopping centre when an elderly driver lost control of his car and ran into them. She pushed her son in his stroller out of the way but was seriously injured and had her leg amputated as a result. In 2024, her older son died from leukaemia.

In May 2025, she was elected to the Australian Parliament. Prior to entering politics, she was a journalist. She is also a para-athlete and disability advocate. In 2016, she represented Australia in paracanoeing. The surgeon who inserted her titanium rod prosthetic leg was a former Iraqi refugee who came to Australia by boat.

France faced some criticism on social media for talking about her grief and loss during the election campaign. She responded by saying, “Politics is personal, actually … My whole life is the reason I got into politics. I will never stop talking about him and I don’t care whether it causes people to feel discomfort.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_France

Not a slogan.
Not a line rehearsed
beneath the lights.

It’s the sound of metal striking bone.
The stroller you pushed
just far enough.
The leg you lost—
and the fire that rose with it.

It’s your boys:
one still beside you,
one now memory.
Both shaping every step
up Parliament’s stairs.

It’s the surgeon—
once a refugee,
now rebuilding your body.
His story
in your bones.

Not theory.
Not policy.
But grief.
Courage.
Outrigger strokes
and campaign trails.

You ran not to play politics,
but because it played you—
formed you,
remade you.

So no—
you won’t stop speaking
of loss.
Of love.
Of sons.

Because this isn’t discomfort.
This is truth.
This is personal.