Mix 92.7 Sunshine Coast breakfast presenter Caroline Hutchinson announced on her breakfast show this morning that she will contest for the local federal seat of Fisher in the upcoming election. She will stand as an independent.

The incumbent, long serving Liberal MP Peter Slipper holds the seat with a margin of 12%. In response to the challenge from Hutchinson, Slipper says he has not taken his safe Liberal for granted and he welcomed news of a challenge from the high profile radio personality.

Hutchinson said she first toyed with the idea of joining the ALP but then decided to go it alone because her views fall mid-way between the two major parties, “a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n roll” as she put it when quoted in local newspaper The Sunshine Coast Daily.

On her ‘VoteCaroline’ website Hutchison’s biography gives a ptted history of the radio candidate:

Caroline Hutchinson was born in Margaret River, Western Australia, on August 12 1968. She is married to John and they have three children… Caroline was educated at Margaret River Primary and High School, and at
St Brigid’s Ladies College Lesmurdie. She completed a radio degree at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney in 1988, then returned to Western Australia and began a career as a journalist with the Golden West Network.

For the next eight years Caroline worked for GWN and WIN Television, in Shepparton Victoria, before following her husband John (also an AFTRS graduate) into radio and launching a late night talk show for truck drivers, The Big Rig Gig, out of Albury.

In 1998 Caroline was approached by 92.7 MIX FM on the Sunshine Coast for a vacancy in the breakfast progam… Most famously, Caroline has spearheaded Mix FM’s Give Me Five for Kids,
raising funds for the children’s ward at Nambour General Hospital. For the past eight years Caroline has written a family column for the
Sunshine Coast Daily, and last year published a collection of them in a book.

Photo: Fisher Electorate boundaries.