Newly elected MP Sarah Witty has a passion for helping people

It was a long, anxious wait for the ALP’s Sarah Witty to be declared the new Member of Parliament for the federal seat of Melbourne, with counting going down to the wire. Having defeated Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt, she is now ready to take up the new challenge of making a difference for the people she represents.

Sarah was elected with an almost 10 per cent swing to Labor following a drawn-out count in a close contest, with Mr Bandt not conceding until five days after the poll.

‘It was a bit of an anxious wait,’ Sarah said. ‘You never really know, but I did have a strong feeling that it was going to come my way because of the conversations I’d been having with the people in the community through the campaign. I knew people were looking for something more, something different. They were looking for an alternative.’

Everything I learned from school and from life helped me to want to give back.

A former student of Mater Christi College, Belgrave, Sarah’s career encompasses banking and insurance, owning a Subway fast food outlet, working for a social housing enterprise and a charity providing nappies for women in crisis.

Sarah said her election to Parliament feels like all of these threads, beginning with her education at a Good Samaritan Education school, have come together in her new role.

‘Every part of what I did throughout my life has all sort of led me to where I am now, which is all about helping people,’ she said. ‘Everything I learned from school and from life helped me to want to give back.’

Sarah was a student at Mater Christi College in the 1980s, graduating in 1989, and said the Good Samaritan spirituality, founded on the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel, helped form her social conscience.

‘The parable is all about not judging people, just helping people who need a hand,’ she said. ‘If you see someone who needs a hand, you give them a hand without giving any thought to your own needs or comfort,’ she said.

‘But in terms of my career, if you’d asked me when I was at school, and even in Year 12, what I wanted to do when I grew up, I never had an answer.

‘As a result, my career looks quite different in that I’ve worked in banking, insurance and I’ve run my own business, and then I’ve moved into the community sector, and it seems like I’ve bounded around all over the place but, of course, I haven’t.

‘I’ve always done things where it’s been community facing and public facing and always been in service industries. Whether that was working in hospitality and giving people food and drink, right through to when I was the CEO of the Nappy Collective, where I was supporting families in crisis, it was always those ideas of wanting to help people in everything that I did.’

Sarah said her business background gave her the skills to apply to her passion for helping people.

Through her work with Homes for Homes, Sarah helped raise more than $110 million for social and affordable housing under an initiative where property owners who register their properties with Homes for Homes and sell them donate 0.1 per cent of the sale price to the social enterprise, which in turn passes the funds on to community housing providers.

During her time as CEO of the Nappy Collective, Sarah said the grassroots charity was able to rebuild after COVID-19 decimated its volunteer base to now be running with 400-plus volunteers, collecting more than 2 million nappies in a 12-month period from around 800 collection points around Australia.

‘It’s a beautiful little charity,’ she said. ‘We don’t give the nappies directly to families. We give them to organisations that support families; from the big charities like the Red Cross or Salvos to all sorts of little organisations that support families like women’s shelters and food banks. Because if you need a nappy, you likely need a whole lot of other wrap-around supports as well.’

Fostering has been both the most rewarding and most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Meanwhile, after a long and painful struggle with infertility, Sarah and her husband took up the calling to be foster parents.

‘I spent 10 years trying to be a parent, and that involved a lot of grief and loss as a result of that journey,’ she said. ‘I knew that foster care was something that would both help the children in need as well as fulfil my need to be a mother. So, I put my hand up for doing that.’

Sarah and her husband have a particular commitment to welcoming older foster children who often find it hard to secure a family placement. ‘I wanted to open my house up to allow those children to have somewhere where they can be safe and secure for a period of time,’ she said.

‘When kids come into my care, we never have a limit on age, we don’t have restrictions on how long they need to stay. They just stay for as long as they need.

‘It’s been both the most rewarding and most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I absolutely adore it.’

Now that she has been elected to Parliament, Sarah’s husband, who is a teacher, will work reduced hours so that they can continue being foster parents.

With Federal Parliament sitting this month for the first time since the election, Sarah joined other ‘newbie’ MPs in Canberra recently, learning the ropes and getting to know one another.

She said her main focus in her new role would be to represent the needs of the people in her electorate, which takes in the Melbourne CBD and inner-city suburbs including Richmond and Fitzroy.

‘For me, it’s about just wanting to be here in the seat of Melbourne, and helping the community as best I can, and finding a path to be able to help them in Canberra—that’s the main focus,’ she said.

She also hopes to be able to advance community support for social housing and for children in need.

‘Obviously, with my background in housing and in supporting children, I really am a believer in two things,’ she said.

As a society, we’re only as strong as our weakest link, and if we can give as much support to the people that really need us, we’re all lifted up.

‘The first thing is the only way to stop someone from being homeless is by giving them a home. I’m a believer in making sure we have enough social and affordable housing for people and the support they need to be able to get into a home. That will be a priority.

‘Children are also a big focus of mine and the families that they grow up in, no matter what that family looks like, whether it’s foster care or with parents and family members.

‘If we can give every child the best start in life, for them to be the best humans they can be, then that actually helps everybody. It helps them as an individual, but it also helps society. If they’ve had the best and the right sort of start to life, it allows them to be able to give back and contribute in a meaningful way.

‘I really believe that, as a society, we’re only as strong as our weakest link, and if we can give as much support to the people that really need us, we’re all lifted up as a result. So that’s where my focus will always be.’