Known as “Jonno”, Senator Jonathon Duniam has been in politics for his entire working life. To many, his announcement of an impending retirement from politics came as a shock.
He made the announcement on June 14th that he would not be contesting the next election and retiring from politics.
His official retirement date is still up in the air and contingent on some important policy work but it will be before the end of the 2026.
Senator Duniam made the leap from being a staffer behind the scenes, to becoming a Senator. He describes politics like a vortex.
“Particularly the Liberal party,” he says.
“The average age of membership is well north of where I am now, so when I joined the party at 18 years of age there was a huge amount of excitement about someone who was under the age of 50 joining the party and that then translated into an interest in having me join as a political staffer.
“So I did that for 15-16 years and then of course in 2016 put my hand up for election.”
His reasoning at the time – as a staffer you provide advice and help prepare things and try and support getting to an outcome, but it’s up to the elected member in the end.
“I thought well I can sit on the sidelines and gripe about how well or not so well the person I work for might have gone, or I can choose to have a crack myself,” he said.
“I do genuinely believe in what I’ve done over the last decade and everything prior to that.
“You wouldn’t do this and get out of bed every day and take the job seriously and fight hard to do it if you didn’t believe in what you were doing.
“So to that end I wanted to have a crack and I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to make sure that for the three boys [his sons] I’ve mentioned ad nauseam in my media since my announcement that there was something I could point to and say I did this for you.
“And that’s what this was about, actually making a difference as cliche as that sounds.”
Jonno Duniam is currently the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration – when asked some of his biggest achievements during his political career, he was drawn to retaining funding for the Mersey Community Hospital in Latrobe.
“There was a proposal at the time from Malcolm Turnbull to close both the North West Regional and the Mersey Community Hospitals and set up a brand new hospital in Ulverstone,” he said.
“I thought that public infrastructure projects never go well, are never on budget or time and so we might have this grand plan to do that but then you have the north west without appropriate healthcare services for god knows how long.”
He says it was his job to fight for that – ending up with around 750 million dollars for healthcare, at the time the largest financial transaction between the Commonwealth and the state of Tasmania, as well as saving a vital piece of health infrastructure.
“There are a lot of examples like that, like saving funding for our emergency food programs in Tasmania,” he said.
“Again a government of which I was a part of, had the bright idea of cutting funding to all of the local groups that provided food relief to households that were doing it tough.
“Our government cut the funding to those groups and gave it to a big interstate organisation which had no footprint here which would have meant there was no volunteer network.
“I was able to fight for funding to be saved there.”
Other highlights for Jonno Duniam was ensuring GST for the Macquarie Point Stadium was preserved, and standing up for both the salmon and forestry industries in Tasmania.
After a decade in the Senate chamber – and several more years as a political staffer – when Federal Parliament returns in 2027 Jonno Duniam won’t be joining them.
He says there’s never a good time to leave politics – saying he is enjoying what he’s doing but there are things that drove him to make the decision.
One – his family.
“It has been 25 years of versions of what I’ve been doing,” he said.
“When you’re a staffer as well, particularly a Canberra staffer you’re flying in and out just like the person you’re working for and that is 20-25 weeks of the year in Canberra in total, plus weeks on top of that travelling interstate.
“The week before last I was out 4 of 5 weeknights so you’re not home anyway, and that takes a toll.
“My boys are are 17, 15 and 11 and they’ve borne the brunt of that. They’re very understanding especially for the 11 year old he’s known nothing else.
“I need to give them more than I have been giving them and that’s the biggest reason for my decision.”
The second he says is for his party to have renewal.
“I think people who are there for extended periods of time… I tend to think there’s a risk of becoming institutionalised, that you’re more focused on hanging onto the job than doing the job for the people you represent,” he said.
“Renewal is a good thing and I’m pleased to be able to be providing that for my party.”
Pre-selected recently for the second spot on the Liberal Senate ticket is former state MP Sarah Courtney – who will as a result fill the Senator’s casual vacancy.
Once he has retired from politics he’s confirmed he won’t run for state or local politics.
As well as spending time closer to home and with family, the Senator says he’s looking forward to having more time just simply to think.
“One of the big regrets I have out of politics and my involvement is you often don’t have time to think, you have to move quite quickly that’s just the nature of politics,” he said.
“I don’t think it was like that 20-30 years ago I think members of Parliament, Ministers in particular had more time to think.
“The news cycle now is such that I had my first tv interview at 7.30 this morning so you have to be across whatever the news of the day is – you don’t have hours to sit there… you have to be able to present a response in short form very quickly.
“I’ll still be involved in my party, in the community. I will be having input, there’s a role for the general population to be involved, that’s what I’ll be doing and and encouraging others to do the same.”
You can hear more on this story in today’s episode of iHeart Tassie: “Long-term Liberals Look to Life Beyond Politics”
