Maxine McKew recognised in King’s Birthday Honours list for services to journalism, politics and education
When Maxine McKew left high school in the late 1960s, she had no grand vision of a specific career path; rather, she had a single, guiding principle.
When Maxine McKew left high school in the late 1960s, she had no grand vision of a specific career path; rather, she had a single, guiding principle.
“I just wanted an interesting life,” said McKew, as she reflected on her recognition in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours list.
More than 50 years later, McKew’s impressive catalogue of achievements and experiences – as a journalist, a politician, an author and an educator – has clearly exceeded the benchmark she set herself as a teenager.
“I was always a curious kid,” she said. “Growing up in Brisbane, I always wanted to know what was happening ‘out there’.
“I started reading newspapers at the age of 11 … I still remember buying the first ever copy of The Australian (in 1964). It was a window on a wider world for me.”
Today, McKew has been made a member (AM) in the general division of the Order of Australia for “significant service to journalism, to higher education, and to the Parliament”.
While McKew the politician will forever be remembered for her extraordinary victory in the Sydney seat of Bennelong in the 2007 federal election, in which she ousted then prime minister John Howard from parliament, the legacy of McKew the journalist is equally significant. McKew developed a taste for newsrooms in the early 1970s during a brief stint as a typist at the BBC (“as soon as I got there, I knew that this was the business for me”) before she returned to her hometown of Brisbane to take up a traineeship with ABC Radio.
Within three years, she was promoted to an on-air role on groundbreaking current affairs program This Day Tonight, and was one of only a handful of prominent female journalists in the Australian media at that time.
“It’s hard to believe, but I was the first full-time female reporter to work in the ABC’s Brisbane office,” McKew told The Australian.
“It’s satisfying to see how far the media industry has come, with women now holding so many dominant positions in finance and political reporting, and as foreign correspondents.” The pinnacle of McKew’s media career was her decade-long stretch as host of Lateline from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, during which time the show carried enormous political clout. “Lateline was a singular contribution at the time to national political life because it went out of its way to look across the globe and it had the resources to do that, and the research strength to get A-list guests,” she said.
But McKew, who turns 70 next month, also expressed dismay at the dwindling resources of modern newsrooms.
“It concerns me that we are hollowing out a lot of the research effort … when I consider the quality of people that the ABC hired to support what me and (inaugural Lateline host) Kerry O’Brien did on that program,” she said.
“I think it now seems to be all about serving the various digital platforms, and hitting as many eyeballs as possible. And I get all that, I’m not trying to be a Luddite. But I know how thinly resources are spread – not just at the ABC but at other media organisations as well – and that is a concern.”
McKew’s political career was brief but spectacular – she says that despite having been an MP for just three years, she is still regularly stopped in the street by people who want to discuss her stunning win in Bennelong.
“That moment (the 2007 federal election) took my life in a completely different direction. And I’d do it again if I had my time over, as chaotic and as depressing as I found the events of June 2010 when Labor shot itself in the foot,” she said, referring to the ousting of Kevin Rudd in his first term as PM.
McKew said she has bumped into Mr Howard “a few times” over the years since her famous victory. “We occasionally run into each other, usually at airport lounges. We always have a word … I have a good deal of respect for him.”
Post politics, McKew has focused her energies on the education sector. McKew has been an honorary fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education since 2015, and currently sits on the boards of State Library of Victoria and Respect Victoria, an organisation dedicated to the prevention of family violence.
And she still reads three newspapers every day.
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