Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi has spoken about emigrating from Pakistan to Australia in 1992 to escape rising corruption, only to find that her adopted country had its own problems with political integrity. Speaking on ABC's Kitchen Cabinet with Annabel Crabb, she recalled that within her first year in the New South Wales Parliament, 11 MPs had left or been demoted amid corruption allegations investigated by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, including former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.

Faruqi arrived with her husband Omar and their baby son carrying little more than two suitcases, and despite being recruited due to a shortage of civil engineers, both struggled to find work in their field, with Omar driving taxis for a year while she completed postgraduate study. The couple later moved from Sydney to Port Macquarie, becoming, by her account, the first "brown people" hired by the local council in its 150-year history, and her community work there through groups such as Landcare eventually drew her into the Greens and onto her current political path.