Keneally’s plum position comes down to one thing

Most women want to be treated fairly in the workplace and get ahead because of their hard work and efforts. But if you’re a member of the new look Labor Party it seems all bets are off, writes Peta Credlin.

I don’t know about you, but all I have ever wanted as a woman was a fair go.

Not to be advanced because I was a woman, but not to be held back by gender either.

I’ve always rejected the hollowness of getting ahead through a quota because achievement via a chromosome at birth — rather than all the effort you’ve put in since then — is no achievement at all.

Hence my dismay this week that two men were forced to step aside for NSW Labor Senator Kristina Keneally to join the new opposition front and become Senate deputy leader. It was gender, not leadership credentials that got her there.

MORE FROM RENDEZVIEW: All’s not quite Right in the new look ALP

After the announcement, she was forced to defend some very undemocratic factional deal-making while trying to assert Labor is supreme on the issue of gender equality with its 50-50 leadership positions.

Kristina Keneally has been announced as Labor’s Deputy Leader in the Senate. Picture: Kym Smith

Looking back at Keneally’s career to date, it’s been a series of jobs given by factional bovver-boys rather than won on merit. She was brought in as NSW Premier in the dying days of a truly awful state Labor government marred by corruption, scandal, and MPs going to jail. She never won an election in her own right and, as leader, presided over Labor’s lowest primary vote in history. She was then brought back from the political dead as Bill Shorten’s captain’s pick in the seat of Bennelong, in a high-profile by-election, but lost that too. When Sam Dastyari was forced to quit the senate over grubby dealings with Chinese influence peddlers, she was again the powerful men’s pick to take his vacant senate seat. See the pattern?

MORE FROM RENDEZVIEW: Warring tribes of Canberra have a headache on their hands

Spare us your claims of being a warrior for women Kristina because being ‘installed’ rather than elected isn’t what women want to cheer.

Give us a Bridget McKenzie any day. She’s the Deputy Leader of the Nationals. Won it fair and square and was re-elected again this week based on her strong performance so far.