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Ali France only has to close her eyes to remember the sickening roar of the car.

France was pushing a stroller containing her son, Zac, through the car park of Brisbane's Highpoint Shopping Plaza in May 2011. The routine trip to the shops nearly killed the woman who, eight years later, is hoping to defeat Peter Dutton, one of Australia's most powerful and divisive politicians.

France is Labor's candidate for the marginal seat of Dickson in Brisbane's northern suburbs. Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister and leader of the Liberal Party's conservative faction, holds the seat on a razor-thin margin of 2 per cent.

On that Wednesday morning in 2011, France was waiting for a lift when an out-of-control car driven by an elderly man screamed in her direction. She tried to push the stroller out of the way but it went under the car, which then slammed into France and pinned her against the front of another vehicle.

When France woke up in intensive care days later with an intubation tube down her throat, the former journalist reached for the hand of husband Clive and scrawled three letters: Z-A-C.

Clive reassured her that four-year-old Zac had escaped mostly unscathed, but France had not. The force of the car severed the femoral artery and she nearly bled to death before the ambulance arrived. Surgeons were forced to hurriedly amputate France's left leg from above the knee.

"I spent many years in hospital and my pathway to politics really began in that hospital," she says. "Waiting for surgeries and appointments, I talked to many, many people about how they were struggling with health expenses and the pressures of the system."