Keneally: Labor did not lose Fowler because of ‘parachute’ backlash

Former Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally says lingering resentment in south-west Sydney over last year’s strict COVID-19 lockdown was the decisive factor in her shock election loss, not local anger about being “parachuted” into the previously safe Labor seat of Fowler.

In her first interview since conceding defeat to independent Dai Le, Keneally said she was still deciding whether she would continue living in the electorate - despite vowing to do so whether she won or lost.

Kristina Keneally after losing the election in Fowler.Credit: Dylan Coker

The former premier said she had experienced far worse suffering in her life than losing an election, most significantly the still-birth of her daughter Caroline two decades ago.

“The most important factor was COVID and its impacts,” the former NSW premier told the Herald’s Peter FitzSimons when asked why she had lost the seat, which Labor previously held on a comfortable 14 per cent margin.

“Those harsh lockdowns engendered an understandable sense of parochialism that the community had been left behind by both major political parties.

“And I genuinely believe that whether the Labor Party ran me or anyone else in Fowler, they would have encountered the same set of challenges.”

“I believe I have found in my life that when God shuts the door, she opens a window.”

Kristina Keneally

Keneally said her campaign started strongly, and that she had received a “lovely and enthusiastic” reaction from locals at train stations and street stalls.

“But when pre-polling started, the number of people who only took the UAP [United Australia Party] how-to-vote cards seemed unnaturally high to me,” she said.

“And I had one or two nasty encounters, during pre-polling, where I started to think this is not going the way we expected it ... But I kept getting reassurance that everything was fine.”

Keneally insisted she had made a conscious decision to leave the Senate and run for Fowler, even though her move followed infighting within the NSW Labor right faction over whether she or fellow senator Deborah O’Neill would take the winnable spot on the party Senate ticket.

Kristina Keneally campaigning in Fairfield ahead of the federal election.Credit: Nick Moir

“I chose to try and go to the House of Representatives because I felt it’s where I could make my best contribution,” she said, adding her husband had noted she did not seem satisfied by life in the Senate.

Keneally said she did not shed any tears over her defeat on election night, instead commiserated over whisky with friends.

“The greatest loss in my life was when my daughter Caroline was still-born in 1999,” she said.

“That’s when I felt searing pain, not this. True, at the moment I feel that I am of the world, not in it – things are happening around me that I am observing which I am simply not a part of, and in that regard that sense of unreality is not dissimilar to when my daughter died.

“But there’s also a sense of calm. I know that there are far worse things in life than losing an election.”

Keneally and her husband have been renting an apartment in Liverpool since late last year but continue to own a home on Scotland Island on the northern beaches.

Asked whether she would continue to live in Fowler, Keneally said: “We are working that out. The only firm decision I have made is to get rid of all my social media accounts. Social media has become an angry place.”

On speculation that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may ask her to serve as ambassador to Washington or the Vatican, Keneally said she did not know whether she would accept such an offer.

“Right now I’m happy to just breathe and think about what the right thing is for me next,” she said.

“I believe I have found in my life that when God shuts the door, She opens a window, and I’m just waiting to see what window might open this time.”

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