Penny Wong

by Simons, Margaret;

  *

  In the second half of 1995, early in her time in Yeadon’s office, Penny Wong met Dascia Bennett, a woman eight years her senior. Bennett had been working with an NGO involved in timber industry restructuring before moving into the superannuation sector, but they didn’t meet through work. Rather, the connection was made through a network of former South Australians. Bennett was a country girl from the north of the state. She had married young to Mark Weckert, a farmer from the town of Brinkworth, about two hours north of Adelaide, and together they had moved to Grass Patch in Western Australia, where they established a broadacre wheat-and-sheep farm. They had two children, Rohan and Courtney. Bennett was a member of the National Party. She ran, under her married name of Dascia Weckert, in the third position on the ticket for the upper house of the Western Australian parliament at the 1993 election. Yet she claims that when she met Penny Wong she discovered that their core values were not so far apart. Today, she describes her early politics as ‘agrarian socialism’, with a concern for community at their core. This, she says, she shared with Wong.

  Bennett’s marriage to Mark Weckert had broken up amicably in 1994. She had moved back to South Australia with the children, then to New South Wales, for a job. She had never thought of herself as gay, but when Wong invited her out on a date she was open to the idea, if a little nervous. ‘It took me a little by surprise, I suppose,’ says Bennett today. Soon she felt ‘really very comfortable’. Those first dates were ‘fascinating, layered, not one-dimensional, because she was so smart and interesting and vibrant … I remember thinking she was someone who was going to go far in politics, and I wanted to be part of that journey.’ Once again, the language of love – food – was central: ‘She was just amazing; she could cook beautifully and I was good with wine, so I think we complemented each other.’

  Bennett’s children, then in primary school, adjusted easily to Wong. Once the two women were cooking together while the children watched television; the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was on, and Rohan looked up and asked, ‘Are you two gay?’ Penny responded quickly, ‘Yes, we are.’ And that was that. Bennett says, ‘Kids of that age don’t have any preconceived ideas in their heads. They respond to love, respect and boundaries. They thought Penny was just a wonderful person that came into my life and made Mum happy.’

  Soon the four were a family. Bennett and her children were living in Coogee. Wong was ‘a real star in New South Wales’, and Bennett’s career was also progressing. Their mutual busyness meant it was difficult to see enough of each other. Around mid-1996 they had a conversation in which Penny made it clear that she regarded the relationship as serious. When there were children involved, she said, one should not muck around but be prepared to commit. ‘She said she thought she should move in, so she did.’

  It was a happy time for both women, but not without shadows. Bennett remembers walking with Penny when two young white men turned and spat at them, spewing anti-Asian abuse. ‘I don’t want to repeat the language they used. I was a country girl. I wanted to go and throttle them, but Penny held me back.’ It was always there, says Bennett, ‘the presence of that prejudice. It was awful, for someone like her, who is so brilliant and articulate and smart. To be seen as lesser is just intolerable.’

  Toby Wong used to visit them. Bennett describes the connection between Toby and Penny as ‘very close, a connection you could sense in the room’. He taught Rohan and Courtney to cook. He bought them a milkshake maker because, he said, ‘all children need a milkshake maker’. She recalls, ‘Toby was a very creative young man and blessed with amazing skills.’ It was clear that he struggled with drug addiction and depression, but ‘he was in and out of dealing with those challenges. I never saw the darkness. I just saw a lovely man.’ Meanwhile the children’s father, Mark, and Penny also got on. ‘He would visit the kids, and he and Penny would sit around drinking red wine and gently prodding me and teasing me.’

  Several people take credit for bringing Penny Wong back to South Australia to seek preselection for the Senate. Nick Bolkus and Pat Conlon remember flying over to Sydney to talk to her. She was keen right away, they say, but concerned to know whether they were genuine: was it a real possibility? Mark Butler, too, remembers a lunch with Wong near the Macquarie Street government offices in which the idea was discussed. Again, her main concern was whether the opportunity was tangible enough for her to abandon her career in New South Wales.

  Butler and the other members of the so-called Bolkus Left were in a strong position to persuade her. The new Machine was in place, and the party in South Australia was operating in a stable and professional fashion. They were in the midst of generational change at state and federal levels. The Left could only expect to get one senator preselected in South Australia for the next federal election, and South Australia – a ‘small show’ in the context of the federal party – could only expect to get one minister in a federal Labor cabinet. Penny was clearly the leading contender, says Butler. It was obvious that if she entered parliament she would become a senior player. He was able to assure her she would be the Left candidate for the Senate, and if preselected would be placed in a winnable position on the ticket.

  Everyone involved assumed that she should contest the Senate rather than the House of Representatives. Looking back, Butler says that he saw her as more naturally oriented to the Senate. She was ‘better suited to the policy and committee work of the Senate than the daily electorate work of a House of Representatives seat’. As well, although nobody remembers an explicit discussion along these lines, there was a perception that a gay Asian woman would be challenged in winning a popular vote for the lower house.

  Wong herself was always clear that she would run for the Senate. She feared the impact of racial prejudice. In the lower house this could cost the party a seat. ‘If people don’t like Asians, then no matter how you perform and how good your policies are, you just do the maths. If one in twenty people change their vote just on that issue, that’s 5 per cent, and that could lose you the seat. I wasn’t prepared to risk that for the party, or to put myself through it.’

  Dascia Bennett was not surprised when Penny Wong raised the idea of a return to Adelaide. She says she knew that her partner ‘was something really special. She was clearly going to do something extraordinary. And why not do that in South Australia, the state of Don Dunstan, the home of good social policies? That was our journey, and it was a very shared journey.’

  Bennett became an active member of the Labor Party. She gave up her job to follow Wong back to Adelaide. She enrolled to study at Flinders University, and threw herself into the social and political occasions involved in preparing for preselection.

  Wong acknowledges that Bennett was vital to her success. Bennett, she says, is an extrovert, ‘unlike me’, and was ‘good with the working-class blokes’. Bennett says the two of them would rarely disagree on policy, but would sometimes disagree on the right approach. Penny Wong was always cautious, always able to see both sides. ‘You sit on the fence and you’ll get nowhere,’ Dascia would tell her. ‘Sometimes you have to give it a red-hot go.’

  ‘Penny and I were a good balance for each other,’ Bennett says. ‘She is more a policy generator and into the detail of policy. I can do that, but she probably needed a partner who could go to the barbeque or be at the bar and do the fundraiser and talk to the union boys.’

  Meanwhile, there was a natural job for Penny Wong. Adelaide is a small town, and the law firm that served the left-wing unions, Duncan & Hannon, drew nascent Labor left-wingers like iron filings to a magnet. Jay Weatherill had worked there, as had Pat Conlon and Mark Butler. At the time Wong joined the firm, one of her colleagues, Anthony Durkin, was sharing a house with Weatherill. He had moved in when she moved out, two years before. It was a close-knit, almost claustrophobic, circle. Wong had returned to the heart of the internecine world of Adelaide Labor.

  The then senior partner of Duncan & Hannon, Peter Hannon and his wife had met Pen
ny through Weatherill, and through their Labor Party involvement. Hannon had floated the prospect of a job with Wong just before she moved to New South Wales. When Wong rang to tell Hannon’s wife, Karen, that she was coming back to South Australia, Peter was happy to hear the news, and quick to offer her a job. First, he thought she would deal well with the ‘esoteric’ and often difficult area of industrial law at a time when the parameters of employment awards were being tested by the Howard government’s new industrial laws. Second, he was always keen to build connections with key unions. Her background with the CFMEU and the Missos could only help. ‘It was good PR,’ he recalls. He knew she wanted a political career. He had employed a few people who had gone on to become politicians. He and Wong struck a deal that while working for him she would be ‘fully on board’ and focused, but when the time came for her to concentrate on politics she would tell him and leave with no hard feelings.

  She didn’t disappoint. In addition to her intellect, he says, she had a ‘calm and considered approach’ and was able to quickly get across factual and legal complexity. Many people who want to be politicians do not make good lawyers, observes Hannon. ‘They are big-picture people, but Penny Wong could be both big-picture and appreciate the detail,’ he says. ‘She was really excellent that way.’

  Few of the matters she was involved in during her time at the firm were significant, in the sense that they were heard in the junior courts and set no legal precedents, but each had importance for the people involved, and many of them were difficult. They serve as a reminder that, while factional union powerbrokers were negotiating over her preselection, Wong was dealing with the ‘real’ work of the unions – advocacy on behalf of ordinary working people. Before the Workers Compensation Appeal Tribunal, she argued – successfully – for an aged-care nursing assistant. The woman had made a stress claim after her employer pushed to get rid of older staff.21 She represented eleven workers made redundant from an aged-care home22 and a metal polisher whose workers compensation payments for carpal tunnel syndrome had been halted.23 Another case concerned a nurse working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the issue being whether a new enterprise agreement designed to cover health workers applied.24 Then there was a raft of unfair dismissals, an injured carpenter in dispute with the WorkCover authority about how much he was to be paid25 and a worker in a hospital with an injured back.26 Added to this was a dispute about whether a builder’s meal allowance should be included in the wages used to assess a workers compensation claim27 and the case of a childcare worker who lost a finger in a slammed door.28 Hannon says the published judgements are only a fraction of the work she did. In workers compensation, only about 1 per cent of matters reach judgement; the others are settled. Penny Wong was a formidable negotiator. Her tenacity led to better settlements.

  Working at the firm was rewarding, remembers Anthony Durkin, who is now at the Bar. There was a sense of purpose and camaraderie. ‘You felt part of a movement, you felt part of a group of people who were committed to doing the right thing. On the other side was the dark side, and we were on the light side, on the side of the powerless.’

  Durkin had known Penny Wong for years. He, too, had been involved in student politics at university, though he was some years ahead of her. Meeting her again when she returned to Adelaide in late 1996, he was struck by her ‘undercurrent of seriousness’. She could be fun – she had a ready and hearty laugh – but nevertheless it was the professionalism that left the greatest impression. Sometimes they had to handle each other’s files when one of them was on leave or unavailable. If Wong had been involved in his matters, he would get the file back with meticulous handwritten notes bringing him up to speed: ‘It was evident the clients had been in good hands.’

  It was Wong’s work for the firm that resulted in one of the first articles mentioning her in the mainstream media. The Advertiser reported on 9 March 1998 that a bus driver she had represented had won a landmark case before the full Industrial Relations Court of South Australia. Former soldier Barry Leddy had been classified as a part-time worker but was paid for more than thirty-eight hours a week by the State Transport Authority. The court found that he was entitled to full-time pay and conditions. Towards the end of the article, Wong is quoted: ‘These drivers were Clayton’s part-timers. The department can’t have its cake and eat it too.’29

  Nine weeks later, The Advertiser used her name again – this time in a report that she had been selected as the Left faction’s candidate for the Labor Party Senate ticket. The Machine – the Left and the Right in their power-sharing agreement – was splitting the positions between them. Linda Kirk was the Right candidate. That meant that if the Machine had its way with preselections, the ‘marginalised Centre Left’ sitting senator Chris Schacht would be relegated to an almost unwinnable spot. (The other sitting senator, Rosemary Crowley, did not seek preselection and supported Wong to replace her.)30

  But the battle wasn’t quite over, and it was about to get dirty.

  In the meantime, Penny Wong switched jobs. Mark Butler had become secretary of the Miscellaneous Workers’ Union at the end of 1996 and president of the South Australian branch of the Labor Party the year after. It was a crucial time for the unions. In light of the new industrial laws, the Missos needed a dedicated legal officer. In late 1999, Butler offered Wong the job.

  Peter Hannon was sorry to lose her. She left at an inconvenient time – on the eve of a large and complex Australian Education Union state industrial case – but he recognised that she was adhering to her deal. ‘The stars were aligning for her politically, and it was a natural job for her to move to.’

  The close-fought work continued, but this time with the additional challenge of a need to define the boundaries and implications of the new industrial laws. There was an action before the full Industrial Relations Court about the cessation of night-shift penalties,31 another about the entitlement of Buttercup Bakeries staff to take industrial action,32 and a third about the rights of contract cleaners who were sacked when their company lost a contract and immediately rehired by another, related company.33 Then there was the school groundsman and whether he should be paid an ‘on call’ allowance,34 a dispute about the correct wage for qualified childcare workers,35 and a case concerning a dealer at the Adelaide Casino who had developed depression following his return to work after an injury – this in the context of the casino trying to negotiate Australian Workplace Agreements with its staff. Another case, in which Wong represented a glass cutter who had not been paid overtime, resulted in a resonant passage in the judgement of the South Australian Industrial Relations Court:

  An award is an exercise in public lawmaking; it has the force of legislation because it is legislation … No one can contract out of an award, and any attempt to do so is illegal and unenforceable in the courts. It is remarkable how often this court has urged upon it the submission that it should not apply the provisions of an award because the parties are said to have agreed to something different. The only challenge in the exercise lies in penetrating the thicket of words in which this basically untenable argument is camouflaged.

  The present trends towards enterprise bargaining do not alter this principle at all.36

  The glass cutter got his overtime, plus interest. Meanwhile, the judgement was an eloquent statement of the main issues that the Labor Party was to contest in the years ahead – an attack on collective bargaining, and ultimately the WorkChoices legislation.

  The federal election in which Penny Wong was elected to the Senate was held in late 2001. Because of the way the Senate works, she did not take up her seat until the middle of the following year. Right up until then she was doing this work: dealing with the nitty-gritty of the wider struggle, the local implications of changes taking place on the national stage.

  She was representing the all-too-often-forgotten basis and justification for union power – the worker.

  6

  CHOSEN

  When Wong and her new family returned
to Adelaide, they began to attend church on an occasional basis. Dascia had what Penny Wong describes today as ‘a nice sort of Christian faith. Not into the formality but just a sense of God.’ It was something they shared. The church they attended, the Blackwood Uniting Church in the Adelaide Hills, brought Wong full circle with her Australian ancestry: her grandparents had been married there when it was Methodist.

  The minister was the mother of one of Courtney’s schoolfriends. When she met Dascia and Penny for the first time, she encouraged them to come to a service. ‘We’ve dealt with all the homophobia,’ she assured them. Through this minister, and through her relationship with Dascia and her children, Penny’s inchoate sense of God began to find a form of expression that felt fitting. Soon, she wanted a ritual – not a confirmation, but an affirmation of faith. On a Sunday morning, as part of a normal service, and after preparatory discussions about faith, Penny Wong was baptised.

  Pressed on what she believes – is God a creator, for example, and what about the problem of evil – she resists. Wong seems cool and logical to the outside world (indeed, this is one of the reasons she is seen as a natural leader) but she is, she says, primarily driven by emotion. She describes her faith as instinctive and emotional, not intellectual. ‘You can tie me up, ask me a hundred questions to which I don’t have a clear theological answer. I just have a sense that God is there, and I want to continue to have some sort of relationship with Him, or Her.’ She quotes John Shelby Spong: ‘There are different paths to God. I find God through Jesus of Nazareth but others find God in other ways.’