Penny Wong
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Penny Wong was late one morning in early 2019 for an interview for this book. It was because of ‘a dispute about fairy wings’. Her younger daughter, Hannah, was determined to wear a shirt with wings attached and ‘it was in the dirty-clothes basket and it was filthy and I said, “You can’t wear that.” And so I had to look for the fairy wings we got for Christmas, which were somewhere in the back of the cupboard … It’s hard because she is a gentle kid, and if you get angry with her she gets really upset, and it’s …’ She threw her hands over her face. ‘It’s, arrrrgh.’
Penny Wong and Sophie Allouache announced that they were pregnant with their second child in December 2014, with the baby due in April.
It had been a normal month in the life of the Labor opposition – a continuation of the hard work of holding the government to account and looking for political advantage. But it was also a momentous month for the world. China announced at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that it would agree to a peak in its greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, followed by a reduction. The commitment would be confirmed at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, where the accord that Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd had helped formulate at Copenhagen was transformed into an international agreement to strive to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. In 2014, Wong said the China announcement was a sign that the Abbott government was out of touch in its continuing poor record on climate-change action.34
A few days later, she was putting pressure on the Abbott government over broken promises regarding ABC funding, and successfully embarrassed defence minister David Johnston when, during a heated Senate debate, he claimed that the Adelaide-based Australian Submarine Corporation could not be trusted to build a canoe. ‘He is a disgrace,’ she said in the Senate. ‘This is a man who has insulted thousands of hard-working Australians.’35 Johnston was removed in a reshuffle a few weeks later.
The week after Johnston’s gaffe, she was having a go at education minister Christopher Pyne after his bill to deregulate university fees was defeated by Labor and the crossbenchers in the Senate. ‘Instead of trying to pretend he’s Churchill, Christopher Pyne might actually try to go back to the drawing board and come up with a package that is more fair,’ she said.36
Three days after that came the announcement of the pregnancy. She released the news in an interview with her hometown newspaper, The Advertiser. The baby, Wong said, had been conceived using the same IVF donor as Alexandra – a man known to the family but whose identity would remain private.
The announcement had effectively been made by three-year-old Alexandra. At the South Australian Labor convention in Adelaide in November, she had been sitting on the sidelines reading The Gruffalo over and over again to a baby. Wong came to check on her, and a friend said, ‘She’s just told everyone Mummy’s got a baby in her tummy.’37 Adelaide is efficient at nothing if not the spreading of gossip.
Reception of the news was far removed from the international media storm that had accompanied news of Alexandra’s conception in 2011. This time there were only a handful of stories, most of them discussing Sophie’s pregnancy along with the fact that South Australian Labor MPs Kate Ellis and Amanda Rishworth were also expecting. A few days later, Crikey published its light-hearted annual awards list for politicians. Penny Wong was rated the third sexiest politician, behind Tanya Plibersek and the Greens’ Larissa Waters. Sarah Hanson-Young was fourth. There was no mention of the impending birth.38
Hannah was born on Good Friday 2015. As with Alexandra, Francis Wong chose the Chinese middle names. Tian, the generational name, was shared with Alexandra. The second middle name was Hoong, which means ‘rainbow’. Penny and Sophie chose the name Hannah because Penny liked it.
Once again, the birth came as the debate on same-sex marriage was heating up. The Labor Party was due to hold its national conference in July. Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek had announced she would be pushing for an end to the conscience vote on same-sex marriage, meaning that all Labor parliamentarians would be bound to vote for any future marriage equality bills before the parliament. The Coalition was split on the issue, and Tony Abbott was coming under pressure. Bill Shorten said he supported marriage equality but was against a binding vote. The media reported that the proposal would almost certainly be defeated. Other Labor MPs said they would cross the floor rather than vote to legalise same-sex marriage.39
Yet despite the political backdrop, this time around, the reception to her daughter’s birth was muted. Penny announced it on Twitter, with a picture of Alexandra holding the newborn. The media commented that the photo was ‘adorable’, and moved on.40 There was some hateful stuff on Twitter, but at nothing like the levels when Alexandra had been born. In just three years, the idea of a lesbian couple deciding to be mothers had moved from a scandal and a nationally divisive issue to a normal part of life. The country had moved.
But not all of it.
In June 2015, shortly after Penny Wong had returned to work after a month of parental leave, the Catholic Bishop of Port Pirie wrote to his parishioners saying that the children of same-sex partnerships would in future feel like a ‘stolen generation’.41 It made the national news. Penny Wong later described the ‘stolen generation’ tag, which was picked up by others, as one of the most hurtful things ever said about her family.
In mid-2015, with Hannah in the first months of life and Labor’s national conference approaching, it had become clear that the parliament could not, or would not, deliver on marriage equality until either Labor enforced a binding vote in accord with its platform or the Coalition allowed a conscience vote. Some were saying it was another example – along with climate change – of the Australian political system’s inability to deliver good outcomes.
A lot had changed over the years Penny Wong had been a member of the Australian Labor Party. The Left faction, once relatively powerless, was growing in influence. Anthony Albanese had almost become leader in 2013. Mark Butler was now the party’s national president. At the 2015 national conference, the Left would be on a near-equal footing with the Right. This was the result of many changes, but among them were the hard and dirty political work behind the scenes, the deals and the shaftings, some of which had involved Penny Wong. She was not outside or above politics. Penny Wong was, and had always been, absolutely and fundamentally inside politics and of politics. That was the choice she had made all those years ago. This was why what she did mattered, beyond the purely personal. That was why she had stepped into the spotlight on marriage equality.
In the lead-up to the July 2015 national conference in Melbourne, the Left faction was split on the issue of the conscience vote. The faction met privately on the morning of the vote, Sunday 26 July, in a final push to reach agreement. Albanese spoke emphatically in favour of a conscience vote. Then came Penny Wong. She said how rare it was for her to disagree with Albanese. She talked about how she had voted ‘for my own discrimination’ in 2004, because she believed in collectivism, and appealed for that spirit to prevail now. ‘We are a party that stands together and fights together. We should stand together and fight together for equality before the law.’ Some of the delegates were in tears.
The vote was conducted on the voices, and Penny Wong had a clear win. This victory meant that she was once again at risk of humiliating a Labor leader – this time Bill Shorten – who had publicly backed a conscience vote.42
Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek went to see him and negotiated a face-saving compromise. The conscience vote would stay in place for the rest of the parliamentary term, and the one after, but from 2019 all Labor MPs would be obliged to vote for same-sex marriage in line with the party platform. It was an intellectually inconsistent compromise – suggesting that same-sex marriage was a matter of conscience for four years but would then become an inalienable human right. In return, Shorten was to make a public promise that within one hundred days of a Labor government win he would introduce legislation to allow for same-sex marriage.
She reminded them of 2011, when the platform changed. ‘I don’t think I have had a prouder day as a member of the Labor Party, and I will be prouder still when we deliver marriage equality in law.’ She would like it sooner, she said, but ‘this resolution does what we want, which is to end the conscience vote, and you have the alternate Prime Minister of Australia giving you the commitment of what a Labor government will do – one hundred days, a marriage equality bill. But I want to win it sooner … I want to win it in this parliament if we can.’
She challenged ‘true liberals’ to back same-sex marriage in the parliament: ‘Marriage equality is a campaign of hope. It is a campaign of justice and it is a campaign of equality. But most of all, delegates – and this is why we will win – it is a campaign for those we love, for our partners, for our friends, our sisters, our brothers, our sons, our daughters.’43
Two weeks after the Labor Party conference, the Coalition party room met to try to solve their impasse on the issue. Liberals in favour of marriage equality – including Malcolm Turnbull – were furious when Prime Minister Tony Abbott included the National Party, most of whom were opposed.
It was one of the most gruelling meetings in Coalition history. More than ninety parliamentarians spoke. The media were camped outside, marriage equality campaigners were glued to their televisions, and members of Australian Marriage Equality were on the telephones to the MPs and their influencers, armed with research, arguments and emotional support.
After six hours, Abbott emerged to face the media. He gave a long preamble, then announced that about two-thirds of his colleagues were against a free vote. Nevertheless, he had decided that the current term of parliament would be the last in which Liberal and National MPs would be bound to vote against same-sex marriage.
Right at the end of a long address, he said that in the next parliamentary term, same-sex marriage would be put to a public vote – a plebiscite. He gave no details – no idea of the timing or how the vote would be conducted. It was a way of managing the bitter divisions within the party. Penny Wong told marriage equality campaigners she was astounded by the lengths Abbott would go to in order to avoid a parliamentary vote in which, inevitably, some MPs would defy his authority and cross the floor.44 As for the plan for a plebiscite, she described it to the media as ‘a green light for hate speech … We saw that Tony Abbott is a man who will fight tooth and nail to be yesterday’s man.’45
One month later, Turnbull deposed Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party. He said the party needed to provide leadership that ‘respects people’s intelligence’. To become prime minister, he had needed the National Party to transfer the Coalition agreement to his leadership. The Nationals struck a hard bargain. Turnbull had to pledge, against his own principles, to stick to the Abbott plan for a plebiscite on same-sex marriage. He put it in writing. As Turnbull’s numbers man, Simon Birmingham, put it later, the surrender on same-sex marriage was uniquely costly. ‘That issue, more than any other, gave strength to Labor’s narrative that Malcolm had capitulated to the Right. It didn’t hurt immediately, but the symbolic power was huge.’46
Still, both sides of politics had now moved. Labor would enforce a pro-marriage equality vote. The Liberals would allow a conscience vote. The plebiscite was the conservatives’ last hope – on an assumption that the public shared their views and would block change.
The 2016 election was a double dissolution called on the basis that the Senate had twice rejected government legislation to establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, but was in fact fought mostly over jobs, the economy and the future of Medicare. It was to be an eight-week slog to election day and, once again, Penny Wong was campaign spokesperson. Marriage equality was a live issue. Turnbull said he would vote yes in any plebiscite. Shorten said that people’s relationships shouldn’t be ‘submitted to a public opinion poll’.47
In June, at the height of the election campaign, Penny Wong delivered the Lionel Murphy Memorial Lecture, with marriage equality as her topic. She opened up about her experience of hate speech and the likely impact of a public vote.
For many gay and lesbian Australians, hate speech is not abstract. It’s real. It’s part of our everyday life. My Twitter feed already foretells the inevitable nature of an anti-equality campaign …
As a public figure I’m pretty immune from the slings and arrows of public debate … I am resilient enough to withstand it, but many are not … I oppose a plebiscite because I do not want my relationship, my family, to be the subject of inquiry, of censure, of condemnation, by others. And I don’t want other relationships, other families, to be targeted either.
Many same-sex couples don’t hold hands on the street because they don’t know what reaction they’ll get. Some hide who they are for fear of the consequences at home, at work, at school … Not one straight politician advocating a plebiscite on marriage equality knows what that is like – what it is like to live with the casual and deliberate prejudice that some still harbour.48
This was one of a collection of speeches and articles Penny Wong delivered during 2016 and 2017 in which she developed the case for marriage equality, and tackled the opposing arguments.49 Sometimes, in the ones for the general public, she would speak mainly of love; in others, often for more specialised audiences, she talked history and philosophy. But the speeches all followed a similar trajectory. First, she placed the issue in the context of the long fight against discrimination. She compared homophobic policy to racial discrimination and laws of gender inequality – both now illegal.
Then she stepped through her opponents’ main arguments. That marriage was immutable? That ‘marriage just is’, as Cory Bernardi had put it? History proved that untrue. Marriage existed long before Christian weddings were the norm, and at various times and locations, different groups of people had been excluded – slaves and prisoners, for example. In some places, marriage between those of different races had been banned. In parts of Australia, Aboriginal people had needed permission from the state to marry up until the 1950s. Now, gay and lesbian Australians were excluded from the institution. Marriage is an enduring institution, but it has never been frozen in time.50 In Jane Austen’s era, marriage had been mostly about money, family alliances and social position. All were thought to be more important than love.
She moved to the other side of the argument – coming from radicals who argued that marriage is an archaic institution, rooted in inequality, and therefore why should gays aspire to be married? Marriage had evolved, she said. Heterosexual people had changed it, so it was now chiefly about mutual support, intimacy and love. Why should gay people be excluded from that? ‘Marriage has endured precisely because it has evolved, adapted and embraced change.’51
The argument from religion? Here she talked about her own faith: ‘I don’t think the God of my faith would be affronted by who I am, my relationship nor my family.’52 She often quoted John Locke on the importance of freedom, including freedom from the imposition of religious belief. Locke had described homosexuality as ‘promiscuous uncleanness’. But, she said, those who would quote Locke in support of discrimination against gays made ‘a basic error in logic … they can’t distinguish principle from context. In my view, Locke identified a fundamental principle on which democratic politics is founded. It is the principle that matters, not who discovered it. One’s own views should not determine the rights of others.’53 She spoke about the changes in public opinion in her own time – how she now enjoyed the easy acceptance of her neighbour; the generosity of members of the public who stopped her in the street, at the airport, to tell her to press on; the good wishes received whe
n her daughters were born, not only from friends but from strangers.54
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The federal election was held on 2 July 2016. The result wasn’t clear for days. Sitting on the ABC television panel on election night, Penny Wong said as the results rolled in: ‘The people have spoken – we’re just trying to work out what they said.’55
After a week of counting, neither party had a majority. Eventually, Turnbull achieved a one-seat majority. It was the second-closest election since 1961. Labor had come within a ghost of victory.
During the final fortnight of the campaign, the Labor Party had pushed hard against the plebiscite, instead touting Shorten’s commitment – marriage equality in the first one hundred days of a Labor government, through a parliamentary vote. Activists in the marriage equality movement were now dedicated to opposing the plebiscite but preparing to win it if they had to. The government had the numbers to pass the necessary legislation in the lower house. The Senate was less certain. Labor took some time to make its position clear – although Penny Wong had already publicly opposed a plebiscite in the Lionel Murphy lecture. Over the second half of 2016, the Greens, Senator Derryn Hinch and the Nick Xenophon Team all announced that they would vote against the plebiscite, and in October Labor stated it would too.
In November the plebiscite legislation was defeated in the Senate 33–29. Penny Wong spoke during the debate, again emphasising the reality of hate speech and its impact. After the vote she felt satisfied, but not jubilant. She hoped the vote had succeeded in protecting vulnerable people. But the parliament, with its politics-as-usual approach, was no closer to delivering marriage equality.56
Wong and others began working on a way forward, which she assumed would succeed only under the next Labor government. The current government had released an exposure draft of a same-sex marriage bill sponsored by the Liberal senator Dean Smith. This was to be the vehicle for delivering the reform if the plebiscite succeeded. Wong lobbied for the bill to be put through the political process, and the Senate voted to establish a cross-party inquiry into the draft.