When news of senator Kimberley Kitching’s tragic death broke, it was immediately apparent something was very wrong with the response from many of Labor’s most senior people.
A glance at Twitter showed condolences by Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Kristina Keneally and Tanya Plibersek appeared strained (and deputy leader Richard Marles failed to tweet), in contrast to the accolades pouring in from the Coalition, including Scott Morrison, Barnaby Joyce, ministers and backbenchers. We now know why, thanks to Bill Shorten’s heartbreaking statements last week, and the extensive coverage in this paper and elsewhere since.
Kitching had been treated appallingly badly by her own party for some time but especially in the past year. It seems the Opposition Leader and his Senate leader are particularly to blame as the two people ultimately in charge of Labor’s parliamentary team. Statements on Wednesday by Albanese and Wong indicate they intend to hide behind Kitching’s death rather than confront their responsibility for her horrendous treatment by her own people.
For me this is quite personal and deeply upsetting. As recorded by Janet Albrechtsen on this page on Monday, Kitching wrote a generous opinion piece about me last year in response to my plea for everyone in politics, but particularly Labor, to ensure an end to sexist, misogynist and dangerous behaviour towards women. The piece is testament to her kind, caring, compassionate and principled nature; even more so when you consider we had never properly met when she wrote it.
Kitching saw a wrong and tried to make it right. As we know from her relentless advocacy on the Magnitsky Act this is the person she was: someone who would stand up for what was right, no matter the personal cost. She concluded her opinion piece on my treatment with “We’ve called out the speck in the Liberal eye on those issues without acknowledging the log in our own.”
Well, we now know how big the log was and who the loggers were who cut down the tree – Albanese and Wong – and they need to be held to account.
Albanese and Labor have spent the past 18 months relentlessly attacking the Prime Minister and the Coalition on “women’s issues”. When I highlighted Albanese’s hypocrisy on this matter, pointing out that he had failed to stand up for women including me, he promised to act in future when I raised problems or concerns. He said: “I call out inappropriate behaviour anytime I am asked.” He didn’t say this just to me, he said it to the press gallery and the Australian people.
Since then, in numerous speeches to parliament I have highlighted that under Albanese Labor allegedly has failed to keep its female staff safe from abuse from current and former male MPs, it failed to support women or keep them safe in safe Labor seats for preselection, and Albanese has failed to condemn sexist and misogynist rants against me and other women by friendlyjordies and its supporters, despite my many speeches and two letters to him pleading with him to do so.
We now know he also failed to support and protect one of his own, Kitching. He failed to support and protect her in her workplace and he failed to protect her preselection and thus her career. He has failed to condemn “inappropriate behaviour” by her female and factional colleagues. So when Albanese has the gall to say he listens and acts for women, as he did on Tuesday, he is lying.
Wong is no better. It was Wong who was on the ground in my electorate, Boothby, throughout the 2019 election campaign and who cannot have missed the dangerous behaviour that was going on because the abuse I was subjected to was reported in the papers, on radio and TV. Wong failed to condemn this behaviour, then belittled my experiences.
Such actions look minor now given allegations that Wong was complicit in the ostracisation of Kitching in her workplace, the Senate, further allegations she appropriated Kitching’s work on the Magnitsky Act and allegations that Wong made the most devastating of accusations of Kitching when she said because Kitching was not a mother there were some things she could not understand.
I thought Labor saw only Coalition women as fair game; I put it down to politics. We now know its own women like Kitching were treated just as badly, if not worse, and that is sickening.
Despite this, Kitching stayed true to her party and the Labor cause until her death. She personified parts of the Labor tradition I think most of us respect even if we don’t agree with the precise policies it produces; principled, decent, Christian and caring. This is the tradition that in the hands of Albanese and Wong seems lost. The word tragedy is used too freely these days, but Kitching’s death at 52, in the prime of her life, is a genuine tragedy: for her husband, Andrew, her family and friends, for Labor and for our nation.
Nicolle Flint is the retiring Liberal member for the South Australian seat of Boothby.
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