Warren Entsch served in Australia's federal parliament for almost three decades. He worked with half a dozen Prime Ministers and witnessed the passage of some of the nation's greatest shifts in social and economic policy.

He was an entrenched backbencher with an outsized influence and outsized opinions. He stood against enraged gun owners in his own community after the Port Arthur massacre, he brushed off demands to scrap mentions of climate change from Great Barrier Reef health reports. But most famously, he stared down a Prime Minister and much of his own party to change Australia's marriage laws, a key moment of defiance that catalysed the legalisation of gay marriage.

Mr Entsch attracted a fair share of criticism and controversy during his career and many have disagreed with facets of his conduct as a member of parliament. But tellers of history must not neglect the background of the endeavour to correct Australia's last great legal inequality, and the role Mr Entsch played in that crusade.

Anna Middleton was elected as the Division 7 councillor to Cairns Regional Council in 2024 as an unaligned and independent candidate with a low budget, grassroots effort, beating other candidates with more cash and more recognisable names. Since her election, she has leant on the expertise of industry professionals, scientists and experienced public servants to guide her decisions in the council chamber — an evidence-based approach that has won and lost voter sympathy in equal measure, and caused her to clash with the emotional and idealised decisions of other influential people in Queensland’s political landscape.

Bronwyn Opie is the director of the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre, a leading Queensland advocacy organisation for climate change action and ecological conservation.