‘Things that are baked in do change, but they don’t change quickly’: MP Monique Ryan

For independent MP Monique Ryan, unseating federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the May election was an incredible feeling.

“It was the most fun night of my life,” she says of becoming the member for Kooyong, a blue-ribbon Victorian seat that had always been Liberal. “There’s no doubt about it.” And yet in the wash-up - assessing the three-month election campaign and the three months since her win – she’s also come to see politics as a “very brutal blood sport”, filled with emotional and interpersonal challenges she didn’t see coming. As she heads to Canberra, she freely admits she’s on a very steep learning curve.

“It’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before,” Ryan says on the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks. “I’ve never put myself out in a public forum where people are passing judgment on what I say, what I think and how I look – on a daily basis.”

Ryan discusses her former life as a paediatrician, the election campaign and her hopes for the next three years with Good Weekend senior writer Melissa Fyfe, who penned today’s magazine cover story about Ryan.

“Things that are baked in and embedded do change, but they don’t change quickly. And they only change with the passage of time – and with people’s behaviour changing,” Ryan says. “You can’t tell people, ‘You’re going to behave like this’ – you have to provide an example. And you have to be the change that you want to see.”

Good Weekend Talks is a “a magazine for your ears” in which we take a deep dive into the definitive stories of the day, through nuanced conversations between the best journalists from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and the people captivating Australians right now.

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