ABOUT DANIELLE BURRIDGE
Danielle Burridge has called Eastern Victoria home for almost five years.
She is completing her research thesis (Psychology Honours), so she brings a researcher's curiosity and a carer's compassion to everything she does.
Danielle's path to politics began at her father's bedside. Her father spent decades running a much-loved restaurant in Sydney. Good food was his passion. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Danielle became his carer. Heavy medications, including fentanyl and morphine, couldn't ease his pain or bring back his appetite. Medicinal cannabis did. Danielle watched her father become comfortable and happy, and importantly to again eat the food he loved.
The path to finding a doctor willing to prescribe at the time, wasn't easy, and cost was prohibitive. Once a prescription was in place, the rules on how he could use it made no allowance for his tolerance or for breakthrough pain. He passed away in 2019, and Danielle has carried the lesson with her: people who are dying, and the families caring for them, deserve access that is compassionate, affordable and shaped around the patient.
Danielle is particularly passionate about reforming driving laws so that patients aren't punished for using medicine they've been lawfully prescribed.
She wants to give the people of Eastern Victoria a voice that combines lived experience with evidence, and to make sure no family has to fight the system in the hardest moments of their lives.