Few hard questions as the friendly commentariat boosts Steggall

Apparently being female and Green means never facing media scrutiny — look at Zali Steggall.

Zali Steggall’s campaign launch speech at the Novotel Manly. Picture: Kate Zarifeh

Apparently being female and “green” means never having to face media scrutiny. Olympic slalom skiing bronze medallist Zali Steggall, running as an independent in the federal seat of Warringah hoping to topple long-term Liberal MP Tony Abbott, has received generally soft media treatment. Voters may imagine an independent trying to unseat a high-profile government MP who has been prime minister for two years and opposition leader for five should face serious probing.

But apart from this newspaper’s Brad Norington, who has doggedly pursued Steggall’s links to Labor front organisation GetUp, most interviews with Steggall have assumed virtue for her and treated Abbott as a pariah.

Whatever your views on Abbott, he has been a diligent local member, raising large amounts for the Manly Women’s Shelter, Bear Cottage (children’s hospice) and the Royal Far West (centre for rural children needing medical treatment in Sydney) with his annual Pollie Pedal. He turns up for surf life saving events, still patrols at Queenscliff beach and is a long-term member of his local Davidson Rural Fire Brigade.

GetUp members drumming up anti-Abbott sentiment don’t like being told these things. Their retort usually focuses on Abbott’s many different positions on climate change and opposition to same-sex marriage.

They point to Warringah’s 75 per cent vote in favour of marriage law reform in the 2017 plebiscite to argue he is out of touch. Yet five million other Australians voted against gay marriage and Abbott is very supportive of his gay sister, Christine Forster.

Activists resort to the “Abbott is a misogynist” line, which this column has previously argued is rubbish. Much of it goes back to former prime minister Julia Gillard’s famous speech on the issue, yet Gillard has admitted that when they were both in charge of house business for their respective sides she was fond of Abbott.

It is hard to see how a man with a strong, independently minded wife who runs her own businesses, three daughters, a female chief of staff in opposition and in government (Peta Credlin) and a female deputy (Julie Bishop) can really hate women. None of this is to deny Abbott has been a controversial figure since his days running Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and it is only fair his electorate be given the opportunity to decide if he has lost touch with a seat that has changed since he first won it in 1994.

What of Steggall? Character counts in politics yet most journalists seem to have taken Steggall’s at face value. They have accepted her assurances she is not a GetUp candidate and has never voted Labor, as she first told the head of the Australian Republic Movement, Peter FitzSimons of Nine’s The Sydney Morning Herald, on January 27. Yet even if she is not from GetUp, the organisation is campaigning vigorously for her. And Steggall admits she has never voted for Abbott so can she really portray herself as a centre-right candidate, asNine’s (former Fairfax) papers and Guardian Australia do?

A lawyer and mother of two, she says the electorate is sick of inaction on climate change. She forced Abbott last month to say he now supports Australia’s commitment to the Paris emissions reduction targets to which he first pledged the Coalition in 2015 but backflipped on during the prime ministership of Malcolm Turnbull.

Steggall is clearly a very determined woman and in media profiles speaks of her relentless commitment to physical improvement before her Olympic medal and world title, and since her retirement from competitive skiing.

She received an Order of Australia in 2009 for her services to the Olympic movement and to charity. She is a non-executive director of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, director of the Sport Hall of Fame, member of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority anti-doping rule violation panel and an arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

But despite her ongoing com­mitments, some in the ski community are critical. Most won’t go on the record but some say she has not put much back into the sport at a grassroots level. Remember she lived in France and her ski career as a junior was with French teams.

“Slalom skiing is by its nature a selfish sport and many of us regard Zali as selfish. She has mentored no one on the slopes here since her retirement. Most Olympians are here every year mentoring junior skiers,” says one alpine ski business owner.

A club captain and coach is more direct: “She has put nothing back into skiing at all. They got their fair share of sponsorship in Australia even though her early skiing years were in France. Kellogg’s and OneTel put a lot of money in to her. Many skiers get support from the association (Australian Olympic Committee) and that’s taxpayers’ money so they put back in by doing things … putting in a bit by nurturing up-and-coming skiers.”

Steggall’s camp rejects the criticism. As well as her formal roles mentioned above she says: “I was a pro bono, non-executive director of Ski and Snowboarding Australia from 2002 to 2006. I have mentored, encouraged and given talks to young skiers, in particular one of our best up-and-coming skiers, Zali Offord, named after me.”

The AOC says: “Zali Steggall has made an ongoing contribution to the Olympic movement over many years, including two terms as a director of the Winter Olympic Institute of Australia.” Still, her ski critics question whether she will be prepared to do the local grassroots work every MP must if she has not done grassroots mentoring in her beloved sport.

Few media reports have questioned the motives of the high-profile business people backing Steggall. A long piece by Jane Cadzow in Good Weekend in Nine’s Herald and The Age on March 9 quoted a range of business people backing Steggall on climate action. The piece, like most, did not ask if those backers stood to make money from renewable energy. Clearly Turnbull’s son, Alex, who lives in Singapore but is backing Steggall, does. So do backers Simon Holmes a Court and Solar Choice founder and local resident Angus Gemmell.

Mosman resident and Pacific Equity partners founding partner Rickard Gardell has backed Steg­gall financially but would not discuss his investments with Norington in a piece published here on March 4.

This column has previously criticised the ABC and Nine’s papers for relying on former Liberal leader John Hewson as a conservative critic of the conservatives on climate issues without revealing he invests in renewables. Such oversights never occur when investors in mining or fossil-fuel power generation are quoted.

Several Mosman investment bankers are backing Steggall, including campaign chairman Rob Purves, who is also a WWF Australia governor, and Archer Capital managing director Peter Gold.

Bankers around the world love renewables investments because their returns are usually government-guaranteed and the technology is government-subsidised. Bankers also love the idea of international carbon trading, where they see the potential for fees and loan interest payments on a market that could grow to $7 trillion simply for trading paper certificates. No dirty mining or industrial plant building required. Few voters realise the huge homes in Mosman and along the beaches, many with dozens of solar panels on their roofs, are effectively being subsidised by higher prices for base­load power. In Warringah, that means less salubrious areas back from the beaches such as Manly Vale, Brookvale and Abbott’s Forestville are paying more to heat their homes while owners of harbourside mansions and beach houses receive solar rebates.

Teslas are common in Manly and Mosman, and wealthy voters will no doubt approve of Labor leader Bill Shorten’s commitment last week to ensuring half the nation’s car fleet is electric by 2030. Apart from not thinking about the coal burned generating electricity to power these cars when recharging, analysis by environmental economists shows the carbon footprint in building cars with large battery storage is about 30 per cent greater than for conventional cars. More important, as a contributor of only 1.3 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, how will Australia, with a million cars sold a year, solve anything by getting ahead of China and India, where together 32 million cars sell every year?

The Sydney Morning Herald last Wednesday reported Steggall appearing with Hewson at a Smart Energy Conference in Sydney to support the launch of an Australian-made electric cargo van. It was a day after Shorten’s electric car launch and Hewson said Abbott deserved to lose his seat.

Abbott is styling himself as the candidate looking after interests of the ordinary families of Warringah, while implying Steggall and Labor will look after rich voters. It is a microcosm of the wider climate debate as Labor campaigns for policies that may hurt its own voters’ hip pockets most.