The federal election may be on Saturday, but Cunningham MP Sharon Bird has been out of work for weeks.
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Not that most of the voters realise it. She's been out at pre-poll booths, handing out how to votes for her former staffer Alison Byrnes.
And every day she's had to deal with people asking if their tax dollars are paying for her to be there.
The short answer is - no. The longer answer is that, once the Prime Minister calls an election, all the seats in parliament are declared vacant.
Because you can't run for a seat if someone is already sitting in it.
For the retiring Bird, that means she ceased to be an MP in early April, choosing to step down to spend more time with her family and no time in Canberra.
"I think you have to know yourself and be honest with yourself in this job," Ms Bird said.
What's lovely is Liberal people have come to me on on the way to vote in this election and said 'thanks for what you've done for us, Sharon. We can't vote for you but thanks for what you did'.
- Sharon Bird
"It's very easy to feel that 'I'm so important to this role that it has to be me'. I knew I'd reached a point where I really in my heart wanted to put my family first."
That doesn't mean she's stopped following what is happening politically; she is still checking out the media, still analysing what it means.
"I don't think I'll ever stop being engaged and fascinated about politics and how it can be really maximised for our local area," she said.
"I'll probably be that annoying retired MP who always rings the office saying 'you should be doing this or doing that'."
Ms Bird comes from generations of mining stock - several forebears died in the 1902 Mt Kembla mining disaster.
She ended up being the first in her family to go to university, studying history and English literature with a view to becoming a teacher.
But Ms Bird was always a member of the Labor party - her mum said her first political act was letterboxing for Bob Harrison's Shellharbour council campaign. She eventually would end up on that very same council between 1991 and 1995.
In 2002 she was chosen to represent Labor in the Cunningham by-election, won by the Greens - still the only time Labor had lost the seat.
Ms Bird said she did take the loss personally, feeling she'd let people down.
"It is a little bit tough and you do walk around for a little while thinking everybody hates me," she said.
"But you do soon get over that. What you need to do is stop thinking about it and start engaging with what do you need to do to win back that trust."
Ms Bird said the party went away and learned the lessons of 2002, coming back two years later to win the seat.
She said that campaign was different as it was part of an election, where the focus is on the party leaders, rather than a by-election, where it's more of a local focus.
After 2004, Ms Bird would win five more elections before retiring. Despite her building up what is a very safe Labor seat with a 13 per cent margin, Ms Bird said she never took it for granted that she would be re-elected.
"You just can't," she said. "I just think people sniff out if you're being arrogant."
What helped her re-election efforts was her "superpower" - having staff who cared about people.
"This is a sort of thing you don't cut a ribbon on so it doesn't get any publicity, but someone rings the office in tears because their mother can't get a home care package, and the daughter is looking to give up a job because they can't get in someone in to look after mum," she said.
"You put in staff who care and follow it up and most the time when we can get them a resolution, that's what the community respects at the end of the day."
That's regardless of which side of the political fence they sit on, it seems
"What's lovely is Liberal people have come to me on on the way to vote in this election and said 'thanks for what you've done for us, Sharon. We can't vote for you but thanks for what you did'.
"Generally speaking, in this region people enjoy the democratic process. They love a good debate but they're not personal or nasty."
She was pleased another female was running in the seat for Labor.
"Having been the first woman in the seat it's good to see that the party can foster and invest in and bring another woman forward.
"That it's not case of 'we've had the woman, tick, now let's move on'."
Making parliament a better place for women
As the first female MP for Cunningham Sharon Bird said she hadn't had first-hand experience of the sexism and poor treatment of women that has surfaced in Canberra recently.
Ms Bird has retired from federal politics after 18 years and, while she admits the game has gotten a bit more "vicious" these days, she said she hadn't experienced that level of sexism in parliament.
Still, she praised the report from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkings into Commonwealth parliamentary workspaces.
"I don't want young women to look at the career in public service that I've had and think 'I don't want to be in that environment'," Ms Bird said.
She felt government needed to act on the recommendations in the report to ensure a safe workplace.
"That's so that young women will aspire with confidence that they can go into parliament - not just as elected representatives, but as staff, as people working the library and researchers or in committees - that that is going to be a workplace that you can achieve in and not feel that there's any gender bias or sexual harassment or indeed danger to your well-being."
While she hadn't experienced sexist behaviour, Ms Bird found she tended to second guess herself more than her male colleagues.
"It's that self-doubt - I had to be really conscious to not allow myself to do that," she said.
"You find yourself thinking 'I've got this idea, but is it really good enough to put forward?' whereas all the blokes would go, 'yeah, I'll just get in there and give my opinion'."
However, she said women did bring a different - often more successful - way of working.
"I think with women we sometimes try to be a bit more collegiate," she said.
"Sometimes that's viewed as a weakness but I think that's actually a strength."
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