Gladys Berejiklian’s parents on why their daughter is best for the job
Krikor and Arsha Berejiklian had wanted their eldest child Gladys to be a lawyer or doctor, but soon realised she was destined for a bigger calling. They sit down for a coffee with Annette Sharp, revealing it’s not easy seeing her under pressure.
NSW
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To hear Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s biggest fans tell it, the race between their Liberal party leader and Labor’s Michael Daley is not nearly as close as the media and polls suggest.
“I can’t trust paper — one day up, one day down … I don’t think it’s that close,” the Premier’s father, 87-year-old Armenian migrant Krikor Berejiklian told The Sunday Telegraph, shaking his worldly head. “My daughter going to win.”
His wife, Arsha, 79, also doesn’t rate Labor’s Johnny-come-lately candidate Daley who, next weekend, hopes to derail the couple’s eldest daughter’s hard-won political career.
“He has no experience — and he doesn’t know sometimes what he talk …,” Mrs Berejiklian said. “He wants to put Alan — what’s his name? — Alan Jones out.”
Over coffee at a North Ryde cafe — across the road from the public primary school where Berejiklian and her two younger sisters Rita and Mary were schooled and just a few kilometres from the humble North Ryde house where the Berejiklians have lived for 45 years — the Premier’s parents hint at all their dedicated daughter has given up to be the first woman Liberal Party Premier of NSW.
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“Her life. I think her life,” Arsha, a retired nurse, said measuredly, giving insight into the personal sacrifice her daughter has made for her political career.
“She’s married to politics,” Krikor, a retired boilermaker/welder who once worked on the Sydney Opera House, added.
And been a good husband to their 48-year-old unmarried daughter?
“Yeah — ask her not me!” Krikor spluttered, dodging the question expertly and referring The Sunday Telegraph to his absent daughter.
“We don’t know …” Arsha expanded, with a shake of her soft dark bob.
“It’s not easy to be family of the Premier — to see your daughter under pressure. (We) worry a lot,” Krikor said tenderly.
The couple tried to steer their academically gifted daughter towards a career in law or medicine in childhood but a school excursion to Canberra at age 16 set her heart on politics.
“I used to say to be a lawyer or a doctor. She’d didn’t like. And the principal (of Peter Board High School, North Ryde, where Gladys was school captain), he told me your daughter is going to be somebody in future,” Arsha said proudly.
Did they ever hope their daughter might one day become Prime Minister?
“Of course, of course …. Why not? She can do anything,” the Premier’s mother said.
Krikor is certain the nation’s prime leadership role was never beyond his Gladys: “Because I know of her smartness — very political and intelligent — I hope maybe one day (she would) be Prime Minister, but now … through,” he said, his hands cutting the air in front of him, a gesture indicating that dream is kaput.
“I don’t know what she’ll do after Premier but she has a big — a great — future. I don’t know (doing) what. If she re-elected, okay, if she not re-elected she will still be strong.”
With Friday’s New Zealand terror attack preventing the Premier from joining her parents for this interview, the elder Berejiklians happily — and for the first time — opened up about their immigrant love story — and the work ethic that shaped their daughter.
Armenians both, Krikor migrated to Australia in 1965, aged 33 (his wife corrects him, he was 34) — four years before Arsha who celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of her Australian migration on March 23, election day.
“She come from Jerusalem, I come from Syria — then we meet here. She like me. I like her,” he said, short on romantic embellishment.
“In six weeks we meet each other and we got married. In six weeks,” explained Arsha who was 29 when she met her future husband after being introduced to him by his sister, then on the lookout for a “good fit” for her brother.
“We went out one night and then he said “I am coming not for just pass the time. I want my future (to be) with you”,” Arsha said.
A day trip to Newcastle in his new car, a shiny Valiant, in 1969 would seal the deal.
After almost 50 years of marriage, the couple look to be still a “good fit”.
With three professional daughters to carry on the name — and no grandchildren yet to be counted — the elder Berejiklians, whose parents were orphaned in the Armenian genocide from 1915 — have been known to nudge their daughters about getting a move on concerning procreation but on the record will say only: “The main thing they are happy, we are happy.”
Krikor lists the Opal card as one of his daughter’s great achievements to date while for Arsha it is her daughter’s commitment to planning: “She’s planning for a new generation — good schools, good stadium, sport is important … the trains.”
Hardworking Liberal voters both, as we get up to leave, Krikor tells me again why he loves Australia: “I come here Wednesday. I found a job. They said you work tomorrow and I say “No, Monday”- I had to rest a couple of days. And then I started. I come here and the next day I find a job — that’s why I love Australia, I never see such a country … it’s the most important thing.”
It’s a professional sentiment their daughter, Gladys, will be mindful of as she counts down for next weekend’s election and the prospect of life after it.
Originally published as Gladys Berejiklian’s parents on why their daughter is best for the job
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