The resulting report was released in the week of Valentine’s Day 2017. For the first time there was a cross-party consensus on the legislation. The bill would allow same-sex couples to marry but also protect the religious celebration of marriage. Wong told the Senate this was the first time ‘the clouds of partisanship have parted … We must now, together, take the next steps, to work together, to compromise, to end this debate and to achieve what is the will of the overwhelming majority of the Australian people.’57 She told the media it was a ‘historic agreement on how we can move forward and achieve marriage equality … We ought to pause to consider the enormity of that achievement. [On] a debate so often mired in partisanship, mired in acrimony, a debate characterised by finger-pointing, we have a spirit of cooperation and the agreement around this report.’58
The emergence of a consensus bill gave more momentum to the debate. Corporate Australia joined in, with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce arguing that the parliament was falling behind the will of the people. Opinion polls showed increasing levels of popular support. Pressure was mounting on the government. On 9 August it brought the plebiscite bill forward again, and failed to get it to first base. Later that day it was announced that, instead of a plebiscite, which needed legislation, the government would instead have the Australian Bureau of Statistics conduct a postal survey.
A High Court challenge to disallow this failed. Over 16 million survey forms were mailed out from 12 September with a deadline for return of 7 November.
Wong hadn’t wanted a plebiscite but, now the survey was inevitable, she decided along with the broader marriage equality movement that everything had to be thrown into winning it. She and others in Labor recommended to the two umbrella movements conducting the campaign for same-sex marriage – Australian Marriage Equality and Australians for Equality – that they recruit Tim Gartrell to lead the campaign. Wong had worked with Gartrell on several campaigns, including the 2007 effort that had brought Kevin Rudd to power. She told the lobbyists that Gartrell ‘has the ability to think meta as well as details. So he sees the frame and the picture and the narrative and the emotional feel, but he’s also good at the nuts and bolts. And very few people can do both.’59
While the High Court was still deliberating, Gartrell and the team assembled a campaign that reached out across the nation, including business, the union movement and community groups. There were rallies across Australia. Wong addressed a number of them. Meanwhile, when Wong was out with the children, Alexandra would count the number of cafés they passed with rainbow YES signs in the windows. Wong campaigned in Adelaide alongside the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and the Liberals’ Christopher Pyne. On this issue, political differences were put aside.
When the results were released on 15 November, Wong was in a Senate committee room in Parliament House, television cameras trained on her and the other politicians gathered to watch the announcement on television. ‘I’m nervous,’ she said. She drank several glasses of water and joked that she wished it were gin. The volume on the television was turned up. ‘These are the longest minutes of my life,’ she said, closing her eyes for a short prayer.60
The chief statistician came on the screen and talked about the process of the survey. Penny Wong stood, her hand clasped tightly in a fist and held against her chest, chin up, eyes hard. She braced herself for the worst. She pursed her lips.
Then, at 10.03 am, the number of Yes votes was announced: 7,817,247. Penny Wong’s face was animated. In a few seconds, she smiled, then frowned, then rocked from side to side. As the percentage of Yes votes was announced – 61.6 – she buried her face in her hands and turned away from the camera in tears. Labor senators Sam Dastyari and Pat Dodson patted her awkwardly on the back. Derryn Hinch put a rainbow flag around her shoulders.
In this moment, the political and the personal collided. Penny Wong’s armour – her shield – collapsed. The Australian public had done what the parliament had been unable to do on its own. As the political journalist Katharine Murphy put it, ‘The majority had spoken and they had accepted Penny Wong, her private and the public self. It was all OK.’61
The perpetual outsider, the Hakka descendant, the guest person, had been embraced and accepted – celebrated, even – and was now home.
*
At Wong’s urging, action on the marriage equality bill began right away. An alternative bill containing stronger religious protections amounting to new forms of discrimination against same-sex couples was already before the parliament, sponsored by a conservative Liberal MP. Within hours of the plebiscite result, the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 – the Dean Smith Bill, now co-sponsored by a cross-party group including Penny Wong – was introduced in the Senate.
Wong spoke in the debate the next day. She pointed out that the Yes vote had been higher than any national two-party-preferred vote in the nation’s history – marriage equality had more support than either of the two main political parties. It was ‘a day of joy and a day of grace’, she said. ‘I chose to put my name in support of this bill because I believe this is the bill that can pass the parliament.’ The Yes vote showed that fairness and equality in Australia grew ever stronger. ‘This is the most personal of debates because it is about the people who matter most to us. It is about the people we love. So I say to Sophie, “Thank you for your love and commitment and for all you do.” And I say to our beautiful daughters, Alexandra and Hannah, “I work for and fight for the world I want for you.”’62
She sat down, accepted the hugs of her colleagues and some from the other side of the bench and, for the second time in forty-eight hours, the camera caught her brushing away tears.
Penny Wong made it clear to marriage equality campaigners that Labor would not support any amendments that amounted to new forms of discrimination – including changes to anti-discrimination laws to allow businesses to refuse services to gay couples.63 On 29 November, the bill was passed by the Senate. None of the conservatives’ amendments had been accepted. It passed the House of Representatives, also without amendment, on 7 December 2017.
The strategy – engineering a consensus bill through the Senate process – had worked. Politics had worked. And yet it had been done not by the parliament alone but by the people – by all those normally outside ‘the room’ in which decisions are made.
After the vote, Tim Gartrell said the result overturned conventional wisdom about the electorate’s conservatism. He predicted it would energise the ambition of Australia’s progressives on other fronts.64 The 2019 federal election result has surely blunted that optimism. Many of the young people who enrolled to vote on same-sex marriage did not vote in the election.
So will Penny Wong and Sophie Allouache marry? Asked this question in early 2019, Wong said, ‘Oh, who knows? That’s something we will discuss together, and not in public.’ It was never about her own desire to marry, she says, it was about her right to do so, and the right of everyone else like her.
When Sophie Allouache and Penny Wong filled out their survey forms, they did it with the children present. They walked together to the postbox. Penny Wong handed her form to the children, and they dropped it in. It was mostly about them, after all. ‘For me, this really was wanting them to grow up not ever having society say to them that “your family is lesser”.’65
13
A DANGEROUS PLACE
The 2019 federal election loss was devastating for Labor. The word was used often in the media to describe the events of 18 May, but it doesn’t begin to capture the human reality of the disappointment.
Politicians don’t attract much sympathy. They choose to play the game of thrones. Wong, at fifty years old, had spent most of her seventeen years in parliament preparing for power – for the ability to make a difference in government. In return she had had only the limited opportunities and plentiful frustrations of opposition, together with that brief, compromised six years of the Rudd–Gillard–Rudd government, with all its challenges and bitter unf
ulfilment. At a personal level, this loss was tragic.
The word ‘tragedy’ comes to us from the Greeks, where it meant a form of drama based on human suffering and the affairs of nations. In its true sense, the word is wrapped up with personal and political aspiration and human failings. According to Aristotle, the audience of a tragic play should leave the theatre cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and humans. In tragedy, the lowest point comes before catharsis, which brings a lightening of the emotions, and fresh hope. At the time of the final interview for this book, on 9 July 2019, Penny Wong had not reached catharsis.
Wong did not expect the election defeat. ‘It’s the first election I haven’t really judged correctly. But I don’t think I’m an orphan in that,’ she says. The Labor Party had been preparing for government. Public opinion polls had been predicting a Labor victory for almost three years, following the near win in 2016. Bill Shorten was never popular, but the party had, in public at least, united behind him. Meanwhile, the Coalition government had been in chaos, with Malcolm Turnbull deposed and Scott Morrison taking his job in August 2018.
Penny Wong had been preparing to be the minister for foreign affairs. After the 2016 election, she had requested the shadow portfolio. Over the next three years, overlapping with her work to build the case for legalising same-sex marriage, Penny Wong was working hard and quietly to construct what she described as a transformational foreign policy.
Foreign affairs, particularly at this moment in Australia’s history, is arguably the most important job in government. It is also one of the lowest-profile domestically, and in election campaigns. Inevitably, there is a lot of bipartisanship between the major parties. The national interest demands it, which also means that policy disagreements are usually handled quietly. If foreign affairs hits the headlines, it is often evidence of crisis or failure. The work involves subtle language, negotiation and judgement calls. Yet in this portfolio, perhaps more than any other, there is the capacity to make a difference – the aim Wong has pursued ever since her teenage dreams of working for Médecins Sans Frontières. For Wong the anti-populist, the foreign affairs portfolio was a job that spoke to her talents and engaged her intellectually and emotionally. She brought to the preparation all her capacities and passion. The job was to be the pinnacle and the fullest expression of her career.
On election night she was part of the ABC panel commenting live on the results as they came in. She looked tired when the broadcast began at 6.00 pm. By shortly after 7.00 pm, it was clear to her that voting patterns were not playing out as expected. She texted Sophie, who was in a hotel room nearby with the children. ‘I told her that I thought we were in trouble. I was trying to work out how long I would have to be there.’
It was ‘horrible’ to be on public display while dealing with such a shattering blow. Her fellow panel members, including Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, were ‘gracious and decent’, which helped. As is her way, she remained outwardly calm while in tumult. ‘I thought to myself, What’s my job here, what should I do? and I thought that in part it was to speak to those who voted for us and who were also disappointed.’
By 8.30 pm it was clear that a Labor defeat was likely. The ABC election analyst Antony Green called the result as a Coalition victory an hour later. Wong put in a three-hour-long display of grace under pressure. She acknowledged a desire for a gin and tonic towards the end. It was a ‘very tough result’ for Labor, she said.1 She can’t remember whether she ever got the gin and tonic. She went back to the hotel, to Sophie and the children.
The next morning, when Alexandra and Hannah woke up, they saw Penny’s face. ‘Did you lose, Mum?’ asked Alexandra. ‘How are you?’
Penny replied that she was ‘devo’.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Devastated. Very, very upset.’
The children set about trying to work out what they could do. ‘They made me a coffee and they gave me their last gingerbread man. I thought, Greater love hath no child …’
Alexandra recalled her earlier comment that she didn’t want Labor to win, and apparently felt guilty about it. ‘She said, “Mum, I know I said I didn’t want you to win, but I did want you to win as well.” I said, “It’s OK, darling. That’s just how it happened.”’
In the days that followed, Wong considered quitting politics. ‘I had to decide whether I wanted to stay. I don’t want to be melodramatic about it, but in these jobs you have to really commit and I had to ask myself if I still could. The disappointment is not just personal – those dashed hopes and dreams – and it’s not just party political or tribal. It’s a sense of loss about what you want to be part of, about the meaning of your life.
‘When I was younger … I wanted to do something in my life that had some meaning … There’s a purpose to many, many jobs, but there’s a particular type of purpose to politics … being part of something bigger than yourself and trying to contribute to shaping the country. And I guess the question I had to ask was, ‘Do I still have that in me?’ Because I think if you decide you don’t then you should get out. And then there’s the question of whether, emotionally, you could do something else – whether you would be content or satisfied in another kind of job.’
Her indecision did not last long. On 22 May, four days after the election, she called a media conference in which she announced her support for Anthony Albanese to replace Bill Shorten as leader. Albanese was ‘a man of authenticity’, she said, as well as describing him (of course) as the outstanding parliamentarian ‘of our generation’.2 She looked exhausted – she had dark circles under her eyes – but she was trademark Wong for the cameras: calm, composed and forceful. By then, she had decided both that she had what it took to stay in politics through the barren years of opposition and that there was nothing else she wanted to do.
Her intervention came close to sealing the deal for Albanese. The other contenders – Tanya Plibersek, Jim Chalmers and Chris Bowen – dropped out of the race shortly afterwards.
Otherwise, Wong virtually disappeared from the headlines. She expressed no opinion on the reasons for the defeat, beyond what she had said on election night about the impact of Clive Palmer’s wall-to-wall advertising and the Coalition’s preference deals with One Nation. Although she had not voted for Shorten as leader, she offered no public blame for either the policies Labor carried to the election, the unpopularity of the leader, nor the campaign. Not all her colleagues were so restrained.
Simultaneously, this book was reaching its final stages. I had seen her on 7 March for our last interview before the election. I had asked for a final interview after the election, expecting that she would by then be the minister for foreign affairs and we would talk foreign policy. As was her way, she had neither guaranteed that interview nor refused me, but I was led to expect it would happen.
But in the post-election period, communications temporarily broke down. The time was fast approaching when it would be too late for a final interview to inform this book, but no date was offered. On the grapevine I heard that Wong was not in a good way. The publisher stretched the deadlines.
On 2 July – the first day the federal parliament sat after the election – Penny Wong was there but, as political journalist Katharine Murphy commented, ‘Wong lacked her characteristic vigour. She was in full possession of her poker face, but the disappointment at Labor’s circumstances was etched in her body language.’3
The day before, she had given one of her first extended media interviews since the defeat, to Fran Kelly on Radio National’s Breakfast. She talked mainly about how Labor would handle the government’s tax cut legislation; on this she did a competent political job, not committing to anything and doing what she could to turn the pressure back on the government. Then the discussion turned to foreign affairs. Donald Trump had stepped over the North Korean border to shake the hand of leader Kim Jong-un. Wong commented that Trump liked to try engineering historically significant moments, but the
true importance of this would depend on what followed – would Kim denuclearise? Asked about a truce in the US–China trade war, she said trade wars had no winners. Australia’s interests were not served by bilateral trade arrangements between the United States and China: ‘What we want is open, fair multilateral agreements.’
Finally, she was asked about unrest in the Middle East between the United States and Iran. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo had called on Australia to adopt a tougher stance to increase global pressure on Iran. Prime Minister Scott Morrison had not ruled out Australian participation in any military conflict. What would Labor’s attitude be? Wong pointed out that no request had yet been received from Washington. Labor had sought a briefing from the government; she said she expected that to happen in the coming week, and went on: ‘We don’t believe military conflict is in anyone’s interests.’ The situation demanded that both sides de-escalate. Would Labor support military collaboration with the United States if asked? No such request had been made, she reiterated.4
Here were hints of the kind of foreign minister she would have been. It was possible to imagine the contours of what she might have said to Kelly had she been speaking not from opposition, but from government – the subtle shifts that, to the community that knows how to do the textual analysis, would have been significant.
Finally, at the very last moment it could inform this book, I was granted a final interview.
When we met, I suggested to Penny Wong that after tragedy there is catharsis.
‘Is there?’ she responded grimly.
Deciding to stay in politics did not mean she had recovered from the blow of the election defeat. ‘I don’t think this stuff is linear. I’ve never found emotional events in my life were dealt with in a linear way. It’s much more organic.’
Penny Wong Page 32
