Chris Schmidt comes from mostly a sales and marketing background with 20 plus years experience in this area.
For the last ten years, he has been a full-time refugee and human rights activist just doing contract self-employment in the marketing area to keep the bills paid. For the last three years he cared full-time for his sister and mother, until his sister died twelve months later. Now, he still continues to care full-time for his mother as well as doing advocacy work.
In 2022, Chris ran for federal parliament for a socially progressive party that became known as TNL. He ran in the seat of Sturt, which swings around Adelaide from the north-east around to the south to include parts of Unley City. This party has refugee friendly policies, campaigning for an end to mandatory detention and offshore processing in the overseas detention facilities.
Chris is passionate on all areas of human rights. He believes the little people matter. It is important to Chris that the environmental crisis is prioritised, Achieving net zero by 2030 is not good enough. However, environmental change is pointless unless it cares about social justice, including improving our refugee intake and our policies on handling refugees. He can see how this can be done in a way that limits Australia's population growth to zero while protecting the rights of refugees.
Chris will run for TNL again in 2025 and is already gearing up already for a long and hard fought campaign. Human rights, justice for refugees and social change will always remain at his heart.
Chris truly cares. He is passionate about creating a society where justice prevails and all - refugee, migrants, First Nation, and white Australians - live together in peace and harmony, with the rights of all respected. This should be a society where everyone has enough and has their basic needs met.