‘The major parties have taken their electorates for granted for a long time’

Nomi Kaltmann says her success in leading the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance gave her the confidence to stand as a teal candidate in Caulfield.

Nomi Kaltmann reveals a gift for understatement when asked to describe her life. “I am quite busy,” Kaltmann, 30, the Melbourne lawyer, feminist, journalist, Orthodox, mother of three told The Jewish Independent.  “I have three children under the age of five. I work - I have a job as a legal interpretation analyst, I run the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA Australia).”

She forgot to say she is also a grant writer for charities, a contributor to the US Jewish magazine Tablet, and The Jewish Independent.

Kaltmann has announced she will stand as a teal independent candidate for the seat of Caulfield in the Victorian state election in November.

With everything else in her life, was it hard to decide whether to run?

“Agonising!” she responds. Kaltmann wasn’t looking to run, though she had been invited before: “I’d had previous opportunities wherein the idea had been floated by the Labor Party but each time I turned it down.”

She formally resigned from the ALP earlier this month, having previously worked as an adviser to now federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and former state minister Marsha Thomson.

The Caulfield electorate is a marginal seat, held by deputy Liberal leader David Southwick by just 0.1% and is viewed as crucial to the Coalition if it is to have any chance of winning government. The ALP candidate is Lior Harel. Both Southwick and Harel are also Jewish.

Kaltmann was approached by a group of locals, many of whom were involved in Zoe Daniel’s successful Voices for Goldstein federal campaign.