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AUSTRALIA, REMEMBER THIS NAME: MARYKA GROENEWALD One week before polling day, she was wheeled into emergency surgery. Appendicitis. Doctors said four to six weeks' recovery. She was back on the phones the next week. And she won. You might not know her yet. You will. Maryka Groenewald sits on the crossbench in the WA Legislative Council. One seat. No major party behind her. And she's outworking half that chamber. Born in Johannesburg. Came to WA at 13 with her family and her faith. Studied Community Development and Politics at Murdoch, then spent years in the places most politicians never set foot, foster care, prisons, running restorative justice programs, coordinating the Angel Tree project so kids with a parent locked up still got a Christmas present, advocating for women escaping trafficking. She didn't read about broken communities in a briefing paper. She worked in them. Then she ran for office. And lost. Federal 2016. State 2017. State 2021. Federal 2022. Four straight defeats over nine years. Most people walk away. She didn't. In 2025 she won, the first Australian Christians member ever elected to any parliament in the country. And from day one she's gone after one thing: accountability. Her biggest fight: the gender clinic at Perth Children's Hospital. For months she pushed the Cook government to release its clinical Model of Care. They stonewalled. She used the one crossbench motion she gets a year to force it into the open — and the documents landed. What she put on the parliamentary record, straight from the government's own answers: 202 minors referred to the clinic in a single year. 69 on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. The youngest referred was 11. The youngest ever treated was 10. A service costing, $2.5 million a year whose own model runs from blockers, to hormones, to mastectomy referrals for teenagers. When the government refused her permission to table the evidence, including the UK's Cass Review — she used standing order 59(2) to force it onto the table anyway. And here's the part that matters: even the Greens leader, no ally of hers, said on the record he understood her concerns about transparency. She got an opponent to back the principle. She doesn't care what colour jersey you wear. If you're failing the people of this state, she'll say it to your face in Parliament — and back it with the government's own numbers. She also introduced the Born Equal Care and Protection Bill, the first of its kind in WA, so a baby born alive after a termination gets the same care as any other newborn. But she doesn't want to be known only as a fighter. In her first speech to Parliament she said she wants to be "a bridge builder", to bring "hope, truth and joy, with some grit and courage of course" into how she does politics. I've done the research on this woman. She's not a career politician who fell into a safe seat. She came up through the trenches, and she brought every bit of it into Parliament with her. Her motto: "Walk the walk, do the work." One seat. No machine. Making more noise than parties with ten times the resources. If we had thirty more like her, this country would look different. Share this if you reckon we need politicians who actually stand for something. And if your local member's gone missing, tag them and ask where they've been. What's your thoughts…? Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺