The Labor values were ‘both subjective and dynamic … inherently contestable’, and resisted strict definition. But they demonstrated ‘an understanding of the relationship between the … community and the experience of the individual. A community that marginalises is not strong. Exclusion does not equate to unity. Equality has little relevance if it does not manifest as opportunity. And prosperity must be created to be shared.’
She spoke of the Whitlam Labor government: its social reforms but also its ‘cautionary tale for progressives … public confidence in a government’s economic credentials is essential’. She spoke of the economic reforms of Hawke and Keating. ‘The manner in which those reforms were delivered is instructive for Labor today. The drive to reform is not easy, but the benefits of positioning the economy and the country for long terms are pivotal. Worthy reform will always have critics and is almost always resisted.’
The economy, she said, was central to progressive politics. It was ‘a reminder of the uniqueness of both Labor’s position on the political field, and of our platform … Those that view themselves on our left do not see the economy as their responsibility; those to our right do not see the economy as an enabler of opportunity.’
Then she returned to the place of Labor in Australian politics. It was a challenging time for the party. ‘A low primary vote is a problem. A primary vote that is eroding from the left and the right is a more complex problem.’ She continued:
The Labor project is to marry a mandate to govern with progressive values and economic responsibility. No other party or movement replicates this in Australia. This unique position brings with it two aspects of political character. The first is that we seek to form government. We cannot simply appeal to those who already agree with us, nor dismiss any who do not.
… We do not simply seek a Senate quota, nor to target a particular seat. We seek to govern Australia for all Australians. We never have the luxury of only playing to a narrow audience. We have to build agreement. We have to persuade. This involves far more than compromise, although some would airily define it as such. It demands both courage to hold firm, and the capacity to convince. It is not easy.
She concluded with the counterfactual. What would Australia be like if the Australian Labor Party had never formed government?
I’d ask those who criticise to contemplate an Australia without Labor governments. An Australia without a party committed to governing for progressive change. An Australia without universal health care, where someone’s income, not injury determined the level of care they received. An Australia not brave enough to recognise those whose land we inhabit, not big-hearted enough to apologise to those we have harmed. An Australia where workers’ rights extend no further than the minimum wage, and the most basic of conditions. An Australia where the opportunity embodied in tertiary education remained beyond the reach of those most in need. An Australia where gender and race can overshadow ability. An Australia where parochial interests drove economic decision-making, where we failed to open our eyes to the region and the world beyond our shores.1
It is complicated to be Penny Wong. She is dedicated to the Australian Labor Party, a true believer in the values she outlined in the John Button lecture. At the same time she is an artefact of its progress, and of a changing Australia. She both moulds and has been moulded by the party, the country and its limitations and strengths. She is an exemplar of a question of the times – do political processes work? Is it possible for someone of integrity and ability to make a difference? Does politics still work? There was no previous time in Australian history when a gay Asian woman could have risen so high in politics, and yet she is committed to maintaining solidarity in a party that includes social conservatives. It means that, as well as embodying change, she was destined to disappoint those who expected her to act as though outside or above party politics.
Five months before the John Button lecture, in July 2010, as the Labor Party approached the election, Wong had come under sustained attack from the gay community after an appearance on Channel Ten’s Meet the Press. It began well: most of the discussion had been about the election campaign, and her portfolio responsibilities of climate change and water. That night there was to be an election debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. It coincided with the finale of the reality-television program MasterChef, and the timing of the debate’s airing had been altered so the two didn’t clash. Wong told the audience she liked to cook and would watch the debate, then switch ‘straight to MasterChef’.
At the end of the program, the focus turned to questions sent in by viewers. One queried her support for the Labor Party’s opposition to same-sex marriage. In a relatively unguarded moment, Penny Wong came as close as she ever had to expressly supporting Labor Party policy against same-sex marriage – rather than speaking in generalities about party solidarity, as she usually did. She talked about how Labor had removed discrimination against same-sex couples under many different pieces of legislation. The Rudd government had delivered on the moves agreed at the time of the 2004 Marriage Act debate, and same-sex couples were now treated equally in superannuation, social security, health care and many other areas of law. In total, more than eighty pieces of legislation had been changed. But, she said, ‘On the issue of marriage, I think the reality is there is a cultural, religious and historical view around that we have to respect.’ She claimed she respected the Labor Party view of marriage being between a man and a woman. ‘I am part of a party and I support the party’s policies.’2
Before that night’s MasterChef contestants had assembled their ingredients, Penny Wong was at the centre of a social media storm that rapidly broke into the mainstream press. The spokesman for the group Australian Marriage Equality, Alex Greenwich, called her a hypocrite. It was once the ‘cultural, religious and historical view’ that women should not be members of parliament, that Asians should not be allowed into Australia and that lesbians should not exist, ‘yet thankfully all that changed, allowing people like Penny Wong to contribute to Australian society at the highest level’, he said.3 Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens, said her words had ‘horrified’ him. ‘To somehow excuse discrimination … on the basis of culture or heritage … Are we going to bring back in hanging?’4
The next night, Penny Wong kept a scheduled appearance with the ABC’s Q&A television program, appearing on a panel that included Malcolm Turnbull and Christine Milne, as well as former Labor minister Graham Richardson. Milne and Wong tangled over the Greens having voted down the CPRS. Milne argued that the scheme was too ‘browned down’. Wong responded, ‘Oh, give us a break … it’s not economically effective to shut down the electricity sector and disrupt security of supply, Christine.’ The panellists all talked over one another. Richardson posited that the previous evening’s MasterChef had been more interesting than the ‘very boring’ leaders’ debate.
Penny Wong knew that after the controversy of her Meet the Press appearance she would be asked about gay rights. Earlier that day she had talked to Lois Boswell, who had warned her that almost anything she said would ‘blow the whole show up’. Boswell was referring to the behind-the-scenes preparations for that year’s South Australian Labor Party convention. Negotiations and lobbying with the socially conservative unions of the Right had been taking place for months. One false step now could scupper the effort.
The inevitable question came towards the end of the show, from audience member Danielle Raffaele. ‘Penny, you say that you support your party’s decision to be against gay marriage, even though you are gay yourself. How can you sit idly back and allow yourself to remain silent about the obvious inequality that you are kept in?’
The audience erupted in applause.
Penny Wong turned to the chair, Tony Jones, and sotto voce warned him that her answer might take a while. Then she launched into a mini-speech.
She said that when she had entered the parliament she had thought ‘very carefully about how to handle being Asian and gay and in the par
liament, because it hadn’t been done before’. She had decided to be open about who she was, and never shy away from it, and to ‘try to be dignified, even when it might be difficult … part of the reason I did that was I thought it was very important to show that you should never be ashamed of who you are, even when there are people who would try to make you be’.
She went on to talk about the work that she, Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and others were doing to ‘improve the party’s position’ on gay rights, and the legislative changes achieved during the Rudd government. ‘These are things that make a real difference to people’s lives … Now, I accept that you and some other people in the community would like us to have a different position in terms of marriage. That isn’t the position in the party but what I would say to you is do take a moment to consider what we have tried to do, what we have advocated for and what we have delivered for gay and lesbian Australians.’
The round of muted applause was interrupted by Christine Milne denouncing Labor’s ‘lack of leadership’ on the issue. Gillard should be allowing a conscience vote on same-sex legislation sponsored by the Greens and then before the parliament, she said.
Tony Jones batted that back to Penny Wong, who said she didn’t agree with conscience votes. ‘If we’d had conscience votes in the Labor Party on a range of issues … there are many reforms which would not have been achieved. I have a view that you join a team, you’re part of the team, and that’s the way … we operate.’
Jones threw it back to the audience, and a man asked why, if Malcolm Turnbull could disagree with his party’s policy on climate change, Penny Wong couldn’t disagree with her party on same-sex marriage. At that point, to everyone’s surprise, Graham Richardson interrupted with a fierce defence of Penny Wong. As a senior figure of the party, he knew something of what was going on behind the scenes.
‘Look, I’m amazed somewhat by these questions, really … There are a lot of people in the Labor Party who don’t agree with this stuff. At the moment there’s nowhere near a majority, but there will be. There will be over time because Penny will work for it and it will get up in the end. But give her a break, for God’s sake. She’s part of a caucus. There’s a whole lot of them. She doesn’t run the government, she’s a part of it … There’s a thing called cabinet solidarity … and if she wants to break it she gets nowhere. You’ll lose someone who fights for your cause. That, my friends, is dumb. Big-time dumb.’
While he spoke, Penny Wong sipped water and kept her eyes down. It was an example of that ability she had developed in school. To stay still and calm, even when emotions were raging.
Since Wong had voted in favour of Howard’s changes to the Marriage Act in 2004, the party platform had been modified to support the removal of discrimination against same-sex couples under federal laws. This had been opposed by some, but figures on the Right had been gradually persuaded to come on board. One of them was Joe Ludwig, of the Queensland Right. Wong recalls, ‘He was a lawyer. He told me he went back to first principles. “Is this discrimination? Yes. Is it justified? No.” … It was an example of how that very traditional Labor notion of fairness sometimes overcomes people’s personal prejudice.’
When Labor came to government in 2007, the platform was implemented. Labor kept the promise it had made in 2004 to remove legal discrimination against gay couples. Same-sex couples were now equal to heterosexual couples under Medicare, social security and superannuation legislation. The next step in the strategy was meant to be recognition of civil unions. Rudd had discussed this policy publicly, but in 2009 had acted to hose down debate on the issue at the national conference. At this stage, Rudd was personally opposed to same-sex marriage.
Meanwhile, Penny Wong and the members of Rainbow Labor – including, later on, her deputy chief of staff, Tom Mooney – worked to engage gay party members across the factions. John Olenich, her former staffer, had also been involved in Rainbow Labor. As he puts it today, Rainbow Labor, with Penny’s staff centrally involved, had gradually changed the position in the party. In 2004, there hadn’t been the capacity to take the issue head on but, says Olenich, Rainbow Labor had ‘gradually chipped away and helped give Penny the political space to push the platform forward’. As Graham Richardson told the Q&A audience, it was generally thought that the numbers in Labor were still nowhere near a majority in favour of same-sex marriage, and even civil unions were likely to be opposed. But things were changing in surprising ways.
Gillard had declared herself opposed to same-sex marriage. This was widely understood as a condition of her alliance with Don Farrell, socially conservative leader of the South Australian Right faction, and one of the so-called ‘faceless men’ who had engineered her challenge against Kevin Rudd. Wong says today she had ‘no insight and no direct knowledge’ of such a deal, but she remembers talking about Gillard’s stance with her own mother, Jane Chapman. ‘Mum isn’t involved in the detail of politics, but she said something very shrewd. She said it was a problem for Gillard because it was inexplicable. People would not understand how an atheist and a single woman in a de facto relationship could hold those views … It added to that idea that she was somehow not authentic.’
In late 2010 the issue became part of the campaign of leaks – generally seen as being from Kevin Rudd or his supporters – that undermined Gillard’s leadership. One revealed that Rudd had agreed privately with ‘key Left faction leaders’ to back same-sex civil unions, and that he had also intended to grant Labor MPs a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.5 The next day, under pressure, Gillard announced that the Labor Party national conference scheduled for 2012 would be brought forward by more than six months, to December 2011, to allow for a full-blown debate over the party’s policy differences.
But in the meantime there was the South Australian Labor convention, which took place just three weeks after Penny Wong gave the John Button Memorial Lecture. Wong had warned Gillard weeks before that at this conference she would publicly support a change to the party platform. This she could do in consistency with party rules because it was, as Kevin Rudd helpfully noted, ‘within the formal processes of the Australian Labor Party’.6 In Wong’s judgement and that of her allies, there was now for the first time the ‘political space’ to move forward. If she had done it previously, she would have lost, and damaged herself in the process.
At the convention, as the most senior South Australian member, she held Julia Gillard’s proxy. Knowing that she couldn’t use it on this issue, she gave it to Don Farrell. That meant her opponents had an extra vote.
A motion called on the Labor national conference to amend the party’s platform to support same-sex marriage. Farrell gave an incendiary speech. Recognising same-sex marriage would destroy the government, he said. It would mean the party had been ‘hijacked’ by the Greens. ‘The Greens are running a bowl of issues up and trying to wedge the Labor Party.’ The din while he spoke distorted the audio on the recordings. There were loud calls of ‘Shame!’ on both sides.
Then Wong rose to her feet. Her speech was just over 800 words long, but in terms of the party’s internal politics it was seismic. Not only was she, after six years of publicly backing party policy, ‘coming out’ in favour of changing the party platform, she was also opposing the prime minister, Julia Gillard – who was already under attack on multiple fronts, from Abbott and also from Rudd.
Wong referred to her own experiences of racial discrimination and her reasons for joining the party. ‘In the Labor Party, I saw the capacity to turn principle into action. I was not interested in simply criticising. I was not interested in simply talking about change. I wanted to be part of delivering it.’
She appealed to the party’s tradition of fairness – the history of advocating for equality, from ending the White Australia policy to land rights and laws against racial and sex discrimination:
Delegates, there has been some commentary which has confused my position of not commenting publicly on this issue with my position on the a
ctual issue itself … talking about change is not the same as delivering it. And delivering change is not the same thing as seeking headlines. There are some, including in the Greens political party, who would have Australians believe that the only test of one’s commitment to equality is how loudly you criticise and how much you shout. Commitment to equality is also present when you deliver change as part of a party of government. And commitment to equality is also there when you seek to persuade and not only to condemn. And the commitment to equality does not recede because so many of us respect the principles of solidarity – the same principles which have helped deliver so much change over so many years.7
There was a standing ovation.
She did not expect to win the vote, although she judged she could move the issue forward. But when the motion was put it passed 90–88. The Right had split, and Don Farrell – the godfather of the Right and Julia Gillard’s numbers man – had been humiliated on the floor of the conference.
Wong remembers, ‘I asked people, “How did we win this? How did that happen?”’
People directed her to the secretary of one of the unions usually allied with Farrell’s socially conservative Shoppies, who had corralled his votes in her support. She went over. ‘I said, “Thank you,” and I asked him why. And he kind of shrugged and said, “It’s my daughter.” I nearly cried. And I thought, This is why we will win. Because if you love someone, how can you tolerate them being treated that way?’
This was the first Labor state conference to support a change to the national platform on same-sex marriage. It was a precursor to the national conference, an indication that Gillard might face defeat on the issue in a year’s time.
*
Eight months later, once again, Wong’s personal and political lives intersected. In August she announced that her partner, Sophie Allouache, was pregnant. Under South Australian law, the couple had been prevented from seeking an IVF donor locally. Instead they had used sperm from a friend and undergone IVF in New South Wales. The baby was due in December – the same month in which the Labor national conference would debate same-sex marriage.
Penny Wong Page 26