Susan Margaret Davies is a former Australian politician. She was born in Mirboo North, Victoria, to parents Richard Llewellyn and Jean Margaret Davies. She attended LeongathaHigh School and Watsonia High School in 1971, when she completed her Higher School Certificate. She received a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education in 1976 from La Trobe University. She subsequently became a secondary school teacher, and began farming in addition to this in 1989. Davies joined the Labor Party in 1993, as part of the rural protest against Kennett government funding and service cuts, and was the Labor candidate for Gippsland West in the 1996 Victorian state election. Sitting Liberal MP Alan Brown resigned less than a year after the state election, precipitating a by-election. Labor declined to stand a candidate for this very safe Liberal seat; most of the area covered by Gippsland West had been in the hands of a conservative party for more than a century and a half. Davies resigned from the Labor Party and contested the by-election as an independent. The Liberal primary vote plunged by over 16 percent, allowing Davies to emerge victorious by 159 votes. She retained her seat in the 1999 state election, and held the balance of power with two other rural Independents when a significant, mostly rural, and very anti-Coalition swing led to a hung parliament. Davies played a key role in developing the "Independents' Charter", which the three independents used as a basis for backing a minority government under Steve Bracks and the Labor Party. She served on the Public Accounts and Estimates committee during the following parliamentary term. Prior to the 2002 election, Gippsland West was essentially replaced by the newly created seat of Bass, which was notionally Liberal in a traditional matchup. Davies contested Bass, but was pushed into third place on the primary vote behind former Liberal MLC Ken Smith. She later rejoined the Labor Party and contested the 2004 federal election as the Labor candidate for the federal seat of La Trobe. She was defeated by the Liberal candidate, Jason Wood. Davies now runs a small farm in South Gippsland, is part of a local food producers' network and Korumburra Landcare, and is a director on several organisations, including Chairing Energy Innovation Co-operative Ltd, which promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency measures as a response to climate change and peak oil.
