It’s On – 3 May 2025: To Everyone Who Cares, Let’s Turn Our Angst Into Action
Channel Your Sensitivity Into Strength: Join the Fight for a Better Australia by 3 May 2025
If you’re reading this and feeling overwhelmed, anxious, maybe even helpless about where the world’s at and where it is heading—I get you. I’m Sue Barrett, and as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), I feel it too. The weight of the world presses on me 24/7—the climate crisis, the inequality, the endless noise of division, the threat of authoritarianism, the unjust wars, just to name a few. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? But here’s what I’ve learnt: that same sensitivity, the one that keeps us awake at night, is also our superpower. Over my lifetime, I’ve found ways to channel it into positive action—action that’s literally changing the world around us. And I’m inviting you to join me and many thousands of people who want a better world.
Five Years of Saying Yes
Let me take you back to Christmas 2019-2020. Australia was literally going up in flames and Scomo (our former PM) was in Hawaii and wouldn’t hold a hose. I was on my couch, in the middle of what felt like my millionth existential crisis, wondering yet again: Where was the action? Where was the accountability and leadership on climate, fairness, and a better future for all of us?
Then my friend Denise from North Sydney called. She was feeling the same frustration, and then she said something that shifted everything: ‘Sue, you have to do in Goldstein what Cathy McGowan did in Indi and Zali Steggall did in Warringah.’ And I remember saying, ‘Sure, how do we do that?’
Fast forward to late 2020. A small group of us—ordinary Goldstein locals, not political insiders—came together. We were done waiting for someone else to fix things. That’s how Voices of Goldstein was born: a spark of frustration and hope, fuelled by a simple truth—someone had to do something. With every conversation, every new face, we realised we weren’t alone. We found our voice. Then we found Zoe Daniel—someone with integrity, empathy, and smarts who reflected what we craved in a leader. I asked her to run for Goldstein, and eventually she said YES. Then she turned the tables on me asking me to be her campaign manager, and I said YES too. Together with 1,500 Team Zoe volunteers, we took on a huge challenge and in 2022, we did something extraordinary: we won the blue ribbon seat of Goldstein, powered by community, not party machines.
But that was just one element of what has turned into a huge five years for me and many others. In 2021, I helped co-found and launch March4Justice— and in just 14 days from an idea to the event, we rallied 110,000 of us in 200 locations around Australia marching for equality and an end to gendered violence on 15 March 2021. Then in 2023, Zoe asked me to lead a team of 500 volunteers for the Goldstein for Yes campaign – and again, we were successful. And now, in 2025, I’m an active volunteer on Zoe Daniel’s re-election campaign.
The majors think we’re a fluke, a flash in the pan. They’re wrong. We’re not going away. We’re not going back to old-school politics. This isn’t a moment—it’s a movement.
Prepared by a Lifetime of Sensitivity
I didn’t stumble into this blindly. As an HSP, I’ve been preparing my whole life—starting with my childhood. Growing up, the world terrified me—its harshness, its unpredictability, its insensitivity. But my parents didn’t let me shrink from it. They encouraged me to explore—through sport, art, craft, music, academics, anything that piqued my curiosity. Step by step, I ventured out, and the world became less frightening. That curiosity turned into courage, a courage I’ve carried into adulthood to face the big stuff head-on.
What I have come to realise is that sensitivity isn’t just feeling too much; it’s seeing too much.
It’s noticing the cracks others ignore, feeling the stakes others shrug off. For decades, I’ve led with that curiosity and courage—first in running my own business for 30 years, where I weave emotional intelligence and business savviness into human-centred strategy and action, then in activism, where I’ve turned angst into action and helplessness into hope.
Margaret Mead said it best: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I’ve lived and still live this truth. In Goldstein, a handful of us hooked into a political revolution, inspired by trailblazer Cathy McGowan and Voices of Indi, who flipped a blue-ribbon Liberal Party seat in 2013 and kept it independent ever since, with Helen Haines now holding it strong. Then we saw another spark in 2019, when Zali Steggall took Warringah from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Liberal grip. The fuse was lit—and in 2022, six more community independents joined the crossbench, including Zoe. Now, in the 2025 federal election, 7 incumbents and 38 community independent candidates in total are running across every state and territory in Australia, backed by tens of thousands of volunteers mobilised to drive better outcomes for our nation.
Refere to: Not Shit Candidates list
You’re Invited: May 3, 2025 Is Our Moment
To every sensitive soul out there who gives a damn about our future—listen up. I know how heavy it feels. The dread, the exhaustion, the fear that nothing will change. The negativity, lies, and propaganda spewed by the LNP and others can drown us if we let it. But we can’t be overwhelmed by it. We have to get out on the ground in huge numbers—human to human—listening to people, having meaningful conversations that matter.
That’s what we do. That’s how we win.
In Goldstein, we’re rallying behind Zoe Daniel’s 2025 campaign message: Independence IS the Difference because Independence Acts. Independence Fights. Independence Works.
It’s not just a slogan—it’s the truth. Zoe works for us. She’s our voice in parliament, delivering what party hacks never could. It’s what the other community independents do for their electorates.
On May 3, 2025, we have a shot at history. An expanded crossbench of talented, committed community independents is within reach—a parliament that listens, that fights for us, that reflects us. This isn’t about me; it’s about us. I’m inviting you—yes, you—to join this movement.
Get out and volunteer for Zoe and for the other Community Independents in or near your electorates.
Knock on doors.
Make calls.
Talk to your neighbours.
Listen to people and share what matters.
“We’re not going away,” I told 800 people at a Zoe Daniel Town Hall last November. “We’re not going back. This isn’t a moment—it’s a movement.” Tens of thousands are already in—ordinary people like us, sensitive people like us, who’ve had enough. Together, we can tip the scales.
It’s On—Let’s Go
You don’t need to be loud or fearless. You just need to care—deeply, fiercely—and act. I’ve turned my sensitivity into a force for good, and you can too.
One step, one conversation, one spark—that’s how we start.
May 3, 2025, is our chance to make history. Let’s channel our overwhelm into action, our anxiety into hope, our helplessness into power. It’s on.
Let’s go. Together, we’ll build a world worth feeling deeply and fighting for.
Onward We Press
Resources
5 Feb 2025: A great link to Zoe Daniel’s National Press Club speech on YouTube. Feel free to give it a like and comment if that’s your style.
Vote Community Independents: https://linktr.ee/CommunityIndependentsAU
The Smarter Choice: Why Community Independents are the change we need in Australian Politics
The Movement we helped build: From Ian Macphee to Zoe Daniel
Websites