Do we like Zali Steggall?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Votes consistently for trans rights, LGBTI protections and climate action, held back a notch by the 2022 donation row and some tough-on-welfare votes.
Before politics, Steggall was a ski racer. She competed at four Winter Olympics, won a medal at the 1998 Games and retired in 2002. Then she retrained as a barrister in sport and family law, and sat on a Court of Arbitration for Sport panel that decided on Russia's Olympic participation. Not a bad CV for a bloke's-club-busting backbencher.
She burst onto the national stage in 2019 by taking Tony Abbott's old seat of Warringah as an independent, running hard on climate action. In 2020 she put up a private member's bill aiming for net zero emissions by 2050, modelled on the UK's Climate Change Act. The Conversation noted she describes herself as a non-aligned conservative independent, which is why the climate crowd and the budget-balancers both keep an eye on her.
Her messiest moment came in 2022. The Australian Electoral Commission found that $100,000 from a former coal company director's family trust had come in as eight separate payments, each under the disclosure threshold, and treated it as one donation. Steggall called it a rookie error, said her accountant hadn't flagged it and denied trying to hide the money. Government MPs accused her of hypocrisy, while Bill Shorten defended her.
On the harm test she looks solid. According to They Vote For You, she has consistently voted for transgender rights and protections, for increasing legal protections for LGBTI people, and for criminalising hate speech and hate symbols. She has also voted for the Paris Agreement, net zero by 2050 and a ban on new fossil fuel projects. The votes that will irk progressives are her support for cashless debit card trials, drug testing welfare recipients and compulsory income management.
Her latest move is Community Strong Australia, launched at Parliament House on 25 June 2026 with Allegra Spender. It's built around economic management, climate, political integrity and equality, and allows a free vote. Steggall pitched it as offering “unity over division and reason over rage.” The party doesn't have the five MPs it needs for party status, and other crossbenchers have stayed independent for now. Critics at ANU reckoned the name was vague.
On integrity, the record mostly matches the pitch. She has consistently voted for a federal anti-corruption commission and for tougher political transparency rules. The mixed bit is that she also voted against restricting donations to political parties, which sits awkwardly beside the 2022 donation row. It's a small blemish, not a pattern.