Steph Hodgins-May

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Stephanie Hodgins-May
Born	Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Occupation	Political activist
Employer	Greenpeace Australia Pacific
Known for	activist political candidate
Spouse(s)	Ogy
Children	1
Website	https://stephhodginsmay.org.au/climate/

Steph Hodgins-May is a Greenpeace activist and a candidate for the Australian Greens in multiple federal elections.

Early life and career[]

Hodgins-May was raised in Blampied in rural Victoria on a farm.^[1] Her father was a mayor of the local shire.^[2]

Her mother was a media studies and drama teacher in Ballarat.^[3]

She has a law arts degree and master in international relations from Deakin University.^[1]

Hodgins-May founded the Vivien Hodgins Foundation in honour of her mother's commitment to education, and raised over $40,000 to assist disaster relief efforts for Samoa. She worked in particular on micro-finance projects for local women-led businesses.

She worked in property law before working in the Australian mission to the United Nations.^[4] She was also her father's business partner in their family's farm.^[2] Following the 2019 election, Hodgins-May took up a position as Greenpeace's head of Pacific. In this position she pushed for Australia to do more to prevent climate change and to help the Pacific Islands with the challenges that climate change causes.^[5][6]

Political candidate[]

2013 election[]

Hodgins-May first ran for elected office at the 2013 election for the division of Ballarat, a safe Labor seat. She won 9.5% of the vote.^[7]

2016 election[]

At the 2016 election, Hodgins-May contested the inner Melbourne seat of Melbourne Ports. The seat had been a safe Labor seat since 1906. In a three cornered contest between the Greens, Labor and Liberal, Hodgins-May secured 23.79% of the primary vote.^[8] The results of the election remained uncertain, with Hodgins-May closing in on the incumbent, Michael Danby with a strong preference flow.^[9][10] However, Danby received strong support in the postal votes, and was ahead by fewer than 1000 votes on the seventh count of preferences. Hodgins-May was eliminated at that point, and her preferences allowed Danby to prevail in the final count over the Liberal candidate, Owen Guest.^[8]

Danby also courted controversy when he placed Hodgins-May Greens below the Liberals on his how-to-vote card even though his party wanted their preferences to flow to the Greens.^[11] Danby's supporters were also arrested for defacing election material of the opposing candidates in what was described by all three major candidates as an ugly campaign.^[12]

Zionism Victoria forum[]

During the 2016 election campaign, Hodgins-May was invited with the other two major party candidates, Michael Danby and Owen Guest, to participate in a candidates' forum for the Jewish community, which makes up a significant part of the division of Melbourne Ports. The event was co-sponsored by and The Australian Jewish News (AJN).

After initially accepting the invitation, Hodgins-May declined to turn up citing the fact that ZV was a co-sponsor of the event. The cited reason was stated as the political stances taken by ZV against the United Nations.^[13][14][15]

The decision at the time was seen as a slight against the Jewish community and as taking sides in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, although Hodgins-May subsequently accepted a number of invitations to speak at a number of other Jewish and Zionist organisations. The policy position of the Greens with regards to the conflict was almost indistinguishable from the Labor party, whose candidate, Danby was the eventual winner.^[16] However some members of the Jewish community saw this move as a 'slap in the face' to the whole community.

Hodgins-May subsequently apologised to the community saying "I will say that I’ve certainly never been accused of being a bigot or anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist and I understand that that is how a lot of people felt and were quite hurt and for that, I do sincerely apologise. I really do. I did not mean to cause that hurt and offense to your community."^[17]

The incident continued to be mentioned by Jewish publications in subsequent elections, especially the AJN, who were co-sponsors of the event in question, mentioning the incident often during subsequent election campaigns in 2019^[18][19] and 2022.^[20]

2019 election[]

Hodgins-May nominated for the division of Macnamara at the 2019 election which replaced Melbourne Ports due to a redistribution. The sitting member, Danby decided not to recontest, and after redistribution his lead from the last election was estimated at just 77 votes.^[21]

While campaigning for the election, Hodgins-May secured the endorsement of Gillian Triggs, who was the Australian human rights commissioner until 2017. The endorsement was a personal one and not an endorsement of the party as a whole.^[19] Triggs came under fire from both the Liberal and Labor parties for giving the endorsement.^[22]

During the campaign, Hodgins-May was attacked by Jewish groups because one of her staff tweeted something critical of Israel during fighting in the Gaza Strip. Hodgins-May was critical of the staffer, but refused to remove him from the campaign.^[19]

While Hodgins-May increased her vote marginally, the new Labor candidate, Josh Burns increased his vote significantly at the expense of the Liberal party and won the seat comfortably.^[23]

2022 election[]

Hodgins-May was again preselected for the Greens in the seat of Macnamara for the 2022 election.^[20] It was one of the key seats that the Greens were targeting in their hopes of increasing their representation in parliament.^[24]

A draft redistribution would have removed the most Jewish areas of the electorate around Caulfield which would have been very favorable to a Greens victory,^[25] but the final boundaries did not vary much from the 2019 maps.

Political positions[]

Hodgins-May has taken a strong stance on climate policy, and has called on successive governments to do more. She has argued that government inaction has caused Australia to become a global pariah when it came to issues around the environment.^[26]

She is also an advocate for Australia increasing its foreign aid budget and to focus more on international development.^[4]

Personal life[]

Hodgins-May lives in Elwood with her partner Ogy and has a son, Otis.^[27]

Hodgins-May's mother died in the 2009 Samoan tsunami while holidaying at a local resort.^[28]

Her father was killed in a traffic accident in 2017. Her father, Rod May, was on a motorbike, while the driver of the car had methamphetamines in his system and was disqualified from driving at the time.^[2]

References[]