ABOUT NICK - Nick Xenophon - Independent Senator for South Australia

I’m not a big fan of talking about myself, but people often want to know a bit about how I got into the crazy business called politics.

I got involved in state politics when I ran in the 1997 State Election on a ‘No Pokies’ platform.

Before that I was minding my own business, running a small suburban legal practice in Paradise (the suburb!). But in the mid 1990s I began to see client after client whose lives had been damaged in some way by the introduction of poker machines into pubs and clubs.

So I decided to make a point, to run for State Parliament, to at least raise the profile of the issue.

I didn’t expect to get in, but to my surprise (and to the surprise of the hoteliers with pokies), I scraped in with a bit over three per cent of the state-wide vote.

I worked my guts out in the next eight years to fight the pokies, as well as campaigning on other issues where people and groups weren’t getting a fair go – asbestos, victims of crime, and land tax, to name but a few.

At the 2006 State Election I was re-elected with 20.5 per cent of the state’s vote. I was as shocked as my political opponents, who had predicted I was cactus.

I made the heart-wrenching decision to leave state politics and run in the November 2007 Federal Election because I believed (and do even more so now) that I could do more for South Australians in the Senate.

The writing was on the wall for state governments when the High Court handed down its decision on John Howard’s WorkChoices in August 2006. The Court basically said that the Federal Parliament can effectively override the states, using its Commonwealth powers, even to bring in a law like WorkChoices, which was unfair for many Australians.

Despite all sorts of hurdles, I was elected to the Senate with 14.5 per cent of the vote – just over a full Senate quota (so I didn’t have to rely on preferences from any political parties, which is just how I like it!).

I’m not into the trappings of being a pollie. I know it sounds corny, but the biggest perk of all for me is actually being able to stir things up for people who don’t have a voice, and hopefully make a difference.

I guess how I feel about what I do is summed up in the last line of my first speech in the Senate:

I would rather go down fighting, than still be standing because I stayed silent.

Please keep in contact with me about issues that concern you, your ideas and suggestions. You can send me an email or letter, and my details are on the Contact Nick page.