But it was not to be. We’d left Canberra with one prime minister in charge and flew back in to find another had taken his place. The leadership stoush—as it always would—completely overshadowed everything else. On days like this, politics really is the pits.
On the way back to Australia I dreamed about vast pods of humpbacks and southern right whales making their way along the Sydney coast, swimming south for the summer. In my mind’s eye I could see crowds clustered on Malabar Headland, watching the sea erupt as massive, shiny flanks breached the surface, with giant tail flukes slapping the water and sending rockets of white spray shooting into the blue air.
We’d successfully rebuffed the push to kill more whales, and at long last, the question of whether these animals could be indiscriminately killed in the name of science was now in the hands of the court.
…
Nearly four years later, in 2014, word came through that the judges were ready to bring down a decision. The arguments by the Australian legal team had been convincing, but there was always a question of how far the court would go. The ICJ was really part court, part tribunal, and scoring international disputes of this nature can sometimes deliver messy results. The most I was hoping for was a ruling that Japan’s so-called scientific whaling didn’t conform to IWC rules. This, at the least, would bring the issue back to the commission for further discussion and be a moral victory for Australia.
I was home alone in the evening, with the laptop set up on the kitchen bench to monitor the judgment as it came down live. I could see the packed courtroom, with a sizeable Japanese contingent, and Australia’s legal team sitting quietly at the front. As the chief judge started reading the decision, I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing: the court, by a clear majority, had accepted most of Australia’s arguments. We had won the case convincingly, and the judges had taken the unusual additional step of issuing orders to Japan to stop scientific whaling.
The Japanese delegation studied the floor intently, the Australian team shook hands and smiled, and I whooped with joy. I’d never expected the decision to be so clear-cut. For the first time in a hundred years, no whales would be taken in the Southern Ocean, and the wind is in the sails of all those who have worked to make the preservation of whales a successful global environmental issue.
For Australia, the world is watching. Having got this far, one only hopes we won’t back down at the final hour—although the initial signs aren’t encouraging. Under the Abbott government, Australia’s diplomatic efforts have slackened on the whaling issue, and the Japanese have gone back to the IWC to get approval to renew lethal Antarctic scientific whaling beginning in 2015−16. They intend to target more than 300 minke whales over ten years with a proposal designed to meet the test for scientific whaling laid down by the court; and this proposal has now been adopted in IWC rules.
Australia should play a leading role in analysing the proposal and developing a strategy to counter it, otherwise a majority of countries might support Japan. The court decision has given anti-whaling nations and the NGO community a rock-solid campaigning tool to ensure this doesn’t happen. This is now a litmus test of the willingness of our political leaders and diplomats to press home to the Japanese that sham whaling activities are no longer acceptable, but it will require a substantial effort to make sure Japan doesn’t win the next round.
Some of the most wondrous creatures on earth are depending on us to hold the line, as is the future course of nature conservation on our planet.
32
THE MIXMASTER
THE 2010 ELECTION turned out to be a dog’s breakfast. Having announced the date eight months out—in truth, not a real surprise—early on Julia Gillard had decamped to the western suburbs of Sydney to get in touch with the people. It was a bad move.
Voters expected their leaders to work hard in Canberra or at home, and some resented the pariah status that was implied by this tokenistic stunt. At another time the tactic might have worked, but so skewed was Sydney’s Daily Telegraph against the prime minister it wouldn’t have mattered what she’d done—every headline dripped vitriol.
When the campaign formally began, the Labor Party’s re-election narrative was disjointed, dominated by the debate over how to manage increasing numbers of people arriving by boat to seek asylum.
More damaging was the dam full of leaks covered in the fingerprints of former leader Kevin Rudd. These appeared regularly, a gift to the press pack that created such turbulence Gillard’s campaign could never lift off into clear air.
Added to this, the climate change policy quickly went off the rails. During the campaign, the prime minister announced that there wouldn’t be a carbon tax, a position she qualified late in the day by adding that, if re-elected, the government would aim for an emissions trading scheme—the qualifier was lost in the hubbub. In the absence of a ‘carbon tax’ a proposal for a citizen’s assembly to ‘consider’ the issue had been mooted. Business groups loved this do-nothing idea, but what was meant to happen next was never made clear and the thought bubble was quickly discarded. Even more vexing was the string of bizarre comments from Tony Abbott, who at one point had stated the world wasn’t warming; this from a man who had already distinguished himself by declaring a year earlier that ‘the climate change argument is absolute crap’. Former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull added to the wackiness by stating that his own party’s climate policy was a farce. By the time of the official campaign launch, the environment didn’t rate a mention at all and there was only a passing reference to climate change. Most of the potential opportunities for spending commitments had been diverted into marginal seat campaigns, many of which were in western Sydney.
My last election task had been to fly up to Far North Queensland for the day to campaign with local Labor candidate Tony Mooney, a former mayor of the region’s major city, Townsville.
Delirium caused by sleep deprivation was setting in as I tried to make sense of the news of the day. The new British prime minister, David Cameron, had given his first major foreign policy speech, which predictably didn’t mention Australia—that was one for the monarchists.
The Daily Telegraph had a major puff piece on Australia’s most prominent supporter of the royals, Tony Abbott, portraying him as a blend of Mussolini and Obama—that was subtle. Titled ‘Yes we can’, the profile was accompanied by testimonials from up-and-coming rugby league players, one quoted as saying that he wouldn’t be voting for Gillard because of her ‘whiny voice’—never mind the policies.
A Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Elizabeth Farrelly, was already dreaming of a government run by Malcolm Turnbull and Bob Brown—so much for female solidarity and logic.
Meanwhile, in Townsville, fishing groups had taken out full-page ads featuring a small boy standing on a beach fishing, with the text claiming this would no longer be possible as a result of Labor’s new marine parks. In fact, the waters of the proposed marine parks—called bioregions, which research showed were necessary for healthy fish populations—were at least five kilometres offshore, so no one would be prevented from recreational fishing on the coast. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?
Along with a gaggle of advisers and media, I duly fronted for the pre-election press conference at a nondescript site in the Townsville suburbs with the candidate. Halfway through my introductory remarks, having welcomed Mooney, my memory kicked into gear as it dawned on me that the person I was now endorsing was someone I’d actually opposed, from a distance, years earlier for his staunch anti-environmental views. I hadn’t recognised him straight away, although I should have been familiar with his name. Mooney had previously been investigated for allegations of branch stacking. As the mayor of Townsville a decade earlier, he had forcefully pushed an anti-green pro-development agenda. I wasn’t too disappointed when he failed to win the seat, despite his campaign receiving $5000 from a company connected to the corrupt former New South Wales Labor MP Eddie Obeid. Afterwards I learned that Mooney went on to wor
k as a consultant to a coal company and had been appointed by Tony Burke to the board of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
After a day with a candidate like this, I was ready to chuck it in.
Meanwhile, back home, Kingsford Smith had been overrun by Liberal Party volunteers recruited on air by Alan Jones from radio station 2GB. Jones, who was manically campaigning against Labor MPs and a host of other dangerous left-wingers, including North Coast independent Rob Oakeshott, effusively championed my opponent, ultimately without success.
A rare bright spot during the campaign came with the long-awaited announcement that Malabar Headland would become a national park. It was made with the prime minister on the crispest of winter days at Maroubra Beach—glistening aqua fresh, magnificent. It was a real high point. Having finally got this commitment out the door, along with some much-needed money for rehabilitation of the site, on this day I knew that my being in government had definitely made a difference to the electorate I was representing.
Having spent most of the preceding month in a fit of pique, leaking and undermining the government, displaced leader Kevin Rudd sent a message to local members of parliament the day before the election to convey his and his family’s very best wishes. It spewed out of the fax machine late in the day, ending face up on the floor as scores of busy volunteers and fatigued staff walked over it without pause.
…
I’d always enjoyed election days, and with jasmine on the breeze this one was no different. Small groups of mums and dads arrived early to set up sausage sizzles to raise funds for their schools that, on this day, doubled as polling booths. Volunteers engaged in affable banter across political lines, while fixing the coloured bunting and posters of the candidates and party leaders to fences and power poles.
Democracy still happened in Australia, and this was its finest day.
By late afternoon, streams of locals had fronted to perform their democratic duty. The banners were by now drooping, the skewed posters of candidates with their fixed smiles gazed down at the detritus of the day scattered across the footpath: ribbons and balloons and party leaflets and scrunched-up paper serviettes with tomato-sauce lipstick stains. A last-minute rush of pissed punters from Randwick racecourse shouting, ‘I’m gonna vote for the Sex Party!’ closed out the day.
The post-mortems from the party faithful got underway quickly. With long experience in reading the public mood, and after ten hours of standing at the entrance thrusting how-to-vote cards at every voter, the verdict was in: the mob had turned against us.
Abbott’s scare campaign, based on three simplistic slogans—Stop the Boats, Scrap the Tax, End the Waste—had proved effective. But the saying that Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them still held true. Fed up with the infighting and disturbed by the last-minute leadership change to Gillard, repulsed by the mediocrity of NSW Labor and its procession of premiers and corrupt ministers, confused about what the key issues were and disappointed that, when prime minister, Rudd had walked away from an emissions trading scheme, the voters had turned against Labor in droves.
As predicted, there was a strong swing away from Labor, most noticeably in New South Wales and Queensland, but along with similarly placed Labor members, I held my seat, though the national result was uncertain, with neither of the major parties winning enough seats to form a majority government. As it happened, Julia Gillard proved an adept and more trustworthy negotiator than Tony Abbott, and after seventeen days of discussion she reached agreements with the independents—Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott from regional New South Wales—and the Australian Greens to form government. This was Gillard’s greatest achievement, from which other achievements could be realised. However, the high levels of ignorance about our democratic system fuelled public antipathy towards these arrangements, and no amount of actual legislation passed by the new parliament could temper the public’s aggro.
The first term of government had been a bruising three years. Despite the siren call of song and action that I could faintly hear from my former world, and my recent moment of what-am-I-doing-here angst in Townsville, I was determined to hang in and see what transpired. It might sound self-serving, but I had tried to live out the values of discipline and loyalty that I believed were essential in politics. Unlike any other minister, I had no praetorian guard to protect me. Building constructive relationships across the ministry and the Caucus helped, but my strategy to hold a line and not play games, and with Kate Pasterfield on the alert for mischief, meant we’d repulsed the mini assaults that came from within. In spite of being hung out to dry, we’d managed to maintain the calm, and got a few runs on the board. Now I was up for whatever came my way, be it isolation or warm embrace. We would just have to wait and see.
33
IT’S EDUCATION, STUPID
MAYBE IT WAS always going to end this way.
After the election, I happened on a draft speech I never got around to giving when environment minister.
One part read:
Now more than ever nations will rise and fall on their capacity to ensure shared natural ecosystems are not degraded and that people—their most important resource—are equipped to work in the future economy: driven by services and innovation, focused on low-carbon technologies and featuring mutual cooperation. That is why education is central to Australia’s future.
It was a straightforward observation, obvious even, but what I didn’t fully appreciate then was the scale of the schooling problem we were facing.
Our education performance had been sliding backwards. Many Australian students were not doing as well as their counterparts in other countries, including a number of our Asian neighbours. Serious steps were needed to halt this downward spiral.
In its first term, Labor, with Julia Gillard as education minister, set out to remedy the problem with an ‘education revolution’. This major makeover aimed to address deficiencies in the early years of school, presenting more information on students’ progress, beginning with the introduction of the My School website and NAPLAN testing for numeracy and literacy. The next step was to propel improvements in teacher quality, roll out a national curriculum and, to cap it off, introduce a new funding model for school education.
Once Gillard became prime minister, the question of how this complex, multifaceted revolution would be advanced was as yet unanswered.
I’d by now been through a few cabinet reshuffles and become used to the strange feeling of being part of the inner circle and out of it at the same time. How the various paybacks and factional advancements would be determined in this new term of government was well outside my realm.
The chief of the dominant New South Wales right faction, Mark Arbib, called to say, ‘Mate, you’re a superstar.’ He told me that they were backing me for a cabinet role, which made me feel a little uneasy. Since coming to Canberra I’d religiously steered clear of pub microphones and karaoke bars. I held my own band in too high regard. An endorsement from political vipers like this could mean anything.
I’d retained the portfolio of Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts in Julia Gillard’s first ministry. Before the election, one of my final decisions in the environment portfolio was actually a non-decision. I’d hit the pause button and deferred the approval of two major proposals by British Gas and Santos, for coal seam gas and liquefied natural gas projects, which would include a major port upgrade at Gladstone in Central Queensland. I suspected it was difficult, if not impossible, to manage the impacts of large-scale dredging on the waters adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
There was another issue that warranted further consideration. The contamination of groundwater by the extraction process—a growing problem for coal seam gas projects—needed to be fully explored, and the advice from Geosciences Australia had been unambiguous: ‘The impact of coal seam gas development on the Great Artesian Basin is not sufficiently addressed.’
But as was usually the case, there was intense press
ure for an announcement that would have strong headline investment and employment figures, with both the resources minister, Martin Ferguson, and the treasurer, Wayne Swan, acutely focused on the decision. Ferguson had already raised eyebrows with a request that the attorney-general’s department monitor the activity of green activists. Did that mean monitoring the environment minister?, a few colleagues wondered aloud. I suspected Swan, who’d always supported me, would also be happy to see me out of the environment portfolio, especially given the number of knockbacks I’d given to projects in Queensland over the past two and a half years.
While plenty of wind shear had come with the role, I felt I’d been an effective minister, with all decisions made soundly. I’d finally shaken off the wobbles, even though, with the wisdom of hindsight, I could see how some issues might have been better handled. I had good relationships with most of the senior leadership team by now and would call on them if necessary, but only if factional plays threatened to spiral out of control and take me with them. At the very least, I was sane and reasonable, which was more than could be said for quite a few people around the place. In the harem-like atmosphere of the Caucus, where gossip and game-playing were rife and where Rudd was sure to create mischief, there probably weren’t that many people whom Gillard could trust not to be diverted by internal politics, who would simply concentrate on bringing the education reforms home. And so it turned out that Julia Gillard offered me the position of Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, a fresh start and a hefty agenda, working closely with the prime minister and her office—something I had no problem with at all.
The agenda was definitely ambitious—a good thing—but it needed to be signed off and delivered in quick time: a new needs-based school funding system, the national curriculum, an agreement on Indigenous education with the states to better support Aboriginal students, and the rollout of new national childcare standards were priorities that would normally take a couple of terms to bed down properly. That we managed this and more over the next thirty or so months was testament to the hard work of many people—advisers, staff, bureaucrats, sector leaders. It really was nothing short of a miracle, as swirling leadership tensions generated by Rudd’s ‘will he, won’t he?’ game guaranteed that the government appeared to be perpetually under siege.
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