How Penny Wong made history as our longest-serving female cabinet minister

Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine days. That’s how long Penny Wong has served in cabinet, a record that on Wednesday overtook that of Amanda Vanstone as longest-serving female cabinet minister in Australian history.

Wong’s staying power at the highest levels of Australian politics could not have been predicted when she entered the Senate in 2002, a time when John Howard-style conservatism was in ascendance. Being a Malaysian-born, openly gay woman hardly seemed like the ticket to political longevity or popularity – yet she has achieved both.

Penny Wong is Australia’s longest-serving female cabinet minister.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Australians last year ranked Wong the nation’s most impressive leader, giving her a net likeability of plus 14 per cent (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had a rating of minus three, according to the Resolve Political Monitor, and his predecessor Scott Morrison minus 35).

Diplomats around the world inevitably praise Wong as a shrewd and impressive operator while she commands an almost cult-like following within the Labor Party. As well as foreign minister, she is Labor’s Senate leader and a close confidant and friend of Albanese. In the Rudd-Gillard years she served in cabinet as climate change and finance minister.

Vanstone – who spent seven-and-a-half years in cabinet in the Howard era, including as immigration minister – says of Wong’s record: “It’s a testament to endurance, determination, being able to persevere and keep a calm head.”

While not a fan of identity politics, Vanstone says it is undoubtedly harder for women to gain, and maintain, senior political roles. Male cabinet colleagues, she recalls, would often blithely neglect to invite her to group dinners – casual encounters where crucial political insights could be gleaned amid discussion of that weekend’s footy results.

“I think it’s an embarrassment I held the record for so long,” Vanstone says. “It shows not enough women are coming up through the ranks.”

Although both studied arts/law at the University of Adelaide and share a love of laksa, Vanstone says she doesn’t know Wong especially well.

What strikes her from afar is Wong’s focus on her job and lack of self-aggrandisement.

A case in point came on Wednesday when Wong was asked to respond to a broadside launched by Paul Keating the previous day. The former prime minister seems to have developed something of a fixation on Wong since she declined to treat him as an all-knowing oracle on global affairs.

“It doesn’t take much to encourage Penny Wong, sporting her ‘deeply concerned’ frown, to rattle the China can – a can she gave a good shake to yesterday,” Keating said in a vituperative statement, referring to a speech in which she cautioned against provocative, destabilising behaviour in the South-China Sea.

“I don’t lose sleep over it,” Wong told the Today show, saying that Keating was entitled to his views.

With a flash of the toughness that lies beneath her cool demeanour, she added that “it was a new position to be lectured about … whether or not I understood the country of my birth in Malaysia”.

The contrast between the two was stark: a former prime minister firing off missives from his Potts Point penthouse while Wong was meeting with the most senior political leaders from South-East Asia to tackle the big geopolitical issues of our time.

As for passing Vanstone’s record as longest-serving female cabinet minister, Wong has not uttered a word about it. The deeply private mother of two has kept similarly schtum about her upcoming wedding to long-time partner Sophie Allouache.

Still relatively young for politics at 55, Wong has insisted that she is not going anywhere as foreign minister despite the tiring travel demanded by the role. “Oh no, I’ve wanted this job for a long time,” she said in December, squashing speculation she would soon vacate the position.

“Wong is not a bleater and I’m an admirer of that,” Vanstone says. “You set an example by getting on and doing the job ... I think it will be a long time before anyone passes her record.”

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