Hannah Ferguson, 28, is no regular political candidate.
She is the daughter of a truck driver and a small-businesswoman, a law graduate who was the first in her family to attend university, and a former Electrical Trades Union officer who now runs her own successful independent media business.
She is a Gen Z firecracker beloved of young progressive women, who comes to politics with a built-in constituency comprising her sizeable, multi-platform social media following.
She talks passionately and fast. She is tall and telegenic.
In other words, she is exactly the kind of candidate the Labor Party must dream of recruiting.
Instead, Ferguson has announced she will run as an independent against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in his inner-west seat of Grayndler.
He has held the safe Labor seat since 1996. This, Ferguson likes to note, was two years before she was born.
“I think he’s changed,” Ferguson says of her political rival. “The things he was saying then, I think, align more closely with my views now … He has become a cog in a machine that is failing Australia.”
Ferguson was born in Marrickville and now lives in the electorate with her partner, a lawyer.
Last year, during a post-election National Press Club address, she recounted forming an ambition, aged 10, to become prime minister, after a thrilling school trip to the Australian Electoral Commission in Canberra.
During that speech Ferguson announced she would run for the Senate in NSW but, following recent conversations with fellow community members about their frustrations with their local member, she adjusted her sights to the House of Representatives.
She announced her candidacy on Instagram on Monday, telling followers that “the people of Grayndler deserve better than a representative who chooses to prioritise the gambling lobby, fossil fuel industry and donors who pay to play”.
She has narrowed her probable campaign platform to three main issues: a tax on gas exports, gambling reform, and what she describes as the genocide in Gaza.
“I don’t want to play politics here and I don’t want to attack [Albanese] personally. It’s about being disappointed as a constituent,” Ferguson says.
“Probably behind closed doors he has different values and views, but right now he is answering to vested interests … Political parties are broken.”
Albanese holds Grayndler on a 17.3 per cent margin, having beaten the Greens’ Hannah Thomas at the 2025 election, with 66.9 per cent of the preference count.
But Ferguson already has what most first-time political candidates would trade a kidney for – a media profile, not to mention control over her own media outlets.
In 2020 she co-founded Cheek Media, which she describes as “an independent news platform with a progressive, women’s lens”.
It has a reach of about 3 million per month, she says.
The Cheek stable encompasses a Substack with 27,000 subscribers (4000 of them paid), an Instagram with 252,000 followers, and a podcast, Big Small Talk, with 64,000 followers.
Albanese himself has sought to leverage this following – Ferguson was among a group of online “influencers” and commentators asked into the budget lock-up alongside journalists – and he has appeared as an interview guest on her podcast.
Ferguson’s personal Instagram has an additional 137,000 followers. She canvassed them when deciding to run, which netted her a database of potential volunteers – the kind of grassroots support it might take a political party years to build.
“I have received lots of emails from people who want to donate but that’s not on my mind right now,” she says.
“I want to be really transparent about who I receive my donations from.”
Ferguson hasn’t formed a policy platform yet, nor has she taken any donations, but the influence of money in politics is one of her themes.
She points to the private, unofficial Labor fundraising dinner Albanese attended last week, hosted by Felix Ming Ze Lee, whose father was the subject of an ATO investigation amid allegations of being a tax cheat.
“This kind of pay-for-play, cash for access in politics is fundamentally wrong about our political system,” Ferguson says.
“It’s disgusting. Not enough Australians know how rampant it is.”
As for Gaza, she says it is a huge issue in Grayndler, which is one of the most progressive electorates in the country.
“My view is strong, and known. There is a lack of willingness in the Labor government to name what is happening here,” she says.
“We know it is a genocide against Palestinians. The fact that our government cannot even name that because of the powerful lobby groups, is a departure from the values that the Labor Party claims to stand for.”
Ferguson lists her political heroes as former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and independent senator David Pocock.
She also says that “I am the biggest fan of [New York mayor] Zohran Mamdani”.
Ferguson blames the failings of mainstream politics for the surge in support for the right-wing populism of One Nation.
But she rejects the label of left-wing populism for herself.
“When we are talking about left-wing populism and labels, I think it’s unfair because this is about people and fairness,” she says.
“I am here to listen to the community and amplify their concerns.”
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