Bennelong by-election: Labor rolls dice with Kristina Keneally

Labor rolls the dice that a celebrity/former premier can win the day just as former ABC journalist Maxine McKew did.

Kristina Keneally is a star candidate with barnacles. Labor is rolling the dice that a celebrity/former premier can win the day in Bennelong just as former ABC TV journalist and presenter Maxine McKew did in 2007.

But with Ms Keneally, 48, — a tough, popular, articulate candidate — comes massive baggage the government will be keen to exploit.

She once moved with Right wing powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. She owed her job as premier — held from December 2009 to March 2011 — to them. Obeid is now in jail; ICAC has declared Tripodi corrupt.

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She later told ICAC she always strongly disliked Obeid.

Ms Keneally presided over a government whose missteps on electricity led to high power prices. She made some moves to correct this, but it was too late.

For years after her time as premier, there was speculation that Ms Keneally would go federal — for Kingsford-Smith, the seat her husband Ben had always wanted and the family had long lived in, in southeastern Sydney. But in the end, Matt Thistlewaite moved from the Senate, to succeed Peter Garrett.

Ms Keneally’s desire to go into politics began in Ohio at primary school with an ambition declared to classmates that she wanted to be US president.

She moved to Australia after marrying Ben Keneally, the nephew of famous Australian author Thomas.

When Ben Keneally, who had long been in active in Labor circles, was told by Joe Tripodi at lunch at Lucio’s in Paddington in the lead-up to the 2003 election that he would not receive backing for the state seat of Heffron at the 2003 state poll because of Labor’s affirmative action rules, he suggested his wife who he met in America, Kristina, run.

That was the start of a career which saw Keneally promoted to be disability minister in 2007, where she would have worked with Bill Shorten, who had disability responsibilities in the federal sphere, then she became Planning and later Infrastructure Minister.

On her first day as NSW premier, Nathan Rees, who was being rolled on that day in December 2009, scarred her forever by saying she was a “puppet” of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi.

In a tense Question Time that preceded the leadership vote, Ms Keneally rose and uttered the now-famous lines “I am nobody’s puppet, I am nobody’s protege, I am nobody’s girl.”

Ms Keneally had stayed loyal to Tripodi at the time of his dumping from cabinet by Mr Rees. She honestly did not believe he was corrupt. She was sponsored into power by Obeid and Tripodi in winning a Right caucus ballot 25 votes to 22 over Frank Sartor.

Without Obeid and Tripodi she would never have become premier, there is no doubt.

She also controversially reinstated Ian Macdonald - now in jail over corruption — to cabinet upon becoming premier, only to have to dump him over travel expenses three months later.

But there is little question Keneally has a reputation for integrity and was more naive in her dealings with the Obeids and Tripodis than anything.

The Australian Water ICAC inquiry revealed Keneally had stopped a cabinet minute which Tripodi had crafted for then Planning Minister Tony Kelly to attempt to give a $1 billion contract to Australian Water Holdings which would have benefited the Obeid family.

Ms Keneally dumped on her former colleagues in the commission.

Like Cheryl Kernot, who was thrust into the seat of Dickson where she achieved a five per cent swing and a narrow victory to bring the seat to Labor in 1998, Ms Keneally is taking a big risk here in running for Bennelong.

Even if she were to win, it would be a tough task to retain a traditional Liberal seat long-term.

Ms Keneally said she is the underdog this morning and she is right. But she gives Labor a sniff they would not otherwise have had.

In taking on John Alexander with Keneally, it is a case of taking on a star candidate with a star candidate.

But federal Labor history is complete with the scalps of several such “star candidates” — from Peter Beattie in Forde in 2013, to Garrett; who became a minister but no doubt has regrets about his time in politics, to Kernot, who lost in 2001 to Peter Dutton, to McKew who lost in 2010, after defeating John Howard in Bennelong in 2007.

Ms Keneally is close to Labor’s general secretary Kaila Murnain who would have been central, with Shorten, in approaching her to run.

Whilst premier, Ms Keneally produced Labor’s worst ever result at an election in NSW, in the wake of various scandals involving her ministers — winning just 20 seats against Barry O’Farrell in 2011.

But in 2010, when I visited the seat of Penrith for a by-election with Keneally, she was feted. Her popularity with punters was astonishing.

In fact, Keneally could not believe it when a few days later then Labor general secretary Sam Dastyari walked into her office and told her that she was about to lose the seat with a record swing. She told Dastyari his figures must be wrong given the reception she had received in the seat and told him to get out of her office. The swing — and loss — occurred.

This is the contradiction in Keneally — she is popular on a personal level but the question is whether people associate her with her former government, which in some parts was corrupt.

There is certainly an argument that in 2011 people liked her, but they despised her government.

In this, she is taking on a similar challenge to Carmen Lawrence, premier during the WA Inc era, who went on to become federal health minister.

But Dr Lawrence, unlike Ms Kernot and Ms Keneally, was given a safe Labor seat in Fremantle to stand for.

John Alexander is a high profile member having been a former tennis champion. He has not lived in the electorate for a while and Keneally has only just moved there.

It is game on now for the former tennis champ when he might reasonably have expected to comfortably defend his 9.5 per cent margin.

And, it seems, an ugly and tough by-election campaign awaits.