High Steaks: Member for Herbert Phil Thompson talks life, army and politics
The Liberal Party was the unlikeliest of fits for rough and ready army veteran Phil Thompson, but he beat it into shape. WELCOME TO HIGH STEAKS
He’s no politician, no practitioner of the dark arts of manipulation, no ambitious rookie revelling in insider’s gossip and not even much of an admirer of the Westminster system of government.
“When I was tapped on the shoulder to go into politics I didn’t even know there was a thing called the Senate,’’ Phil Thompson explains with a disarming cheeriness as we breakfast at the edge of the magnificent Cleveland Bay at Townsville’s “C Bar’’.
“Matter of fact, I’m still not sure what the Senate does.’’
He was, little more than two decades ago, a juvenile delinquent on the Sunshine Coast.
His father played no role in his life, he fell in with older boys who were running wild and, in terms of an education, didn’t really get past the ninth grade.
He also caused his devoted, hardworking single mother a great deal of grief when he occasionally came to the attention of the cops.
“I always stayed away from drugs, but I drank and I hung out with these older kids who, I suppose, were worse than me … I was just a wild kid,’’ he admits frankly.
The beard, the tatts and the contained aggression are all still signs the street kid still has a role to play in his identity.
But it’s the Australian Defence Force that can take full credit for harnessing that energy, redirecting it, and turning Phil into a model citizen.
Aged just 37, he’s not only the LNP federal member for the Townsville-based seat of Herbert who has stunned his LNP colleagues by increasing his margin over the last two elections, including during that Conservative wipe-out last May.
He’s also a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia, a Young Australian of the Year (Queensland), an Anzac of the Year and the proud possessor of a few other strange ornaments including a “Dutch Commander’s Commendation’’ which seems something of a puzzle, even to Phil.
When he was 15, he had no thoughts of this glittering future.
He left school early, worked as a concreter, drank beer and played up.
But somehow he heard about life in the army and rode his bike to the Sunshine Coast recruitment centre where he was told, in effect: “We’ll take pretty much anybody, but not you.’’
The army wanted high school pass marks in maths and English and Phil, in perhaps the first exercise in self-discipline he ever undertook in his life, enrolled in night school.
He got his pass marks, peddled back to the recruitment centre, presented them and was immediately accepted.
A raw recruit aged 17, and of the lowest possible status in army life, he found himself at bases such as Kapooka and Singleton performing the most menial duties yet, strangely enough, feeling much as a landlocked duck might feel upon discovering a great body of water.
“I just loved it,’’ he remembers.
“I fitted in.’’
With the benefit of two decades of hindsight, he now suspects that, like millions of wilful young male teenagers across the planet, he had been searching for a trusted male authority figure who was older than him, tougher than him, and ready to roar at him when he stepped out of line.
He found those men in the army, listened to them, learned from them, and thrived.
He got a posting to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, in Townsville, did a stint in East Timor starting in 2007, and by 2009 was deployed to Afghanistan – a posting he wanted more than anything else in the world.
“You think about it – like an elite athlete you train for the big game, and this is the big game,’’ he said.
In 2009 he was on a patrol when he saw a man in a house in an elevated position who appeared to be counting the number of soldiers going by.
Phil went down behind his SR 25 rifle, got what he calls a “sight picture’’ and radioed his team telling them to hold up, because he felt something was very wrong about the presence of this man.
“As I was watching he bent down and lifted up a rifle and, just as it got to his hip, I engaged him with a single-round shot to the head.’’
He was 21 and had just killed a man, but he can live with it.
“It was either he die, or my friends die.’’
But the enemy had now marked him.
Soon after he was on patrol when he had to cross a stream which everyone else had successfully navigated.
Phil had to jump across and, as he rocked back on his heels to get momentum for the jump, an explosive device was detonated right behind him.
His medic – “a true hero’’ – jumped through the flames and dust to drag him away and check him over.
While dizzy and disoriented, he was conscious that his ribs hurt a bit and his head was ringing but he was experiencing no serious pain.
He was medically evacuated to the Multinational Base in Tarin Kot and a Dutch doctor recommended he be transferred to a larger hospital but, before he left, was told to see the local Commander who presented him with the Dutch Commanders Commendation.
‘’And I was like … why?
He took it home anyway, on a Qantas jet surrounded by a medical support team of six and, when back home in Townsville, was belatedly diagnosed with a brain injury which, along with deafness in his right ear, are his ongoing legacies of the war.
But he put serious effort into his recovery, began his work in mental well being and suicide prevention and, by 2018, was named “Queensland Young Australian of the Year.’’
That caught the eye of the Liberal Party which courted him but Phil was reluctant to enter politics, largely because he had absolutely no idea what politics was all about.
He may have proven his physical courage in Afghanistan, but when elected to the seat of Herbert in 2019, he was just pain scared.
“All these people have put their faith in me, and I’m not even sure what to do next,’’ he remembers.
It was not merely that he didn’t understand the role of the Senate.
He couldn’t even find the toilets in Parliament House, and the middle-class culture of the Liberal Party was totally outside his bandwidth.
“I was taken aside and told, ‘we don’t have beards in the Liberal Party’,’’ he recalls.
He told them that they did now, along with tattoos. Some of his commemorate the names of fallen comrades.
It was the Royal Commission into Defence and Veterans Suicide established in June 2021 which proved his political Baptism of Fire.
There was strong opposition inside the party room, with then prime minister Scott Morrison openly expressing reservations about an idea the Australian Labor Party was right behind.
Phil, the rookie, knew he had leverage, given he was the only wounded veteran in the Parliament.
He spoke passionately for the Commission inside the party room, declaring (with an extraordinary nerve for a newcomer) that he would cross the floor if necessary to get it up.
Gavin Pearce, the then federal Liberal member for Braddon who served in the Army Signal Corps, declared his support.
So did Garth Hamilton, the newly elected member for the Queensland seat of Groom who arrived after a November 2020 by-election, and who had barely received his swipe card to enter the Parliament before he too threw his weight behind Phil.
The prime minister backed down, told Phil he was right all along, and the royal commission went ahead.
Phil not only won his first big political battle but got a handle on the realities of politics, even if he’s still determined he will never quite join the tribe.
He’s refused to travel overseas on a parliamentary junket, and won’t recognise government’s hierarchical structures which would allow him to palm off problems as matters for the state, or the local council.
Crime, health, high insurance premiums across the north, a tree hanging over a fence, an immigration issue, roads, rates, rubbish – he’ll have a go at all of them.
“If there is a dog barking next door and you come to my office, I will try and help you.’’
Married with two daughters, he’s discovered he creates his own reality every day, and the best realities come to people who help others.
And helping others, he believes, is still at the core of politics, despite all the frippery.
“ “I sometimes find people often come to me as a last resort,’’ he says.
“ “Something has happened in their lives and, whatever it is, it is the most important thing to them.
“They need to be listened to, to be shown respect, to receive the help they need.’’
Venue: C Bar, Townsville
Me: Corn cakes, poached eggs, bacon.
Phil: Big Breakfast with a side of potato hash and tomato sauce.
Score: Excellent 10/10
Originally published as High Steaks: Member for Herbert Phil Thompson talks life, army and politics
