Helen Haines

Helen Mary Haines (born 21 September 1961) is an Australian politician who has served as the independent MP for the Victorian seat of Indi since the 2019 federal election. Early life and education Haines grew up on a dairy farm in Colac in southwestern Victoria with four brothers, and attended a public school in Eurack. She trained as a registered nurse at St Vincent's Hospital and later as a midwife at Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne. In 1986, she moved to northeastern Victoria and began working as a midwife at Wangaratta Base Hospital before being appointed matron and Director of Nursing at the Chiltern Bush Nursing Hospital. Haines completed a bachelor's degree at Deakin University and a master's degree in epidemiology and public health at the University of New South Wales. In 2004, she travelled to Stockholm to study at Uppsala University, completing a doctoral degree in medical science in 2012. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Karolinska Institute, with her doctoral thesis titled "‘No worries’: A longitudinal study of fear, attitudes and beliefs about childbirth from a cohort of Australian and Swedish women". Haines was one of eleven MPs elected to the 46th Parliament of Australia who possessed a PhD, the others being Katie Allen, Fiona Martin, Anne Aly, Andrew Leigh, Daniel Mulino, Jess Walsh, Adam Bandt, Mehreen Faruqi, Anne Webster and Jim Chalmers. Politics