Birgitta Jonsdottir is a self-described pirate poet who once lived near Mullumbimby — and she could be the next prime minister of Iceland.

In an interview with Lateline, the leader of Iceland's Pirate Party said her year on the New South Wales North Coast inspired her to make a change to society.

"I felt it was a healthy way to see yourself, to go to the absolute end of the world and to go and do some inner work and try and understand better how I can function actually in Iceland," she said.

"I guess that sort of inspiration came to me in Australia. It was a very interesting year."

Ms Jonsdottir lived in Crabbes Creek, her ex father-in-law was the mayor of Lismore and her youngest son was born in Melbourne.

"Somebody said about me, one year in my life is seven years for others, so it sort of felt like I lived for many years in Australia," she said.

The Pirate Party that Ms Jonsdottir co-founded in 2012 only holds three seats in Iceland's parliament but it has the support of 43 per cent of Iceland's voters.

With Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaughsson forced to resign in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, Ms Jonsdottir's Pirates have a real likelihood of taking power in the country of just over 320,000 people.

But she told Lateline she does not think she is the best person for the job.

"I am a very controversial person so maybe that is not the right person to be the prime minister," she said.

Unemployed single mother to WikiLeaks activist

Seven years ago, Ms Jonsdottir was an unemployed single mother of three, who had an urge to "improve society".

She volunteered to work for WikiLeaks, met Julian Assange, and in 2010 played a crucial role in the release of Collateral Murder, the classified US military video that shows an American helicopter gunning down Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists in Baghdad.

Icelandic MP and pirate poet Birgitta Jonsdottir has the support of 43 per cent of voters ( AFP: Halldor Kolbeins )

The Pirate Party's key platforms are freedom of expression, information and digital privacy and Ms Jonsdottir said she would encourage Julian Assange and Edward Snowden to apply for Icelandic citizenship.

"Both have rendered service to humankind by showing us information or facilitating," she said.

Ms Jonsdottir puts her sense of social responsibility down to growing up in a fishing village as a "freaky outcast" and an "ugly duckling".

"I somehow, in my alienation as a kid, learned to... turn these difficulties into strength," she said in a TED talk in Reykjavik last year.

Both her father and husband committed suicide within a few years of each other and Ms Jonsdottir said those crises in her personal life shaped her into a stronger person.

"I learned to live and cope in a situation of extreme uncertainty and that has really helped me later in life to deal with very extreme circumstances. There was never a night I could not fall asleep," she said.