How have your political views changed over time?
When I was younger, my politics were simple. Not because I lacked conviction, but because I hadn’t yet needed to question it. My family leaned conservative, so I did too. It felt like the default setting.
But growing up rearranged the furniture. Somewhere along the way I started reading policy documents instead of slogans. I wanted to know what vision lived underneath the promises, what kind of society each decision quietly built. Not “what will this do for me?” but what will this do to us? To social capital. To the sense of trust that makes a community possible.
That’s when the boxes started to break. I learnt that I couldn’t stay loyal to a party just because that’s how I’d been brought up. I couldn’t vote for a policy that benefited me personally if it cost the country something morally. I realised conscience doesn’t always sit neatly inside party lines.
I even joined a political party once—a minor party that briefly held the balance of power in the Senate. For a while I thought I’d found a home, until one policy made me pause. They were thin on immigration, and I couldn’t ignore it—not because this was my defining issue, but because it revealed something deeper: how we treat the stranger reveals our character. That was enough for me to step away.
Since then, I’ve been a swinging voter. It sounds indecisive, but it’s not. It’s just that conscience travels. Sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes into unknown territory.
I once heard a former Archbishop say that he had voted for every major party in his lifetime—even the Communist Party once, because he believed Jack Mundey was right about protecting Sydney through the Green Bans. That stayed with me. The freedom of it. The idea that integrity can migrate.
So here I am: not a loyalist, not apostate, just someone who can’t pretend that a ballot is a personality test.
I will vote for whoever seems most likely to strengthen the social fabric, to help more than they wound, to build something we won’t be ashamed of later.
I don’t fit the box anymore. And that’s not a problem. It’s a sign of growth.
The Afterword 
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