Tanya Plibersek: ‘We let it go on too long’

FEDERAL politician Tanya Plibersek has revealed the one thing she would do differently if she could go back to 2010 when Julia Gillard made history in becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

Tanya Plibersek: “I think back to when Julia Gillard was prime minister. People didn’t have to agree with her policies, but a lot of what she copped was not about her policies; it was a very, very sexist kind of abuse.” (Pic: Dave Wheeler for Stellar)

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TANYA Plibersek admits she’s never more motivated to clean than just before guests are due to arrive. And on a recent Saturday at lunch hour, when the Stellar team rings the doorbell of her Sydney home, she all but proves it.

“To be really honest with you, I started madly tidying the house at 6.30am,” says the 48-year-old deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party.

Indeed, by the time Plibersek gets a chance to sit down for our talk, she has already completed a round of pancake making, a trip to the gym for a family boxing session, a visit to the shops for groceries and, on top of that, whipped up some Bircher muesli for the Stellar crew.

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The fact that she has squeezed a rare photo shoot and interview into her limited time home from Canberra isn’t unheard of. She tries to set aside a few weekends a year in her schedule that are sacrosanct, but as she tells Stellar, “Sometimes they get chewed up as well... there’s not many when there’s not something on.”

Plibersek is used to the fast pace and full plate. She’s one of the most powerful women in the country, helping to helm the opposition in the lead-up to an election next year, while managing the high-profile education portfolio — and, at home, helping to raise daughter Anna, 17, and sons Joe, 13, and Louis, eight.

With her family at home. (Pic: Dave Wheeler for Stellar)

Plibersek sees more than a bit of herself in her daughter, who’s now undertaking the HSC. “[She’s] a bit of a perfectionist, a bit hard on herself, very self-motivated,” she says. “Yeah, I used to get up at 4.30am to study for a couple of hours before school.”

Not much appears to have changed. By the time she turned 14, Plibersek, who was raised in Sydney’s working-class south to Slovenian immigrant parents, was organising friends to go to peace rallies; a year later she had joined Labor.

Despite her early preoccupation with politics, her first choice of career was journalism. After being knocked back for an ABC cadetship, she took a research job in the domestic violence unit of the NSW Ministry for the Status and Advancement of Women.

Then, in 1998, she was elected to Federal Parliament with 15 other women including Julia Gillard, Nicola Roxon and Julie Bishop. Two decades on, many of her alumni have been moved on, yet her seat in Sydney is still considered extremely safe.

Speaking in Parliament in 2006 during the debate over abortion pill RU486, with then shadow health minister Julia Gillard. (Pic: AAP)

“I really like [the juggle],” Plibersek says. “This morning I had a whole list of things that I needed to get done in a certain time period and I just see it as a challenge; I actually find it quite fun. If you’re organised and plan ahead, I think you can reduce the stress levels a little bit. I like the feeling of managing to get lots of things done.”

She credits her husband of 18 years, Michael Coutts-Trotter, for helping her to maintain the intense demands of her career and stay in touch with their family’s needs without worry.

“I could not do my job if Michael wasn’t so fantastic at being a parent and a partner,” she says. “I’m away a lot and I don’t feel like I need to tell him what to do for the children when I’m not there. He knows what he has to do. He well and truly does his share and does it without any resentment, which is really amazing. I don’t know if I’d be so great if he was away half the year doing his job. It means that I can go to work when I need to without guilt or worry about the kids.”

With Labor leader Bill Shorten at this month’s Fortress NSW Volunteer Launch in Sydney.

The couple met in 1991. On their first date, Coutts-Trotter told his future wife that he’d spent three years in jail for dealing drugs, but was at that point on parole and off drugs. Plibersek has said she never doubted he was on the straight and narrow; today, Coutts-Trotter is the director-general of the NSW Department of Family & Community Services.

At home, the pair is big on gender equality. “We share the work very equally and the kids see that,” Plibersek says. “And I think it’s been so good for them to not have any preconceptions about what sort of work they can do.”

It’s no surprise then that Plibersek has strong feelings about the challenges faced by women in Australian politics. She wryly acknowledges recent speculation about how sexism played a significant role in derailing the leadership ambitions of her long-time political adversary Julie Bishop with a dry laugh and a deadpanned “You reckon?”

As for the surprising year in Australian politics she has witnessed first hand, Plibersek believes the long- term prognosis of the health of politics is dependent on women, including those who have borne the brunt of the recent leadership scuffles.

“We share the work very equally and the kids see that.” (Pic: Dave Wheeler for Stellar)

“I think there are women in the Liberal Party who have talked about setting targets, and I’d really urge them to do that, to take that on,” she says. “Unless you publicly articulate that this is an important thing, you get this kind of organisational drift where the blokes that have been there for a long time mentor the people that remind them of themselves when they were younger.

“I think it is important for public life — not just politics but business, sport, academia and so on — to more consciously make an effort to be more representative of our community, to reach for 50/50. I think when you take a deliberate approach to doing that, you reduce some of the problems that we’ve seen in recent times, like [Liberal MP] Julia Banks talking about being bullied and so on. It just changes the culture of a place; it makes the next generation of women more comfortable being there.

“I think back to when Julia Gillard was prime minister. People didn’t have to agree with her policies, but a lot of what she copped was not about her policies; it was a very, very sexist kind of abuse. I don’t mind conflict but we do have to be very vigilant in calling out that kind of sexism anywhere it happens.”

Tanya Plibersek features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

If she could turn back time, Plibersek says she would handle things differently when it came to Australia getting its first female prime minister in 2010.

“It does get a little bit tiring all the time to constantly be calling that stuff out, but I just think we have to do it because if you let it go...” she says before pausing. “I think we let it go too long with Julia. She kept saying, ‘Let’s focus on the policies. We’ll just do a good job governing and the sexist stuff will just dry up.’ And it kind of didn’t, because there are people who are so deeply entrenched in that way of thinking.

“So I do think you need to, for your own benefit but more particularly for the benefit of the next generation, call that stuff out,” Plibersek concludes.

Speaking of that next generation, she looks forward to hitting the pause button on the good fight and taking a few weeks off over Christmas with her family.

“My absolute favourite thing to do in the world is to find a patch of grass, spread out the towel and read a book cover to cover. But...” she confesses with a laugh, “it doesn’t happen very often.”

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Originally published as Tanya Plibersek: ‘We let it go on too long’