I’ve always believed that who we are is shaped not just by our families and genetics, but the world around us; the people in power, the policies they implement, and the stories they tell. I was born during an east coast low in 2007, the kind that knocks out the power and makes the sky split in half. Since then, I’ve lived my life somewhere between the storm and the system. This isn’t just a story about me.
It's a story about schools, about disability, about power. It's about what happens when the system built to support us fails - and what it means to fight for something better.
I’ve chosen to tell this story through the lens of political leadership. Each chapter is named after the Prime Minister in power at the time, not because they shaped me directly, but because their policies, priorities and failures ran alongside my life. Sometimes they mirrored it. Sometimes they made it harder.
Kevin Rudd was elected the same year I was born, offering hope like it was a campaign slogan turned promise. He delivered a national apology to the Stolen Generation and promised an “Education Revolution.” But while the promises were grand, the systems were shrinking; tighter, more standardised, less forgiving. NAPLAN tests and the MySchool website became fixtures in my schooling, before I even learnt the alphabet. His government wanted equity on paper but for kids like me, we saw the cracks only widen.
This is an unconventional autobiography — but I am an unconventional student.
Welcome to the story of how I learnt to survive, speak up and got my seat at the table.
Rudd (2007 - 2010)
I was born to Mark and Kim, their first child. An average baby by all accounts. Kim, a secretary at Macquarie Bank, hadn’t always planned on being a parent. It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids, it’s just that she could have gone either way. Mark, on the other hand, unequivocally wanted a family. Maybe that comes down to what parenthood means to a “mum” versus a “dad”.
Kim grew up in Canberra with two brothers and thirty cousins. She was just one of many kids roaming around the Batemans Bay caravan park when it got to the Christmas holidays. Her dad ran the largest engineering firm in Canberra, a serious man. She was sent to a private school after the local public one decided homework wasn’t mandatory.
She wasn’t particularly sporty or academic, but she was likeable, the kind of likeable where you just knew she’d do well in life. After finishing business college and a brief marriage at 21, she fled to London. What was meant to be a three-month trip turned into three years.
Those years shaped many of Mum’s mantras that still hold today:
1. Don’t get married until you’re thirty
2. Dye your hair or get as many piercings as you want, but don’t get a tattoo (a close call in Egypt nearly saw her get a lizard on her shoulder)
3. A Lonely Planet travel guide is an essential
While Mum was leading Contiki tours around Europe, Dad had graduated as head boy and cricket captain from a selective boys’ high school and went on to study civil engineering at the University of Technology Sydney. They are an unlikely pair, but maybe that’s what drew them together. They met at work: she was the secretary, he was the engineer. Six months later, they were engaged.
My younger sister, Zara was born in 2010, weighing a whopping 5kg. When they brought her home, I suggested naming her ‘lemon’ which became a running family joke for years, as though I knew she was going to be sour (we didn’t exactly get along).
Gilliard (2010 - 2013)
On 9 October 2012, when I was five, Julia Gillard stood in the House of Representatives and delivered a speech that would echo across the country. Her words struck like lightning. Charged. Sharp. Boomingly loud. She called out the hypocrisy of men who claimed to champion women while wielding misogyny behind closed doors. She was speaking to millions of women, and to girls like me, who were only just beginning to understand the rules of a game rigged against us. While Gillard was navigating sexism in the highest office in the country, I was learning what it meant to be a girl on the playground.
In early childhood, children develop a more concrete understanding of gender as a stable social category and begin to internalise gender stereotypes. The period between three to five years old marks a significant step in one's gender development, where children begin to categorise themselves and others by gender and associate certain traits and behaviors with each gender.
***
Clovelly Public School, the local primary school, was just a short walk up the hill from my house, so short, my mother could hear the school bells and shrills of the children at lunchtime. We moved from Alexandria after a string of incidents that left my parents terribly conscious of the fact their newborn baby was a girl.
One morning, local high school boys from behind the fence hurled sexually charged comments at my mum while she pushed me in a stroller. Openly degraded by those 15 year old school boys and with a toddler in tow. My parents decided I would not grow up in the shadow of boys who learned too young that women were objects to laugh at, dismiss and demean.
It wasn’t that misogyny wasn’t present in the affluent east of Sydney, however to the eyes of Mark and Kim, it wore a nicer shirt. It was quieter, coded, coated in sincerity and dressed in private school ties.
So, dad shined my little leather Mary Janes until he could see his own reflection staring back and mum pulled my thick, mousey hair into two tight ponytails. And together, they walked me up the hill to kindergarten one hand in each of theirs, stepping into a world they hoped would treat me kindly.
Abbott (2013 - 2015)
Tony Abbott assuming office marked the beginning of a nine year Coalition government that coincided almost exactly with my childhood, taking me from age six to fifteen. Abbott was a strong leader, with ambition, goals and a strong Catholic faith — so strong it once nearly led him to priesthood. He sparked ideological debates even in my own home with my dad being a Christian, my mum strictly atheist. This divide would shape the way I came to understand belief, authority and education.
In New South Wales public schools, Scripture, officially known as Special Religious Education, has been part of the system since the 1870s. At Clovelly, that meant half an hour a week of being shepherded off to a classroom based on the religion your parents had chosen for you. Mine chose Christianity.
I can’t say this part of my learning was something I particularly enjoyed, and this was only amplified by my dislike for the man running the program. This aversion stemmed from one moment which has always stuck with me. A classmate mentioned one day, “my mum doesn’t believe in god.” The teacher, only young, maybe in his late twenties, without missing a beat, said “How silly! She won’t go to heaven.” I remember feeling jolted, my mum didn’t believe in God either. In that moment I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere she wasn’t, even if that was supposedly paradise.
Eventually, my mum became an ethics teacher, the longest serving one at Clovelly. For five years, she ran classes on ethical decision making, action and reflection. No commandments, no threats of eternal punishment, only questions. ‘What does it mean to be kind?’ “Can something be legal but still wrong?” Her class was popular, with around thirty kids. In hindsight, it was a better moral education than scripture ever offered. This nuanced debate set me up well for later encounters (like when I recently saw Tony Abbott at an anti-abortion protest when I was leaving Parliament house).
***
By year two, I had chopped my hair short. It was practical with less time combing and fewer dreaded nit treatments synonymous with primary school. I had set my sights on a short pixie cut, shaved on one side, the inspiration was Emma Watson. However, what I had not considered in my trip to the hairdressers was that I would stick out like a sore thumb in the school photo lineup. I hadn’t intended to draw attention to myself, but when I walked into the girls’ bathroom, I was yelled at all the same. Research now suggests that autistic individuals are more likely to exhibit gender diversity and less likely to conform to traditional gender norms compared to their neurotypical peers. Back then, I just wanted to avoid tangles.
So with my boyish haircut and growing discomfort with the rigid scripts of school life, I figured the next step to regain some social capital was obvious: competitive public speaking.
***
Every year, we were required to deliver two speeches: one on a topic of our choice and another on multiculturalism. Many of my classmates, including my best friend Mia, dreaded this assignment, worried they’d stumble over their words in front of the whole class. I never really understood that fear. Without embarrassment and often without looking down once at my palm cards, I’d spring to the front of the room, excited to speak on something I cared about, some aspect of injustice. I covered all kinds of topics, some I didn’t yet fully understand. While I didn’t understand the political reasons behind the popular phrase ‘stop the boats’, I did know about Ahn Do books. My librarian, Mr Scale filled our bookshelves with stories of immigration, resilience and diversity - tales that lingered longer than any slogan.
In year three, I tried to write my own speech on why marriage equality should be legal. The idea was swiftly rejected as ‘too controversial.’ It was the first time I realised that having a voice didn’t always mean being allowed to use it. I didn’t win the speech competition that year but I did learn an important lesson: that even in year three there were lines that weren’t meant to be crossed. The problem was, like other social cues, they were invisible to me.
***
I was lucky to have my best friend, Mia, and even luckier that with her friendship came a second family. Her parents and older sister welcomed me into their home with open arms. Both Mia's parents worked, unlike my Mum, which meant she spent a lot of time at my house. In return, her family often invited me to shows, dinner and even on family holidays. She made me feel safe and I knew that no matter what, I always had a friend.
Mia was kind and sweet and smart, extremely smart. This year will see her graduate from the International Baccalaureate Program, one of the most academically rigorous high school programs in the world.
Turnbull (2015 - 2018)
Mia’s and my friendship only grew stronger from year three to the end of primary. Every year we put each other first on our class preference lists and it must have worked, because we ended up together every year. We weren’t particularly popular, but we were well liked. Our table became a safe haven for kids who needed a break from the chaos of the playground.
Our other best friend, Ava, often struggled with how close Mia and I were. Back then, her finding other friends was a rejection - a betrayal even. But I’ve come to realise it wasn’t that simple. Ava was growing up faster than we were. She had a boyfriend, pushed boundaries and once even rolled her eyes at a teacher, all things I quietly labelled as “bad”. But really, I didn’t have the life experience to understand people outside of the neat categories I’d absorbed from kids’ shows and school assemblies. Now I see that Ava wasn’t any less kind, or brave or good. She was just different to me. She became school captain, and I’ve heard she wants to be a lawyer. I imagine she’ll make a very good one.
As Ava drifted and the schoolyard started to feel more uncertain, I found myself drawn to quieter spaces, ones where I felt needed.
***
Though he was never my teacher, Mr Nguyen changed my life more than anyone else. Head of debating, a small asian man. Unlike my other teachers, he did not live in the eastern suburbs, with his workplace juxtaposing his upbringing within a hardworking, second generation immigrant family.
I spent countless hours with Mr Nygen, he often pulled the debate team out of class for last minute work on speeches, alongside the usual lunchtime meetings and strategising trips in his dodgy, little car to other schools to debate. He was overly conscious of his appearance as a male teacher, always making us work around other teachers and students, never even slightly closing the door.
Mr Nguyen put hours of his own time into the debate team and we won, I don’t know if this was driven by love of learning or his promise of bringing us all Vietnamese Bahn Mi if we grabbed first place. Just before I graduated from year six Mr Nguyen actually rang my mum. He rabbled on, saying how I would do amazing things and praising my dedication and hard work. He predicted I would fly in high school… how wrong he was.
Outside of debating I was the dedicated head of newsroom, a school based video newsletter. I worked on the yearbook, administration and often wrote speeches needed for other students. I even knew a handful of teachers' laptop passwords. Years later when my mum found out about my absence from the school playground, she was shocked to realise how much time I’d spent away from other kids, often alone with teachers. In hindsight, she was right to be concerned, I hadn’t understood how vulnerable that made me.
Morrison (2018 - 2022)
In the 2019 election, Labor leader Bill Shorten proposed two major tax reforms: limiting negative gearing on most new investments and halving the capital gains tax discount for assets bought after January 2020. These changes would have helped to shift Australia’s property market from a wealth-building scheme to a system that prioritised housing as a human right.
Despite Morrison only becoming Prime Minister in 2018, the Coalition won its third consecutive term in 2019, defeating a Labor platform aimed at rebalancing the housing market. So with this unfortunate turn of events for young people like me planning to enter the housing market within the next century, things only got worse.
COVID-19 hit. I was in my first year of high school, overwhelmed by change and I clung to the only thing I felt I could control: my body.
***
It started as a diet. But it turned more sinister.
Left to fester, anorexia nervosa ate me from the inside out. My heartbeat slowed. My head drooped on skeletal shoulders. One day, it even took my name.
I fainted a lot. One day, after collapsing again, my parents asked:
“What is your name?”
I couldn’t answer.
***
Recovery was long. The hospital restored my weight, but not my mind.
Anorexia nervosa is the deadliest mental illness. One in five people don’t survive it.
My parents cried often. My dad would hold me close and whisper:
“I wish I could take your pain away. I wish it was me instead.”
I love my Dad.
***
By the end of year seven, it was clear I would not be staying at my current high school. My parents’ first thought was to send me to Mia’s school.
I was grateful to be back with my best friend and the comfort of familiar faces.
In school number two, things initially felt better - I had friends, played netball, earned good grades. It almost felt like before.
But sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I still heard the beeping of the heart monitor. Getting dressed was hard. Thinking was harder.
2022 was a year of revelation and challenge:
1. I was diagnosed with autism (Mum cried.)
2. My science teacher bluntly told me, “You’ll never go anywhere if you can’t complete an exam.”
3. And school made it clear: there was no place for me.
Albanese (2022 - 2025)
The little girl who once loved quoting Hermonie Granger, “I’m going to bed either of you come up with another idea to get us killed, or worse, expelled” was no longer little. And her worst fear had come true, she had no clear school in sight. This period was marked by immense self doubt. I wondered why I didn’t belong, what my future could look like, and whether I even wanted one.
But my mum had other plans.
By my third school enrolment, she had become an expert in navigating the system. When she heard about a mental health school just five minutes from our house, she was determined that this would be the place for me.
Centennial Park School is a special school for students who require intensive support. These schools provide specialised smaller settings and a range of tailored support services. Admission meant access to art and music therapy, even a therapy dog - but more than anything, it meant being around people like me.
Day one felt strange and I felt out of place. The uniform was a simple black t-shirt. No blazer, no standing behind desks until the teacher commanded us to sit and definitely no chapel. I was laughed at for bringing a pencil case, which I quickly shoved back into my bag, along with my timetable marked with the name ‘Freddie Ball.’
Freddie Ball was a boy in my year, who had turned up six months before me. He had curly, unruly brown hair, and green eyes that darted away whenever I caught a glance.
Six months later, this timid boy asked me out.
***
My person is a mirror which leans tilted upon the wall in my room. Its borders are a warm, deep, brass colour, it stands only slightly taller than me. This mirror, which some may think is like any other, is enchanting and powerful. Its shiny reflection changed my viewpoint and changed me.
Above is a poem I wrote in English Advanced about Freddie, my partner. He walked into my life at my lowest point, and together, over the next two and a half years, we grew up side by side.
He convinced me that my mental wellbeing was worth more than any high school certificate. That I would flourish in the Big Picture Learning Program and that universities and employers would see me for who I am, and if they didn’t, we would move past it together.
So in my final year of school I left the comfort of Centennial Park School to join the Big Picture Learning Program at Blackwattle Bay Sydney Secondary College. I chose this pathway to prioritise my mental health and pursue a more meaningful, project-based entry to university inspired by Freddie.
I am a passionate advocate for education reform, disability rights, and mental health awareness. My lived experience as a twice-exceptional student, navigating both the challenges of autism and the rigid structures of the Australian education system, has fueled my commitment to creating more inclusive policies and pathways for young people.
I am honoured to serve as the 2025 Youth Deputy Premier of 2025 and co-author of the ‘Needs-Based Transition Support (Young People with Disabilities) Act 2025.
I plan to study political science at university. I believe true change only comes when those with lived experience are given a seat at the table. This is my story of how I earned that seat and why I’m ready to use it. So if you’ve read this far, I invite you to join me in making sure no one is ever left unheard again.