Shirley Strickland

Post-athletics

De la Hunty maintained her Olympic involvement in athlete administration, with the Australian teams during the 1968 and 1976 Olympics in Mexico City and Montreal.

Along with her husband, de la Hunty had a longstanding involvement with the Australian Democrats. She was a founding member, and later served as president of the party's branch in Western Australia. From the early 1970s through to the mid-1990s, de la Hunty was a perennial candidate for state and federal political office, although never elected. She stood in six state elections – in 1971, and then in five consecutive from 1983 to 1996. In 1983, 1986, and 1996, she stood for the Australian Democrats, while she stood as an independent candidate in the remaining years. She ran for the Legislative Assembly in 1983 and 1993 (in East Melville and Melville, respectively), and for the Legislative Council in 1971, 1986, 1989, and 1996.

At the federal level, all but one of de la Hunty's runs for office were made as a Democrats candidate. In total, she contested seven federal elections—four consecutive from 1977 to 1984, as well as the 1981 by-election in Curtin, and then in 1993 and 1996. She ran for the House of Representatives in 1981 (Curtin), 1984 (Fremantle), and 1993 (Canning), with the latter being her only independent candidacy at federal level. At all other elections, she contested the Senate, where she was generally placed second or third on the Democrats' group voting ticket. Lawrence died of a heart attack in 1980, aged 56.

The Western Australian government honoured her with a state funeral, the first ever for a private citizen. In 2011, Shirley was posthumously inducted into the WA Women's Hall of Fame, and in 2014, Strickland de la Hunty was inducted into the International Association of Athletics Federations' Hall of Fame