Joe Hildebrand: ‘I was angry and I stand by all of it’

The ALP’s treatment of Kimberley Kitching was nothing short of abominable. Now she’s gone, they’ll be faced with a huge realisation.

On Thursday night I unleashed a tirade on Sky News about the Labor Party’s treatment of Kimberley Kitching – someone who for me was the great hope of the ALP.

I was emotional, I was angry and I stand by all of it. But it is also important to explain why Kitching’s death and the revelations that have emerged in its wake have so disturbed and infuriated those who care about the political culture of this country – and especially within the Labor Party.

Like many political observers I had watched Kimberley Kitching from afar for a long time. She was a prodigious political talent and had what Bill Shorten perfectly described as a “serene intellect”.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten described Ms Kitching as a ‘serene intellect’. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Obviously I have had many differences with Shorten over the years but whatever he might have been wrong about, he was right about her. And in a sense the same forces brought them both undone.

To his great credit, Shorten nearly stole a surprise victory from Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 – but it also came at a great cost. The so-called “Mediscare” campaign that worked so well for Labor in that election was a shameless piece of deception that came back to haunt them when the Liberals did a similarly shameless thing with the death taxes claims of 2019 and Labor got a taste of its own Mediscare medicine.

Mr Shorten was right about Ms Kitching. Picture: Supplied

Perhaps emboldened by the success of such overreach in 2016, Labor became more and more captive to the socialist-sounding dogma and woke virtue signalling beloved of the left. Suddenly the Victorian Right hardman started sounding more like a student activist, denouncing “the big end of town” and jogging around Melbourne in a red T-shirt reading “Vote 1 Chloe Shorten’s husband”. This was woke politics at its highest and silliest.

In short even Shorten – a smart and cynical man who was the very embodiment of the Labor Right – got taken in by the idiocy of the left. It is fair to say it is a mistake he will not make twice.

And it was proponents of these same woke and gender-obsessed politics who ended up tearing Kitching down. In parliament it was the left of the party who turned on her, in part because she tried to prevent the alleged sexual assault of a woman being turned into a political weapon.

It was the advocates for Ms Kitching who ended up tearing her down Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

Another of her now infamous showdowns with the left was when she suggested that kids wagging school to protest against climate change probably wasn’t the best thing for a mainstream political party to endorse. It is staggering that anyone in Labor argued with her.

Likewise she was stonewalled for her views on China and foreign policy, only to have them utterly vindicated and appropriated by others.

Meanwhile, within the party machine her preselection was under threat because of a bizarre schism in the Victorian Right – something even my poor ALP-obsessed brain struggles to understand.

But I do know this.

In the decade since the fateful Rudd-roll of 2010 and the insane quasi-coalition with the Greens, there has been an existential terror among those in the Labor Right that the ALP was being overrun by hard left identity politics obsessives, or ID Pols as party insiders call them.

Outside the party they have many other names: Cultural Marxists, Social Justice Warriors, Virtue Signallers – whatever. The point was they were killing the party, in much the same way that being chained to a fridge might hamper the efforts of someone trying to swim the English Channel.

Kitching was the antidote to all of that – a smart and pragmatic centrist who illuminated ideological idiocy. She was a ray of sunshine – and sunlight, as we know, is the best disinfectant – but now that bulwark against bullsh*t is gone.

Ms Kitching was a ‘bulwark against bullsh*t’ who illuminated ideological idiocy. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

After a year and a half of talks with countless other sensible Laborites from the ground up, I finally spoke to her directly only a few weeks before her death.

We had a mutual friend in the equally prodigious and talented AWU official Misha Zelinsky, who was seeking preselection for the House of Reps but has now found a less hostile battleground in the war zones of Ukraine.

Finding a political soulmate is a bit like falling in love. I adored Kitching instantly and we agreed immediately on everything we spoke about.

Joe Hildebrand found a political soulmate in Ms Kitching. Picture: Supplied

Our first and last conversation ended with a promise that we would get drunk and talk more whenever she was next in Sydney. My real and selfish anger comes from the fact that we will never be able to do that.

She should have been a leading light in the Labor Party. For me she was Labor’s fabled light on the hill.

But the hard truth is that the party snuffed her out. The least it can do now is make sure her legacy of wisdom lives on.

Watch Joe’s new show The Blame Game – 8.30pm Fridays on Sky News or stream on demand at flashnews.com.au.