‘If I had run, I would have won’: The family pain behind Plibersek’s leadership call

This story is part of the Good Weekend: Best of Features 2023 editon.See all 22 stories.

The day after the May 2019 federal election, the Labor team entered a collective depression. It took the party at least six months to rally. Yet, straightaway, there was to be another contest. Bill Shorten stood down from the leadership on election night. A new leader had to be chosen under the rules that divide the vote, if there was more than one contender, between Labor parliamentarians and the broad ALP membership.

To nobody’s surprise, Anthony Albanese announced his candidacy that Sunday. Tanya Plibersek was expected to follow. On the ABC Insiders program, she confirmed she was considering running. Shorten threw his support behind her. Julia Gillard made her first intervention in politics since she lost the prime ministership and endorsed her too.

Other candidates were expected to include shadow treasurer Chris Bowen and shadow finance minister Jim Chalmers – although, as the press noted, both were closely associated with the spending and tax package so recently rejected at the election. This was expected to count against them, and potentially against Plibersek too.

The media were expecting Plibersek would declare her candidacy on Monday afternoon. It came as a shock when, instead, she issued a statement ruling herself out. She said she had support from across the party, but “now is not my time ... At this point, I cannot reconcile the important responsibilities I have to my family with the additional responsibilities of the Labor leadership.”

In the following days Penny Wong, leader in the Senate and a key figure in the left of the party, backed Albanese. Bowen and Chalmers stepped back, and Albanese became leader of the Australian Labor Party unopposed.

In the months that followed, Plibersek gave a few interviews reflecting on her decision. In a podcast hosted by Gillard, she said she was put off by the amount of time on the road, and the impact on her family with husband Michael Coutts-Trotter, then a senior public servant and recently appointed as head of the Department of Communities and Justice in NSW’s Berejiklian government (now Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet under Premier Dominic Perrottet). The couple have three children; Anna, Joe and Louis, then aged 18, 15 and 9 respectively.

She said she was worried that other women might draw from her decision a message about the inability to have children and take leadership positions. She felt bad about that, but: “To other women, I say, ‘You are not responsible for the life and fate and opportunities of every woman. You need to make the decision that is best for you’ ... If you’ve got no kids you get criticised for not understanding what families are going through. If you’ve got kids, you get criticised for neglecting them. There’s basically no right answer. And so, what can you do but please yourself? You have to do the thing that’s best for you in your life and for your family.”

Gillard remarked that she’d been criticised for not having kids. How does Plibersek cope? “I cook in batches and freeze food. I get my clothes out each night that I’m going to wear the next day because I don’t want to be making decisions under pressure at five o’clock in the morning in the dark as I’m rushing off to work,” she said. “You try and reduce the pressure by being super-organised and balance that at the same time with being present when you’re with your kids.”

Plibersek with Anthony Albanese, then-opposition leader at Parliament House in May 2021, two years after she had ruled herself out of contention for the Labor Party leadership, and a year before he became PM.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Plibersek’s supporters were shocked and disappointed by her decision. Jenna Price, a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, speculated that some dastardly internal Labor politicking was at work. Or had Plibersek had an unaccountable attack of imposter syndrome? As for the kids – Price had telephoned Plibersek’s office offering to give up her own career to help care for them.

On social media, Price’s call was quickly shared, liked and taken up. Within hours, Plibersek could have had an army of child carers at her disposal. But none of them knew the full story. None of them knew there was a scar here, a trauma they could not soothe.

‘That’s absolutely what people who like to background against me would say. We’ll never know. It’s history. But I am pretty confident that if I had run, I would have won.’

Tanya Plibersek

Plibersek told the media and some friends a few more stories about what had happened on that Monday morning. Louis – nine years old – had crawled into his parents’ bed and been surprised to find his mother there. She had hardly been at home during the campaign – or for the previous gruelling six years of deputy leadership.

Another story Plibersek told friends was about being in the playground with Louis. He’d spent 15 minutes or so on the equipment and then announced he was ready to go home because he assumed his mother had no more time to give. That hurt. These anecdotes were true, but not the whole story.

Meanwhile, the media were taking background briefings from within the parliamentary party, and as a result reported the real reason she had withdrawn was because she didn’t have the numbers in caucus.

This was a continuation of consistent claims about Plibersek, briefed out by Plibersek-sceptics and her rivals. They acknowledge her popularity with the public and the party membership, but say she is less admired by her parliamentary colleagues. The political journalists reported that the left in caucus, faced with two candidates from their faction, backed Albanese over her.

When I was researching my upcoming book on Plibersek, that account was repeated to me. I put this to her in one of our early interviews. She remarked, acidly, “There seems to be this presumption among some that women can’t count.”

Members of the Plibersek camp urged me not to “fall for” the line. They believe that had she contested the leadership at any time between the 2019 defeat and the final months of 2021, she would have won. And some of them were urging her to try.

In my last interview with Plibersek, I asked her again about the claim that she didn’t have the numbers in 2019. “That’s absolutely what people who like to background against me would say. We’ll never know. It’s history. But I am pretty confident that if I had run, I would have won.”

So, why did she withdraw?

The full story of that decision was not Tanya Plibersek’s to tell. It belonged to her daughter, Anna, who was 18 years old at the time of the 2019 election. Her story appears here for the first time.

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I met Anna on a Friday afternoon in August 2022, over the dining table in the open-plan living area of the family home. She was now 21 years old. She resembles both her parents – her father’s tall, thin physique and her mother’s blonde hair, silky and long, parted in the centre.

She remembers what it was like growing up around her mother. Photocopying her hands on the office machine, then drawing little faces on the images of her fingers. Raiding the biscuit jar in the office. Playing with her mother’s staff. She talks about her early childhood and the birth of her brothers. “I was obsessed with Joe when he was a baby. I wouldn’t let him go out of my sight. And I used to say to Mum, ‘I have to give him 20 kisses before I go to preschool.’ And Mum would say, ‘He’s asleep.’ And I would say, ‘Well, I need to give him 20 kisses,’ so she would have to let me give him kisses before I went.”

Plibersek with Anna, Louis and Joe in 2013. It was clear from childhood that Anna was destined for “the caring professions”. Credit: Sam Ruttyn/Newspix

Plibersek told the children from an early age that she wanted them to be many things – brave and bold – but if she could choose just one character trait, it would be kindness. In the case of Anna, there was no need for urging. From her earliest years it was clear that she had in common with her mother the gift, or the curse, of conspicuous empathy. At the time of our interview she was studying at the University of Sydney to be a social worker – the career her mother had once considered. She said it had been clear since her childhood that she was destined for “the caring professions”.

While still at Randwick Girls’ High School, she featured in the local paper because she had won an award for volunteering as a visitor to the local Montefiore home for aged people. That work had begun when her history teacher urged the students to interview Holocaust survivors. Anna was so moved that she kept going back.

Where had the urge to help people come from, the reporter asked? “I think my parents; they are both social justice advocates and have been my whole life. Since I was a baby, I’ve been going to Mum’s events and meetings. So from a young age I’ve known I need to do the right thing.”

On the day of her interview with me, she had spent an hour on the phone to a survivor of sexual abuse who was due to appear in court the next day. Anna was able to help. It drains her, but “this is what I do now. This is what I do with what happened to me. I try to use it.”

Anna believes that she was more vulnerable because of this empathy and compassion. Plibersek and her daughter are close. Anna asserts that despite her job, her mother is “more available to me than many of my friends’ mothers are to them. I call my mum for, like, everything. I’m always texting her and calling her. If I’m going for a job interview, and I’m thinking about what I want to wear, I’ll send her six photos of options. That’s if she’s not home. If she’s home, then I’ll get her to come and watch me try them all on and help me decide, because she always gives some really good advice about things like that. I’m always asking her questions and I tell her about everything that’s going on with my life and my friends. I’ve always been really, really open with her.”

Plibersek in her Canberra office with baby Anna in 2001. Credit: Ray Strange/Newspix

But there was a period, when Anna was in her mid-teens, when she didn’t tell Plibersek everything that was going on. During this time, Anna’s personality changed. Already thin, she lost weight. She lost friends. She withdrew from her family and became moody and hard to reach. This was during the years when Plibersek was deputy Labor leader and working to improve the party’s culture.

Over this time, Anna was being abused by her then-boyfriend. The abuse began at the start of the relationship and the violence and controlling behaviour gradually got worse, escalating to serious sexual assault. Anna’s abuser was eventually convicted of assault because of what he did to her. He has also been convicted of serious crimes committed against other girls, but has never gone to jail. There are legal reasons why few details can be published.

Anna recalls: “I experienced pretty much every kind of abuse you can think of. It was emotional, it was physical. It was even financial, as much as you can be financially abused as a teenager. He tried to stop me talking to my friends. I lost so many friends.” She tried to appease him. She made excuses. She loved him.

“I was so manipulated. I wasn’t myself. I lost myself.” She doesn’t want to go into further details. The court process was traumatic. Anna was in the witness box for four days, three of them under cross-examination. Her friends and her parents also gave evidence about what they had seen and heard of her boyfriend’s behaviour, and its impact on her.

Anna is recovering. Part of that recovery has been to use her experience to help others. In 2021, she and some others founded a not-for-profit group, The Survivor Hub. Through social media, a website and in-person meetings, it provides support for survivors. Anna is telling some of her story now as part of that effort. She wants people to understand that the court system re-traumatises survivors and fails to hold perpetrators to account.

‘There’s a lot of evidence that shows people in caring professions are more targeted by abusers. People who care are vulnerable.’

Anna, daughter of Tanya Plibersek

She wants people to know that in this area, the justice system is broken. And she hopes to help people understand how perpetrators manipulate you – how they use your best features against you. How you can end up scarcely knowing your own mind, and how insidious it is. And then, if you have the courage to go to court, the things you said to yourself to try to minimise the trauma – the excuses you made, the kindness you showed – will be used to attack your credibility. You felt sorry for him? Then you must be lying.

Anna has often asked herself why these things happened to her, given all her advantages. “There’s a lot of evidence that shows people in caring professions are more targeted by abusers. People who care are vulnerable. You kind of think you can fix them, or you make excuses for them. So, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s just doing his exams now. He’ll be better after that.’ Or, ‘Oh, he’s just trying to get into university. He’ll be better after that.’ Or then, ‘He’s just doing his university exams. He’ll be better after that.’ And it’s never-ending. There’s always excuses that they make for their behaviour. And I wanted to look after him, to be good for him.”

But now Anna knows the central lesson. In particular, as the daughter of a feminist mother who has spent a large part of her career advocating on gender violence issues – the woman who is chiefly responsible for the National Plan for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Their Children. Anna’s own story is proof. It can happen to anyone. She emphasises the word. “Anyone.” She went to court with the full support of her family, excellent counselling – all of her advantages and privileges. Yet, the experience nearly destroyed her – even more than the abuse had done. Today, she does not necessarily advise the survivors she meets to go to court. It is a big decision. She understands why they might choose not to do so.

At the time Plibersek had to make the decision whether to seek the Labor leadership in May 2019, she knew her daughter would soon have to face being a witness against her abuser in court, although the date the case would begin was not yet known. “And the thought of not being able to be there for her through that was just too much.” In the lead-up to the start of the case, Anna was finding it hard to face the days. She either slept around the clock or was woken by nightmares. She wandered the house in the middle of the night, desperately seeking distraction. She leant on her friends and her family, and yet, because they were to be witnesses, they could not discuss the detail of what had happened to her.

It was during this time that Anna saw her father cry for the first time in her life. Her mother, she says – with just a hint of an eye-roll – “Cries all the time. Happy, sad, she cries. Mum crying doesn’t mean anything special, but Dad doesn’t cry.” But at this time, having his daughter hurt, being unable to fully support her, Michael Coutts-Trotter, jailbird, senior public servant, living evidence of the capacity for human redemption, broke down and wept.

Plibersek with husband Michael Coutts-Trotter.Credit: Joshua Morris

Anna had finished telling me her story. We were sitting at the family dining table. It was a Friday afternoon. Her mother had told me earlier in the day that on Fridays she tries to pick up Louis from school, and to cook the family dinner. Now she was at the door, and came into the kitchen. Would it bother Anna if she pottered around while we talked? Anna told her that it would, and asked her to go away.

She wanted to use the remaining minutes of our interview to tell me nice stories about her mother, and she knew that if she did it while she was listening, “She will cry. She always cries.” Plibersek dashed around making Louis a toasted sandwich and putting a pork roast in the oven, then moved out to the study.

So how did Anna feel when her mother decided not to run for the Labor leadership? They hadn’t really talked about it much. They don’t talk about politics at home – or at least not the internal machinations of the Labor party. Rather, “We talk about values.”

“If something’s going on in the news and Joe and Louis and I don’t know how we feel about it, we might bring it up to Mum and Dad or ask them what they think about it, because obviously they have more information than we do. They know what’s going on. And then Mum and Dad might explain how they feel about something. We don’t often disagree. I think I’m a little bit more woke with identity politics than Mum, but she’s more woke than all of my friends’ parents. It’s a generational thing.”

The day in 2019 that Plibersek announced she would not be a candidate for the Labor leadership, she took Anna out to lunch. “We celebrated, Mum and me. I remember how nice it was. Just going out for lunch in the middle of the day.”

Now Joe, home from school, joined us at the table, listening to the conversation. He volunteered that he regretted that his mother did not contest the leadership. “We support her values.”

Anna agreed: “I believe she would have been really, really good at it. There are a lot of politicians who aren’t in it for the people, but she’s in it for the people. It is just so obvious she cares about people, and she wants to make Australia better for everybody. I’m not saying anyone else, or Albo, doesn’t feel that way. I’m just talking about Mum.”

Sadly, too many parents will not have to imagine what Plibersek felt when she learnt her daughter had been the victim of sexual and domestic violence. It is a disturbingly common story. Most daughters, most mothers in this situation never go public, and never go to court. But for Plibersek there was the extra burden of knowing so much about men’s violence against women, and yet not having been able to protect her daughter.

“Listening to Anna give her victim impact statement to the court was the hardest hour I’ve experienced as a parent – but I was so proud of her too,” says Plibersek.Credit: Tim Bauer

Two months after speaking to Anna, I sat at the same dining table with Plibersek for our final interview. What did she want to say about Anna’s story? It had been, she said, “devastating”. “You ask yourself whether you could have or should have done more to protect your child. It’s not an easy question to ask yourself.”

She thinks Anna is recovering as well as anyone could, and “I’m really proud that she is using her experience to help other people. But it has just been awful. Listening to Anna give her victim impact statement to the court was the hardest hour I’ve experienced as a parent – but I was so proud of her, too.” She agrees with Anna that part of the mix was her empathy. “I think she’s absolutely right about that. Her empathy and compassion were used against her by someone in a phenomenally manipulative way.”

As for her own experience giving evidence, it was “awful ... but I was more upset that she was subjected to all the same kind of questions that I thought we stopped asking victims of crime in the ’70s. ‘What were you wearing? What had you been drinking?’ It enraged me to see up close how broken the system is and how much it adds to the trauma.”

As for how this could happen to her daughter: “I’ve always known that it can happen to anyone. The way that men like that behave is very calculating. They take someone away from their support networks, their friends, their family. They destroy their self-confidence, so they can’t behave in the way they normally do. So, what happened to Anna all fits in exactly with everything I know academically about this issue, and have known since I was her age, and everything I’ve ever said.” There are tears in her eyes.

“But knowing this stuff doesn’t alleviate the guilt of not protecting her.” What role did Anna’s trauma play in Plibersek’s decision not to run for leader? She says it played a crucial part, but was not the only factor. “I couldn’t imagine saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t be with you today. I’ve got to fly somewhere for a conference.’ ”

But she doesn’t want Anna to think it was only her. It was broader than that. “I’ve been close enough to all the leaders of the Labor Party. I’ve had a front-row seat for a long time. I know what it entails to do the job properly. Louis was 9 when we lost the 2019 election. Joe had his HSC [last] year. And I miss them when I travel. I miss them a lot ... I love my job. But I had to make that decision on what was right for us, what kind of parent I want to be.”

This is an edited extract from Margaret Simons’ Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms (Black Inc, $35), out March 7. Note: as Simons makes clear in her book, the biography was not Plibersek’s idea and was not written at her urging. She has agreed to participate in this piece to raise awareness about the work of The Survivor Hub, established and run by her daughter Anna and other volunteers. You can find out more about their work here and contact them at [e-mail]. Support is also available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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