Penny Wong nearly quit politics after Labor’s election loss in May

The Labor veteran wanted to quit after May’s crushing poll loss, until Anthony Albanese intervened.

Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese at September’s Midwinter Ball in Canberra. Picture: AAP

Penny Wong wanted to quit federal politics after Labor’s shock (to some) election loss and was counselled into staying on for another three years in opposition by close friend Anthony Albanese, according to Strewth’s sources.

November marks 18 years since Wong was first elected to the upper house. She’s the fourth-longest-serving senator — behind Kim Carr (1993), Eric Abetz (1994) and Marise Payne (1997).

Wong became Labor’s Senate leader in June 2013 during Kevin Rudd’s second stint as prime minister, serving for three months as Senate leader of the government before becoming Senate leader of the opposition.

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The South Australian spent six years as a minister during the Rudd-Gillard governments and another six on the opposition frontbench under Bill Shorten. People close to Wong say she was shattered when she realised live on the ABC’s election night panel that she wouldn’t be Australia’s next foreign minister.

Penny Wong on the ABC election night panel. Picture: ABC

They say senior figures in the party — including her Left factional ally (not to mention Midwinter Ball date) Albanese — had to step in and convince Wong to stay in politics. There was already an expectation among Labor staffers that Wong would quit if the party lost on May 18. One colleague suspects the senator decided to serve her remaining three years out of loyalty to the new party leader.

Question time

“I had to decide whether I wanted to stay,” Wong tells Margaret Simons in the new biography, Penny Wong: Passion and Principle. “I don’t want to be melo­dramatic about it, but in these jobs you have to really commit and I had to ask myself if I still could. The disappointment is not just personal — those dashed hopes and dreams — and it’s not just party political or tribal. It’s a sense of loss about what you want to be part of, about the meaning of your life … When I was younger … I wanted to do something in my life that had some meaning … And I guess the question I had to ask was, ‘Do I still have that in me?’

Anthony Albanese is congratulated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Penny Wong (left) and former leader Bill Shorten during Labor party Caucus meeting in May.

Because if you decide you don’t then you should get out. And then there’s the question of whether, emotion­ally, you could do something else — whether you would be content or satisfied in another kind of job.” Wong didn’t have long to decide. On May 22, four days after the election, she held a press conference at a park near her Adelaide home and announced her support for Albanese.

Labor wins when we bring people together. pic.twitter.com/ZAvUWQtEwR

— Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) November 7, 2019

“I also announce today that I will be putting myself forward again as Labor’s leader in the Senate,” she said. “The Australian people may have elected the Coalition, but they don’t expect them to get a free pass in the Senate and it is our role to hold them to account and to scrutinise what they are doing and I intend to continue to do that, if elected by my colleagues, as Labor Senate leader”. Wong was the only member of Labor’s former leadership team to survive — with Shorten, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen and Senate deputy Don Farrell all stepping down.

Left to right, Chris Bowen, Penny Wong, Chloe Shorten and Tanya Plibersek at an election campaign event.

Estimated departure

Whispers still buzz around the corridors of power suggesting that Wong could hang up her estimates boxing gloves, given her two kids and job prospects in the private sector. “What happens if Labor doesn’t win the next election, expected in 2022?” Simons’s book (out now!) speculates. “By then Wong, at 53, will have been in the Senate for 20 years — a long and exhausting run. Will she quit politics if Labor fails next time around? She doesn’t answer the question.”

Penny Wong (right) with partner Sophie Allouache and their baby daughter Alexandra in Adelaide in 2011.

Hot topic

“A throwback photograph posted on a politician’s Facebook page spawned what hashtag,” host Andrew O’Keefe asked a contestant on a recent episode of The Chase Australia. The options were: a) #hotAlbo b) #coolMalco c) #warmShorten. Unfortunately the contender went with the amusing #warmShorten. For the record, the correct answer is #hotAlbo. But he did slightly better than two others who chose to pass when asked: “By what rhyming nickname is Scott Morrison known?” “Who?” one muttered.

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