The Kate for Fremantle Campaign Launch

Well, along with an avalanche of very enthusiastic younger, and some older, Kate for Fremantle supporters, Fremantle Shipping News and other invited members of the local Freo media attended Kate Hulett’s Voices4Freo launch last Friday night, 10 January 2025, at the spacious and impressive Urban Winery in High Street.

After name stickers were handed out and stuck on shirts, silk frocks, linen jackets, Fremantle Shipping News T-shirts, and the like, and a beer or cocktail was ordered from the bar – one hastens to add at the orderer’s expense, not the campaign’s! – it was time to mingle before the main event.

As one surveyed the scene, spotting who was there and who wasn’t, it was hard not to sense a certain euphoria in the air. I’ve never been to a religious revivalist meeting of the sort depicted in the great Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry, but there was something in the Urban Winery air, for sure, political revivalism perhaps.

And it remained in the air, indeed got a little thicker, when the assembly was called to order by the inestimable Glynn Greensmith whose job it was to warm up the crowd and introduce Kate Hulett. Folks soon learned that Glynn was/is not an Australian citizen despite having spent an awfully long time as an ABC broadcaster and Curtin U journalism academic. Glynn was there, one soon surmised, because Socrates couldn’t be – the latter having succumbed to a dose of hemlock after being found guilty by the Athenians in 399 BC of the crimes of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, and for impiety, that is, worshipping false gods and failing to worship the gods of Athens, a fate Glynn was obviously keen to avoid with his carefully chosen words. As to his words, well Glynn was keen to keep the single word ‘Democracy’ popularised by Socrates at the forefront of everyone’s minds. His parting message – without Kate Hulett in Parliament, Democracy will be the loser.

Kate Hulett Independent Community candidate for Fremantle, Campaign Launch 10 January 2025

Kate Hulett then took the floor to great cheers from her supporters, first explaining she didn’t think just a few weeks earlier that she’d be speaking at her own campaign launch a couple weeks later.

Kate emphasised she is a ‘Community Independent Candidate for the State seat of Fremantle’ and that the election was just 57 days away.

As to the enormity of the challenge facing her, Kate Hulett seemed unfazed, calling in aid not the words of Socrates, but of the famed American cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead – ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

The changing the world clarion call is what the assembled supporters were anxious to hear more about out, and the local Freo media were equally keen to see unveiled. Her immediate response drew attention to the climate emergency, noting ‘houses are quite literally on fire. It is now or never’.

As to the question so many ask about how a Community Independent Candidate can help effect actual change, Kate prefaced her remarks by saying that she had learned from her conversations around Freo over the last year or so, that ‘Fremantle constituents feel unseen and unheard by our elected representatives.’ The construction of the new Fremantle Police Station was proffered as an example of a development thrust upon Freo from upon high that most Freo folk didn’t and don’t want.

Kate Hulett then interestingly informed the attendees at the launch that canvassing of the Freo community suggested that –
* 70% of the people spoken to said that they do not feel represented by
their elected politicians.
* 85% said they were open to voting for an Independent Community Candidate.

Then the candidate began to address the nitty gritty of her campaign. It seemed to boil down to this – ‘In Freo, at each level of government – we are being governed by Labor. Fremantle is a very safe labor seat for the State Government – that’s Simone McGurk – in a very strong Labor State, overlorded by Roger Cook. In WA, Labor could do anything they wanted; they have literally no opposition, and they have surplus money in the bank.’

She continued: ‘But here we are, the only state in Australia, without an emissions target. In Fremantle we have the one of the lowest tree canopies in the metro area. And we must be the only place in the world that’s taking away public transport – when we got rid of the two CAT bus routes. We have lost Spare Parts Theatre, Circus WA is teetering on the brink, and
other cultural organisations – as always – are competing for financial crumbs.’

She added, Indigenous reconciliation appeared to have ‘fallen off the agenda’, large swathes of government-owned land around Fremantle ‘remain empty’ while people desperately need homes, and ‘we seem to have signed up to taking American and British nuclear waste as part of the AUKUS deal’.

As well, she added, the problems with fracking and the planned expansion of Woodside’s Burrup Hub ‘reads like the evil plot line from a disaster movie’.

What is required, said the Candidate, are more non-politicians in government. ‘We want to put the voice of the people, back into politics’, was her rallying cry. As well as a need to ‘break up the hopeless two-party system where party members – no matter how lovely they are – cannot truly represent their electorates because they have to – they have to – do what their leader, or their party, says.’

The answer? she asked – the Community Independent movement, she replied. Because they don’t have a leader, Kate explained – rather they have leaders – the people from the electorate. She outlined that Community independents compile their constituents’ feedback, look at the evidence and consider the impacts. They make a case, and take that to Parliament.

As to her skills and experience, we learned Kate Hulett grew up in the far northern suburbs, went to school in Whitfords, received a degree from UWA, and subsequently moved abroad, before moving home to Fremantle 12 years ago.

Her work history has spanned retail, hospitality, large public-private corporations, tiny boutique agencies, consulting, contracting, volunteering, senior management, market stall holder, and business ownership.

She said she has worked in major cities, as well as outer suburbs, in male-dominated environments, as well as female-oriented sectors. As well as working in sprawling teams, she has also run her own business by herself. .

Kate Hulett reassured her supporters that she would ‘solve problems with creativity, humanity, and success’. And that she is ‘not a career politician’, and has no interest in power or wealth.

In her final appeal to voters to support her Kate for Fremantle campaign, Kate Hulett concluded : ‘I am running entirely with a mandate to give the people of Fremantle a voice, and to spend four years working solely on the betterment of Fremantle.’

The Community Independent Candidate recognised however, before she passed the mic over, that for her to become the next member for Fremantle in the State Parliament required ‘converting Labor voters into Community Independent voters’.

That, undoubtedly, is the task that lies ahead for the Kate for Fremantle campaign.

We look forward to reporting on the various campaigns leading up to the 8 March Polling Day, as well as bringing you podcast interviews with the candidates here on the Shipping News. Watch this space!

* By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** If you’d like to COMMENT on this or any of our stories, don’t hesitate to email our Editor.

*** WHILE YOU’RE HERE –