Lalitha Chelliah, Socialist Alliance candidate for the Senate, Victoria

I originally come from what is now a developing nation. Malaysia introduced me to racism in school, where three races were pitched against each other and race was used to politically organise people into voting blocks.

Travelling to Britain to do a course in nursing further opened my eyes to racism. I was born into an Indian family, within which boys were preferred to girls, so naturally I grew up as a feminist. I worked in Malaysia for about five years and experienced further humiliation as an Indian with dark skin. It is this spirit of fighting for rights that eventually led me to join a left political group in Australia.

I worked in India on an HIV prevention project and conducted a survey of child prostitution in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. This was later presented to the National Indian Women's Conference.

As an industrial organiser with the nurses' union I was involved in leading one of the biggest nurses' strikes in the history of Victoria in 1986.

Currently I work as a nurse, dealing with vulnerable families in the postnatal period, in the city of Moreland in Victoria. I am also a mother of two children and firmly believe in free child care and services to support families including free education and free health care.

From Green Left Weekly, August 4, 2004.

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From GLW issue 592