Meet Claire Boardman

The members of Voices of Mornington Peninsula are thrilled to announce that we have endorsed Claire Boardman to represent us as an independent candidate for the Flinders electorate in 2022!

Claire is a Mornington Peninsula local, living with her husband and children in Mount Martha, the sixth generation to live in the Boardman family's home.

She has dedicated her working life to issues related to social justice and disadvantage, policy, and advocacy.  With degrees in Nursing and Public Health Claire has travelled a less than ordinary road in her professional career in international and rural and remote settings across Australia.  She has experienced and witnessed firsthand the effects of climate change, most notably on the remote islands of the Torres Strait in Far North Queensland where she was privileged to be working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities in public health.

In her public health capacity, Claire has worked in complex disaster and developing nation settings and has an enduring interest in healthcare economics, developing nation and Indigenous health issues all of which are closely tied to climate change and impacts on human health.  She has held a number of State and National appointments including President of the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control (ACIPC) and was a member of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) on Antimicrobial Resistance.  She has held academic positions at Melbourne, Monash and Griffith universities and was elected as a Board Member to the CRANAplus Board of Directors, the peak professional body for the remote and isolated health workforce in 2017. 

Claire is an Executive Director and Deputy Public Health Commander in the Victorian Government's Department of Health and Human Service's COVID response leading a large team to scale and respond to demands across the whole of Victorian Government and community and, to adapt to the ramifications of changing variants, science and community needs.  She will relinquish these positions in the lead up to the 2022 Federal election.

Gender equity is a key issue for Claire who believes strong, independent, and resilient women are needed across all levels of government.  In 2013 she won one of four prestigious Council of Executive Women scholarships to attend the Australian Graduate School of Management Women in Leadership course at UNSW which has assisted her in developing her leadership skills and executive presence with a focus on fairness and equity.

Claire is committed to an ethical, fair and transparent approach to politics and approaches her work and interactions with others with humility and kindness, peppered with a dash of humour.  She believes the critical link between climate and human and animal health can no longer be ignored as evidenced by the global COVID pandemic which has taught us valuable lessons in human behaviour. 

Claire feels honoured and humbled to be selected by the Voices of Mornington Peninsula as the preferred candidate to represent the electorate of Flinders as an Independent in the 2022 federal election.