Susan Davies

Who is Susan Davies?

Susan Margaret Davies is a former Australian politician.

She was born in Mirboo North, Victoria, to parents Richard Llewellyn and Jean Margaret Davies. She attended Leongatha High School and Watsonia High School in 1971, when she completed her Higher School Certificate. She received a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education in 1976 from Latrobe University. She subsequently became a secondary school teacher, and began farming in addition to this in 1989.

Davies joined the Australian Labor Party in 1993, as part of the rural protest against Kennett government funding and service cuts, and was the Labor candidate for Gippsland West in the 1996 Victorian state election. Sitting Liberal MP Alan Brown resigned less than a year after the state election, precipitating a by-election. When the Labor party declined to stand a candidate for the very safe Liberal seat, Davies resigned from the Labor Party and contested the by-election as an independent, emerging victorious.

She retained her seat in the 1999 state election, and held the balance of power with two other rural Independents when a significant, mostly rural, and very anti-Kennett-government swing led to a hung parliament.