Sotiria Stratis was at the Sex Party’s campaign launch during the week when she was inspired to get on Twitter.
I try to teach my kids there’s no use moping about something; you’ve got to do something about it.
“I wrote, ‘keep the bastards honest – fkn oath!” she said.
Ms Stratis, the Sex Party candidate for the seat of Bayswater, said she didn’t think anything of it, but the incident turned up in The Age the next day.
She says the Sex Party is good at attracting attention.
“It’s a name that gets us noticed and it sticks in people’s minds,” she says, but adds the party has serious policies that will appeal to her electorate.
The seat of Bayswater, in Melbourne’s East, is held by Heidi Victoria for the Liberal Party with a margin of 2.6 per cent. It’s the first time the Sex Party will be on the ballot paper there, and they’ve drawn the top spot.
Ms Stratis, who has lived locally for around 30 years, says the growth area needs better public transport.
“When Mum and I moved here, they were going to fix the number 75 tram line,” she says.“Thirty years on – we’re still waiting.”
She tells Neos Kosmos she went to school in Wantirna and worked in local bank branches before taking time off to become a mother.
Now that her four children are older, she says she has time to pursue politics. She joined the Sex Party two years ago, after seeing a stall at Sexpo.
“At first I thought, ‘what are these people on about’,” she says. But she says she was attracted to the party for their libertarian stance and a progressive idea of families.
“Nowadays, what is a family anyway?” she asks. “Some people have a yia yia and a papou and 600 cousins running around,” Ms Stratis, who grew up with a single mother, says.
She says her children, aged between 7 and 16 years old, are “pretty cool” with their mother’s campaign for the sex party.
“I’m not sure they understand it fully, but they want to get involved,” she says.
“I try to teach my kids there’s no use moping about something; you’ve got to do something about it.”