In a heartfelt interview on ABC radio last Friday morning, Bill Shorten laid bare the viciousness within his party. At least partly, he blamed Kimberley Kitching’s sudden death on the brutality of politics. Kitching, who died of a suspected heart attack the night before, was facing a nasty factional preselection fight.
The first-term Victorian senator was no shrinking violet. But she had a decency about her that is hard to locate in many other politicians.
What follows is an example of Kitching’s character. On March 16, 2021, Liberal MP Nicolle Flint delivered an impassioned adjournment speech, demanding that the safety of women in parliament be above politics. Flint denounced Labor for not condemning vile behaviour directed at her by Labor-leaning groups and other lackeys. That didn’t happen. It still hasn’t happened.
The next evening, Kitching sent a column she had written in support of Flint, and detailing her own experiences within Labor’s political machine, to Liberal MP Andrew Hastie. The two MPs were friends and members of the Wolverines, a small cross-party group of MPs with a laser-like focus on Chinese threats to Australia’s sovereignty.
Hastie sent Kitching’s column to Flint that evening. “To be published in the afr or SMH,” he wrote, adding: “She won’t publish it if you don’t like it.”
Flint confirmed that she liked it. Alas, Kitching’s piece was not published. Maybe Kitching didn’t send her piece to a Nine Newspaper. Maybe she submitted it, only to have it rejected for publication. If that’s the case, then shame on that newspaper.
In her 949-word piece, Kitching bravely called out the sexist crap within her own party – not on her way out the door of parliament like many others, but while still in parliament.
Having seen the late senator’s unpublished piece, I’m handing the rest of my column over to her. For one reason. It reveals a common Kitching trait: setting politics aside when she prosecuted a matter of conviction in the hope of changing the country for the better. Even when it soured relations with her own side.
Kitching wrote: “What Labor needs to say in response to Nicolle’s confronting words is nothing more or less than ‘We’re sorry. We can’t deny the truth of what you say because we saw it and did nothing. We’ve tolerated the intolerable, so very visibly on social media, for far too long. We’ve called out the speck in the Liberal eye on those issues without acknowledging the log in our own’.”
Kitching did what senior Labor leaders refused to do.
She wrote: “I’m sorry, Nicolle. I’m sorry some idiot graffitied your office with vile misogynist hate speech that can’t be repeated in a family newspaper.
“I’m sorry that one of our supporters apparently stalked you.
“I’m sorry the necessarily robust contest over a marginal seat between our two great parties turned into an occasional debacle where misogyny was weaponised against you, where you felt unsafe and denigrated.
“I don’t know you well, but you seem such a graceful, confident, tough, articulate, passionate person. And I am deeply troubled that it appears gendered political violence has caused you – a formidable politician – to fall out of love with politics and has prompted you to decide to leave. And for that, I am deeply sorry; not just for you but what it says about all of us, and the limits Australian society is allowing to be put on the contribution of Australian women.”
Kitching then turned inward to her party: “As just one example, we are judged by our husbands in a way that men never are about their wives. I liked the late former Victorian premier, Joan Kirner, I really did. I don’t think anyone in our history championed the cause of gender equity in public life more effectively than she did. And so when I ran in a hotly contested preselection, when I saw her name on the list of eligible voters, I reached out to her via one of her best friends and a former cabinet colleague, a woman who has always encouraged me and supported me.
“Joan was a lioness of the Left, and was not a natural factional supporter of mine but she had no reason to support my main opponent either, a young man. So I thought I had every chance of swinging her when she invited me over to her home in Williamstown for a cup of tea.
“Joan told me that she thought I was great, that I was recommended very highly by her friend and that she had followed my progress through the party as a long-time member of the Administrative Committee and party office-holder but there was a problem and she wasn’t going to support me.
“She didn’t like my husband’s views, whose rather strident online criticism of her Left faction left her displeased. I had many arguments prepared for my discussion with the first female premier of Victoria but was left a bit speechless by that.
“One of the greatest Labor champions for women was willing to judge me, not on the content of my character and career but purely on whether she liked the political views of my opinionated but mostly Labor-supporting husband. Labor has made great strides to elect more women and we’re much better for it than we were in the days where caucus photos consisted solely of men in suits and hats.”
Though Kitching wrote that things are improving within her faction, she notes “most of our decisions – internally – factionally – are still very much made by men. My own Right faction for whatever reason has really struggled with this”.
She mentions the poor treatment by powerful men in the Victorian government of “our titan, the former Victorian minister for women, Fiona Richardson … It was brutal. And there wasn’t much we could do about it. And there wasn’t much Labor men did about it either. And then cancer claimed her in the prime of her life just as she’d reached national prominence for sharing her story about her mum’s experience of domestic violence and pushing for a royal commission into it, which continues to shape the direction of government policy.”
Kitching finished with a plea: “My party needs to be much more vigilant in shutting down and repudiating gender-based political violence, particularly when we know ahead of time that it’s likely to arise in heated political contests, from the fringes, from idiots, online trolls, from the kinds of supporters you don’t really want but are too embarrassed to call out publicly.”
Vale Kimberley Kitching. At your best, you were the classiest of people.
More Coverage
Join the conversation
Macquarie’s new lighthouse is all about the AI boom
Investment bank Macquarie wants to build another AirTrunk, and the infrastructure supporting the tech revolution sits at the heart of its plans.
Read more
The unintended consequences of casino rules
Despite the best of intentions, money laundering rules have sent rule-abiding gamblers elsewhere. Casinos are not the only places which will bear the brunt.
Read more