Penny Wong is not normal.
The Labor Senator for South Australia is exceptionally driven, exceptionally smart and exceptionally busy.
She lives in two separate cities, flies weekly between countless others, and juggles the demands of high office with the confidence and conflict resolution skills you’d expect of a former lawyer who has thrived in some of the most turbulent times Australian politics has ever seen.
There’s not a lot that’s “normal” about that.
She tells Holly Wainwright how she does it, here:
But there is one thing that is very “normal” about Senator Penny Wong: she loves her family. She frets about the amount of time she spends away from her kids Alexandra, 5, and Hannah, 11 months, and she loves and appreciates her long-time partner, Sophie Allouache.
When I met the Senator (who, yes, says “call me Penny”), what’s obvious is that the only thing that shatters her infamous cool, that ruffles her impeccably professional persona, is the suggestion that her family is NOT normal.
Like when Lyle Shelton from the Australian Christian Lobby makes it his business to question whether same-sex couples could ever be a “normal” family, and uses the idea of children being raised “without a mother or a father” as a bludgeon with which whack the marriage equality debate.
“His argument is that we are not normal and that we will harm our children,” Penny says about Shelton’s arguments. “And I object very deeply and personally to the way that he and many others who oppose equality want to use our children as part of their political argument… If you really cared about kids you wouldn’t spend your time on the public airwaves, telling them that their families are not normal.
“I feel like saying, Do you have any idea how boringly normal the rest of our life is? We have a station wagon and a mortgage and we live in the suburbs. Our kids go to child care and kindy around the corner.. We forget the shopping list, we try to run around just like you do to the supermarket… Our lives are not that different. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?”
In person, Senator Wong is warmer and funnier than her formidable reputation suggests. Definitely a little intimidating, and fiercely private, she’s uncomfortable getting too personal about her life in Adelaide with Sophie and their kids, but she’s the kind of parent who can’t help breaking out the phone to show you how cute they are (very) and share her wonder at how parenting, the great leveller, might not have given her any sympathy for detractors, but has certainly softened her against parents dealing with tantrums in public.
“You want to say to them, ‘It happens to us all,'” says Penny. Although, when it happens to a high-profile politician, there’s an extra layer of stress. “‘See!'” she imagines the Lyle Sheltons of the world finger-wagging. “Penny Wong is a really bad parent!”
She certainly is not. But as she reveals in this conversation, she is a time-poor parent who wishes she was around more.
“I think my work life has changed since I had my family… I’m careful about structuring my time away… I try to carve time out and be really clear about what I need to do in terms of evening functions.
“For the first day of school I missed actually taking [Alexandra], but I did fly on the Monday morning so I could spend the night before with her. And you know, she had to take her backpack to bed.”
But then to the plane, because there’s work to be done. Back on the topic of marriage equality, Penny says anyone who thinks it’s an inevitable change is wrong.
“I’m in politics because I don’t ever think anything is inevitable… Change only ever happens because people work for it. That is the history of the women’s movement. Nothing happened without women standing up and saying we want the right to vote… That only happened because people worked for it.”
Listen to Penny talk about marriage here:
Top Comments
I like her, I think she is very smart and very classy. Everything she says seems to be well thought through and well measured, in terms of you feel like she has some brains and has really thought through the ramifications of things before she speaks. She also has a quiet compassion to her, like she speaks in a serious manner but seems to care without coming across as overly emotional or dramatic.(not that I have a problem with overly emotional or dramatic as I tend to be this myself, but I can appreciate restrained compassion in someone else). I always feel that she is the kind of person who would actually listen to another's opinion.
To be honest I am a bit over the whole gay marriage thing, only because it feels a bit redundant, when gay couples have pretty much the same rights anyway as married couples (via defacto laws), I just think it's a lot of energy fighting for rights that they pretty much already have, but on the other hand if it's that important to them well why not, it's just I get a bit fed up of it hearing about it, when I think there are other more important issues in Australia, and it actually makes me a bit cranky the amount of coverage it gets, so I have been a bit fed up with some of the gay activists going on about it, when I think surely there are other things more important that this, but then when I see Penny Wong that calms me down a bit as she is someone I respect.
Wow, what an ignorant comment. You are 'fed up' hearing about people fighting for equality? How utterly selfish of them, fighting to have the same recognition of their relationship as a relationship between a man and a woman and then having the audacity to make sure this fight is in the media. Personally, marrying my husband was a huge step for us and has fundamentally changed our relationship. It's not just about the rights conferred by marriage at all. I wish Penny all the best.
I'm not fed up of people fighting for equality, I'm fed up of hearing people fight to get something they already have. That's what I'm trying to point out. Anyone can have the same legal rights under a defacto relationship as marriage, and marriage was just started as a religious thing anyway, so why would someone who is gay care about a religious thing when they already legally have the same? It doesn't make logical sense. if they desperately want it fine, but I just think the energy focused on it would be better utilised in other areas. A focus on AIDS research etc that I think would be more helpful to gay people than agitating for rights that they already have. I didn't always think this way, I was for gay marriage until a friend told me that gay people have the same rights under a defacto relationship. I couldn't believe it but checked it out myself (I think it's under the Family law website).
Believe it or not, we can focus on more than one thing at once - we can have marriage equality and AIDS research. Its not one or the other.
Despite what you seem to think, gay people do not have equality. Not while there is one set of rules for straight people, and another for gay people. Straight people can get married, gay people cants. That is not equality.
Gay people want to get married for the same reason as straight people - for security, to publicly celebrate their commitment, to provide greater legal protection for their children, or simply because they are in love.
When my husband and I got married it had nothing to do with legal rights or religion, it was about celebrating how lucky we felt to have found each other. Just like I imagine a committed gay couple who want to get married would feel.
Oh dearie, dearie me. So all the people, all around the country seeking gay marriage as a means to achieve equality...they're all wrong?? Gay couples and straight couples are already equal - your friend and the Family Law website says so. Riiiiight....