Dai Le knows how differently life could have turned out for her. She could easily have failed in her long-shot bid to snatch one of Labor’s safest seats by defeating star frontbencher Kristina Keneally at the May federal election. She could easily have never made it to Australia as a refugee fleeing communist Vietnam. She could easily not even be alive today.
“I had to push through the fear barrier on a daily basis, thinking yes you can do this even when people are saying it’s impossible,” she says. “I was campaigning from 7 in the morning until 8.30 at night. But there was no moment of tiredness, the adrenaline drove me.” At Le’s request we meet for lunch at Pho 54, an unassuming noodle restaurant in the heart of Cabramatta. The menu is written entirely in Vietnamese, so I ask Le to choose the dishes for us: she orders two bowls of beef noodle pho. It’s the perfect meal for a frosty Sydney day. During our lunch several diners approach Le to offer congratulations on her win, reflecting her celebrity status in the local area.The weeks after election day have been a hectic blur, Le says.
A sign on one side of the plaza’s grand gateway proclaims “democracy” while another celebrates “liberty”.Le fled South Vietnam when she was aged seven alongside her mother and two younger sisters. Hoping to make it to freedom in the United States, they lived in refugee camps in the Philippines and Hong Kong where Le worked in a factory to help the family survive. Resettled in Australia under the Fraser government’s generous refugee policy, they found a home in Bossley Park in Sydney’s west.