Chris Burson is a veteran of the Australian Defence Force and Victoria Police with nearly two decades of combined service. He began his military career in December 2002 as a Combat Engineer with the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment in Townsville, before transferring to Army Aviation as a Loadmaster with 171 Aviation Squadron, deploying to Timor-Leste.

He served more than a decade in Victoria Police, from general duties on the divisional van in Richmond and Geelong to emergency mental health response alongside clinicians, the Public Order Response Team, and three years as a tactical operator with the Critical Incident Response Team, where his roles included negotiator. Frontline policing - including long hours in emergency departments with people in drug, mental health and self-harm crises - gave him direct insight into community safety and the pressures facing first responders and our health system.

Chris is standing as a One Nation candidate for the Western Victoria Region because he believes Australians deserve representatives who speak openly on difficult topics without fear of censorship or political correctness.

"Every time I go somewhere, it's because of a law written by some politician. If someone writes a law, they need to understand that at the end of that is a copper who has to potentially risk their life to defend this paper you've just written."

His commitment to transparency is proven: in 2022, Chris was in the room when the so-called 'Preference Whisperer' was secretly recorded boasting about trading upper house seats through backroom preference deals - and he helped bring those recordings to light. Chris believes voters, not backroom operators, should decide who sits in Parliament.

His priorities include tackling rising crime, easing cost-of-living pressure, rebuilding our regions, closing the policy and funding gaps first responders face, improving emergency response times and healthcare access, and looking after our environment.

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