25 years since Tamara Tonite's wild Brisbane mayoral bid

It’s been 25 years since Brisbane drag artist Tamara Tonite ran as a candidate in the Brisbane mayoral elections.

Getting involved in politics was not what Tamara Tonite had planned.

She was successfully hosting her own show on community channel Briz31, which had built up quite a cult following.

However, one fateful morning, something inspired her to take on her famous campaign.

“I was in bed with my partner, and a story came up on ABC radio news about a candidate. They didn’t know if they were a man or a woman,” she tells me.

“My partner said, ‘Well, that could be you!’ and I rang the show and said it was me without telling them my name.”

Tamara would spend the next week deciding whether this flippant idea would be something she’d actually do.

A week later, she registered as a candidate and held a press conference in front of Brisbane City Hall.

“I’ve never had that many cameras and microphones in front of me, and it was really quite daunting,” she says.

“Then a journalist asked me about leaving my wife and children behind to do this, and they all leaned forward to hear my answer.

“I told them I’d never been married and that he had his research wrong, turns out he’d looked up the wrong guy!”

Her campaign

At first, Tamara entered as a bit of fun, but that changed not too far into her campaign.

“People started calling me with real problems and asking if I could do something about it,” she recalls.

“So I thought if they were taking it seriously, so should I.”

Her candidacy brought a lot of attention from the media across both national and state print, radio and television outlets.

With her cult following and a platform of “If you catch me lying, I’ll resign,” she started gaining momentum in the campaign.

She focused on some issues like pensioner bus fares and “cleaning up the streets,” as she told Q Capital Weekly at the time.

There were some unfortunate comments made by sitting Lord Mayor Jim Soorley, stating that Tamara didn’t know “If she was Arthur or Martha.”

However, Tamara flipped the narrative and used the media circus as a way to build her profile as she told the Australian Financial Review.

“I guess I get media attention largely because of the freak aspect of being a drag queen,” she said in an interview.

“But I’m treating this as a serious job.”

The results

On the day of the election, Tamara hadn’t planned on going into City Hall for the results, but was called in as she was doing better than expected.

All up, she received 13,000 votes, which was around 3 per cent of the total to finish in third place and in front of all other independents.

While at City Hall she was asked if she’d give Jim Soorley a kiss if he won.

“I said I can’t possibly do that but when he won he came past me and I couldn’t resist and planted a kiss on his right cheek,” she recalls with a laugh.

Not the end of her political career

Tamara could have easily enjoyed the attention and platform the campaign gave her.

However, she was back a year later with an even bigger opponent – the Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie.

Tamara ran in his seat of Brisbane Central on a platform of advocating human rights, assisted euthanasia and access to fertility treatments for all women.

It was something he was apparently not too happy about.

“I think Peter used to laugh at Jim for going up against me, but he was resentful of me going up against him,” Tamara says.

“On polling day, wearing my shirt in New Farm, he walked towards me, but when he saw my shirt and who I was, he walked away and wouldn’t shake my hand.”

Tamara polled 4.2 per cent of the vote, more than all the independents in her seat combined.

The Greens were only marginally in front of her on 6.9 per cent.