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Freakish powers of a formidable operator (Excerpts)
The Sydney Morning Herald
December 8, 2007
Friends and foes alike respect the intellect, focus and commitment of Penny Wong, whose talent for negotiation was forged in the hotbed of student politics. Annabel Crabb reports.
Some people are born with an innate ability to sing; some to paint, or dribble a basketball. Such is the randomness of creation's miracle. But what are the odds that Penelope Ying-Yen Wong, born in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, on November 5, 1968, would enter this world with a God-given knack for politics?
She was barely 18 when she seized control of the campus Labor club at the University of Adelaide; her methodical destruction of the existing power structure there gave an early glimpse of her freakish powers.
Colleagues now describe her as "relentless", and this word sums up her progress through the federal parliamentary Labor Party, of which she has been a member for just five years.
She is calm, groomed, and virtually unflappable. She has a sharp intellect. She is a forensic Senate operative in the John Faulkner mould. She is a lesbian. She is a practising Christian.
And now she is one of Kevin Rudd's most senior cabinet ministers, charged with driving an international consensus on climate change, and a domestic consensus on water management.
It's a huge ask, by anyone's standards.
Penny Wong did not always intend to be a politician, even if it looks that way in retrospect. Her initial plan was to be a doctor, and to work for Medecins Sans Frontieres; she won a spot in medical school in 1986, deferred it, and then left for an exchange year in Brazil, where she volunteered at a hospital - and quickly changed her career plans.
"There was a bit of a problem with blood," she explains briskly.
This is an important revelation, as it might be the first and last recorded example of squeamishness in Penny Wong.
...Wong called people "comrade"; she was intensely organised; her attention to detail was rigorous. If a comrade was spending long hours campaigning, Wong might arrange for a set of course notes to materialise in that person's pigeonhole, just so they didn't get too behind.
"She was totally focused on politics, right from when she started," says Kris Hanna, another comrade...
"She was methodical, serious and committed - in the left, she was known as 'Penny the Prefect'."
...Wong worked part-time as an organiser for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union through the concluding stages of her law degree, but still managed to graduate with honours.
...Certainly, Wong is known widely within the party for her driving ambition, and her lack of squeamishness about the hard and unattractive side of factional business, of which she saw plenty through the Crean/Latham era. "She is very into the politics. But she has a sort of dignity and authority about it," Hanna says.
...Butler, who remains factionally close, describes her as a cool political operator ideally suited to the task set for her by Rudd. Butler is the former secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union in South Australia...
...Butler says she has a forensic brain and a gift for cross-examination; he describes her appointment as a "brilliant" move on Rudd's part. "Climate change, water, emissions trading - they're all about getting across some really difficult technical detail, then getting into a room and negotiating hard. They are just her major strengths," he says.
...As a politician, Wong is not naturally gregarious; at least, not to the degree that many of her colleagues are.
She is serious of demeanour and conservative of appearance, given neither to drinking nor excessive frivolity.
A periodic flirtation with cigarettes is about as close as she gets to formal vice.
...But in private she has a warmth and humour which belies her reputation; there is a touch of goofiness, if you can imagine that. There is a hint of it in her smile, which is shy and engaging; she is striking to look at, and photogenic, but hates having her picture taken.
Over the course of last month's election she served as Labor's federal campaign spokeswoman, proving to be articulate and surefooted; on being asked anything about her private life, however, she gets tongue-tied.
She seems genuinely puzzled by the idea that anyone would be interested in the fact that she is Australia's first lesbian cabinet minister, and the first Asian-born cabinet minister, for that matter.
"If it means that we ... as a nation ... if it shows that we are a nation where people can achieve things just on their abilities, then it is a good thing," she says, with rare hesitance.
Wong brought her mother, Jane Chapman, and her partner, Sophie Allouache - a former University of Adelaide Students' Association president - to Monday's swearing-in ceremony at Yarralumla...
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wow..thank you for posting this. She is always someone I really admire..an example of a beautiful, successful and a very intelligent woman.
1963joanna 4 months ago