High Steaks: Jonty Bush sat outside the home acquitted of killing her father and wanted revenge
Jonty Bush was white hot with anger and “full of rage”. She was outside the home of the man acquitted of killing her father. What she did next would alter the Labor MP’s life forever.
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At night Jonty Bush sat in her car outside the home of the man acquitted of killing her father Robert – she was white hot with anger and wanted revenge.
The death of her father came just months after her sister, Jacinta, was murdered in an unrelated incident – stabbed 40 times by her partner.
The early 2000s was the darkest time of Ms Bush’s 21-year life as she pondered raising her 13-year-old brother without her “rock” dad around.
“There were days when I did drive up and sit outside the man’s house and just look at the house and … I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have my brother to really root me to this idea that I have to be there for someone,” she said.
“I was full of rage.
“I wanted him to lose someone. I wanted him to know what it was like, I wanted to rip my heart out.”
After two trials the man who punched her father was acquitted of manslaughter and grievous bodily harm.
What came after the verdict shocked and devastated her.
“The defendant’s family sat there and kind of punched the air like they’d won a football grand final,” she said.
“That was the lowest moment, I definitely went into a pretty deep depression.”
Ms Bush quit her retail job to focus on university and raising her brother.
She spent time late at night studying the rights of the child, the rights of victims, United Nations conventions and domestic and family violence literature.
That white hot anger fuelled action and prompted her to join the Queensland Homicide Victims’ Support Group before rising to become its chief executive officer.
For about 20 years Ms Bush worked in criminology, victimology, law and order, community safety, early intervention and working with offenders.
In 2009 Ms Bush was named Young Australian of the Year.
She was content working to turn grief into action – but it changed when a radio news bulletin
in 2020 reported the LNP Brisbane City Council had rejected a push to introduce gender quotas on its boards.
“I was really angry,” she said.
“How can we, in 2020, still be having this debate?
“Anger is actually a fantastic motivator and so I say to people when you’re angry do something with that like think about getting involved in a charity or running … there are things you can do with your anger besides sit there and just attack people on Twitter all day.”
A coffee with Labor councillor Kara Cook – who in May was elected federal member for Bonner – prompted Ms Bush to stand for the Enoggera ward against LNP councillor Andrew Wines.
She would lose to the long-time councillor, but the rush of campaigning and engaging with constituents lit a fire.
Seven months later at the 2020 state election Ms Bush was elected to represent the affluent inner city electorate of Cooper – centred in Ashgrove.
She replaced her mentor, the formidable Kate Jones – who this paper labelled a “giant killer” following her local 2015 victory over Campbell Newman.
As Ms Bush’s reincarnation as a politician approaches the five-year-anniversary, she insists she’s loved every day.
What about that well-publicised day in December when she threatened to break from Labor and vote against the LNP’s tough-on-crime laws?
On that day she sparked a caucus revolt that undermined Steven Miles’s leadership on one of the biggest issues facing Queenslanders just three days into the new parliament.
At the end of the day Ms Bush reluctantly voted with Labor to endorse the government’s adult crime, adult time laws – despite the experts she’d spent most of her life working alongside saying it wouldn’t work.
Her pain was evident as she sat in parliament with her eyes closed and headphones playing music at full volume.
“I was listening to Yellow Flicker Beat by Lorde on repeat, which is my kind of armageddon song when I’m feeling like I want to blow the world up,” she laughs.
“I was trying to support a team and be a team player but I clearly was struggling with that.
“I came in here to make a better environment for victims.
“I came in here to do good public policy that would ultimately work and I feel like I’ve made it worse.”
After threatening to leave the party Ms Bush retreated to the Christmas break for some “soul searching”.
“It was very hard for me to reconcile myself and that made me think perhaps the party would be better without me,” she said.
Only her local supporters and the realisation change comes from the party of government stopped her from sitting as an independent.
“I want to be at the table, I believe in the party and I believe in the movement,” she said.
There is significant private admiration within the LNP government for Ms Bush’s staunch values, but politics is a blood sport that dictates no public mercy.
Ministers still line up to needle her for opposing their crime crackdown and correlate them to a threat against Mr Miles’s leadership.
In private, however, several ministers admit they’d vote one Jonty Bush if they could.
Ms Bush said the December incident was a “really strong trauma reaction” that risked her completely losing the respect of Labor colleagues.
Seven months on Ms Bush has matured, but won’t stop rocking the boat for something she believes in.
“I’m not going to stop speaking up in caucus but I came close to a point where people just would have tuned out and stopped listening to me,” she said.
“The way that you influence people and get people to see a different perspective isn’t by getting agitated and fired up and upset.”
For some colleagues, her threat to leave the party has done her irreparable damage.
But the second-term MP is content with separating her co-workers with those friends who’ll visit her tombstone.
“We’re professionals and we’re friendly, they’re not my friends,” she said of Labor colleagues.
“I don’t want to get into a position where I feel like I don’t want to disappoint someone and that stops me coming forward.
“I think we’re a better party when we’re emboldened to speak our truth and to bring something different to the table.”
Missing out on a shadow ministry position in November and having little chance of promotion, Ms Bush has paid a price for speaking her truth.
“You get something out of it too, which is your integrity,” she said.
Tragic personal events and a traumatic political battle have taken their toll on Ms Bush, but she’s surrounded by a loving family and is content with life.
To cope with the intensity of politics Ms Bush runs and works with clay.
“There is something I think that happens when you get your hands dirty with a project and to be able to create a form and really there’s no project that you can create that looks ugly,” she said.
“Ceramics is a very forgiving art form unlike something like watercolour.”
She insists no Ghost-style pottery scenes are recreated with partner Matt at their home.
“It’s a far less sexy version and far more dirty, messy and no one’s there to tidy it up for you,” she said.
Instead, Ms Bush is focused on the Japanese style of Kintsugi – the art of drawing attention to cracks and blemishes.
“I kind of relate to that in terms of a trauma story,” she said.
“Things break, they fall apart, rather than trying to recompose it in a way that it existed before you can actually create a similar form but it looks different, it functions differently, but it’s no less perfect.”
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