New senator Ellie Whiteaker wants to be in the room where change happens

Western Australia’s newest senator was drawn to the Labor Party as the home of aspiration. The kind of place where a girl from Kalgoorlie, the first in her family to go to university, could find a way to change the world for everyone. Ellie Whiteaker will join the red leather benches of the Senate on Tuesday after seven years at the upper echelons of the WA Labor party machinery. She leaves behind big shoes to fill for new branch secretary Mark Reed after overseeing two of the party’s biggest ever wins in this year’s state and federal elections. “The WA Labor Party is a campaigning powerhouse. There’s no doubt about that… and that’s not happened by accident,” she told The West Australian in her first interview as a senator-elect. Other Labor insiders agree, with one saying Senator Whiteaker had exceeded the expectations of when she was appointed the party’s first female secretary in 2022, and presided over one of its greatest wins. But the 32-year-old is already looking ahead to her next challenge and focusing on how WA can play a role in the second-term Albanese government. “The last seven years of my life being the assistant secretary and then the secretary has truly been a real honour, and I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done, but I think now is the right time for me to do something different and contribute in another way,” she said. “As another strong voice from WA in the federal team, it’s a good time to get in and focus on how WA can play a role in those really key national priorities.” She nominated the renewable energy transition, the “bold manufacturing agenda” and Defence as areas where WA was at the forefront of the agenda. Living in Cockburn, she takes a particular interest in the progress on AUKUS and the upgrades of the Henderson shipbuilding strip, saying, “There’s lots of opportunity right on our doorstep.” There has been criticism of slow progress on vital upgrades to civilian and defence infrastructure needed so Australia can maintain its own nuclear-powered submarines. But Senator Whiteaker said it was important that the work be done right. “I don’t think anyone pretends that it’s something that’s going to happen overnight,” she said. “It’s a long-term strategy and a long-term approach, and I’m very confident that we’ll get there.” In taking off her party secretary hat, Senator Whiteaker is conscious that life is about to change in many ways – although she jokes that “once a campaign director, always a campaign director”. Within hours of speaking to The West, she was introducing Anthony Albanese at a nationally broadcast press conference, receiving credit from the Prime Minister for her campaign prowess. “I said, when I came here … that I wasn’t just about holding the seats that we won in 2022 I was about building on them – and build on them we have,” Mr Albanese said. “I do want to give a shout out to Ellie as well, not just as senator-elect, but the WA campaign here.” She will soon be juggling life as a senator with the career of husband David Scaife, a minister in the WA Government, and the demands of their son William, who turns two at the same time she heads to Canberra. “I joke that I’ll probably see more of her as a senator than I did as the campaign director of WA Labor. It’s probably only half a joke,” Mr Scaife said. Senator Whiteaker is approaching the personal challenge the same way she did running a campaign: lots of research, an extensive network of helpers and rigorous logistics systems. “Over the last almost decade, you just see that more and more women and men have entered the parliament with young families and so I’m quite encouraged by that,” she said. “There’s lots of people doing the juggle, and lots of people from WA also, of course, Zaneta (Mascarenhas), Patrick (Gorman) and Matt (Keogh) and soon Tom (French), all adding to the WA kid contingent in Canberra.” Senator Whiteaker and Mr Scaife met in Young Labor – he jokes they’re a “sad political love story” before she says, semi-horrified, he’s guaranteed that will be the headline – after being drawn to the party because of their roots in regional WA, growing up in families of “pretty modest means” and seeing the impact of having access to good public education and good jobs. “We both grew up in families where education was really fundamental to that aspiration,” Senator Whiteaker said. “And so I think that that very much drove us to the Labor Party, that focus on those bread and butter issues, things that really impact people’s lives. “Politics for me has always been of interest, because it really does make a difference in every part of everyone’s lives. And so I want to be where those decisions are being made and be able to influence them wherever I can.”