Foreign Minister Penny Wong returns to her roots to remind her where home is

Penny Wong is being feted on her tour of South-East Asia, but from her birthplace in Malaysia, she is able to reflect on why Australia is home.

As Penny Wong eats her first spoonful of traditional fish ball congee, memories of her childhood come flooding back.

It’s early on a typically humid Thursday morning, and we are in the small Kota Kinabalu neighbourhood of Sunny Garden, where a humble cafe has just been swamped by local and Australian media.

For one of the most guarded politicians in Australia, Senator Wong looks remarkably relaxed sitting next to her younger brother James – or “Peng” as close family call him – while camera lenses and the wide eyes of journalists track their every move.

“This is the first time I have been here without my father, actually,” Senator Wong remarks.

After she left her birthplace in the Malaysian island state of Sabah with her mother at the age of eight, Penny Wong’s father Francis would take her and her siblings to the Kuo Man Restaurant for breakfast or brunch every time she returned to visit.

“My grandmother was very good at making the fish balls, so this was one of the few places that could make them almost as good as my Poh-Poh did,” she says.

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Almost as good as Poh-Poh’s – Penny Wong with brother James Wong Kein Peng, left, eating a congee breakfast at Kuo Man Restoran in Kota Kinabalu. Picture: Gabriel Polychronis

Australian journalists are invited to sit alongside her to eat their own bowls of noodles or fish ball congee – a type of basic rice “porridge” or soup prepared by hand, by diligent workers in a rudimentary kitchen at the back.

Several hours later, we take a break from the media circus to share a simple lunch at the Lido Square wet market. (Food dictates everything in Malaysia.) It’s approaching noon and most of the fishmongers have packed up for the day, but Senator Wong takes the time to browse the wares of the few straggling stalls.

Senator Wong is aware of her reputation as a closed book. But she also recognises the new order of global politics requires a fresh approach to diplomacy. Her attempts to reconnect with South East Asia by showing the diversity of Australia is showing early signs of a foreign policy legacy. And if that requires opening up about her personal history – so be it.

Sitting at a seafood and noodle restaurant in the market, Senator Wong confides it has been “confronting” sharing her family life in Kota Kinabalu with throngs of journalists.

“This has always been a very private part of my life,” she explains.

“Because my parents separated, my mother knew this place but didn’t know it after she left.”

Senator Wong recounted the times she would fly with her late brother Toby from their new home in Adelaide back to Kota Kinabalu, particularly in the late 1970s and 1980s.

“That was very separate from our lives in Australia and it wasn’t something that he and I shared. We could tell people in Australia about it, but for most people it was not familiar,” she says.

“So it was a little bit confronting to have media and others in a place that was my childhood and my home.”

Penny Wong, left, in 1988 with her beloved Poh-Poh.

The Lido Square market is also a significant landmark of her childhood, as her father, who now lives in Melbourne, would take her there to buy fish at 5am. It would be a special activity, reserved just for the two of them to enjoy one-on-one time.

Moments earlier, Senator Wong toured Kota Kinabalu’s Chinatown and received a rock star reception – greeted with a lion dance before posing for selfies with adoring fans overwhelmed with pride that Sabah produced an Australian foreign minister. She also visited her “Poh-Poh” Lai Fung Shim’s grave before touring the Kinabalu International School, where she was just the 19th student to enrol. The campus has changed dramatically since then. The main building, built after she left, was designed by her architect father.

When Senator Wong moved with her South Australian mother to Adelaide, she suffered horrible racism in the close-minded Australia of the 1970s. It is partly what inspired her to enter politics – to help change the country.

Penny Wong in 1972

Senator Penny Wong checks an old album. Picture: DFAT

As she would go back and forth between Adelaide and “KK”, it wasn’t until she was in her 30s when former prime minister Paul Keating spoke about the country’s place in Asia in a high-profile speech in Port Morseby that she truly felt Australian.

“I remember landing at Kingsford Smith (airport) thinking, this is the first time I really feel like I belong, because a leader had talked about Australia in a way that included me. So I think it’s a powerful thing for us at home and it’s a powerful thing for us in the region,” Senator Wong says.

Senator Wong picked up the Foreign Affairs portfolio at a time of growing global instability. War is raging in Ukraine – but closer to home, China continues its attempts to assert its power and lay claim to most of the South China Sea – just off the coast of her idyllic hometown.

Senator Wong suggests Australia has lost considerable ground in the region, and it’s going to take time to rebuild the country’s status as a force that listens to allies, rather than barking orders.

“The sort of region that we want is going to take a lot of engagement,” she says.

“I think it’s clear that it was important for the new government to really demonstrate more energy in the engagement and to be prepared to listen, because we have to remember … population-wise there are many nations larger than us in the region.”

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Senator Penny Wong during her Malaysian visit. Picture: DFAT