Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Joan Kirner was not just a former Victorian Premier and a former Labor warrior to me; she was a constituent, a branch member and, most importantly, a friend and mentor. Historians have written plenty about Joan's political legacy in recent days—the VCE, Landcare, fighting gender inequality—but I want to speak to her personal legacy to try and leave a small record of the wit and warmth, and commitment and kindness that she shared with so many of us.

Her loss has been felt keenly by many—many people across Melbourne's west, across Victoria and across Australia. I have ceased to be surprised at the extraordinary number and range of people who have told me in recent days that it was Joan who got me into politics, or it was Joan who got me through this, or it was Joan who opened this door for me.

Joan and I certainly did not agree on everything—her ardent support for the Essendon Football Club was embarrassing to the last—but she taught me an enormous amount. The issue she taught me the most about was gender inequality. She had experienced it and she had fought it in the community and in government.

Joan was a ferocious advocate of increasing women's representation in politics—she did not just talk about it; she lived it. She was instrumental in the adoption of affirmative action policies within the Labor Party, and in the establishment of EMILY's list.

Initiatives that have seen record numbers of women in Labor cabinets in recent years, including the government of our first female Prime Minister—Julia Gillard—and Australia's first cabinet with equal gender representation under the Queensland Palaszczuk government.

Joan was not just a critic of male dominance of our politics; she was a builder of female representation. Given this, I had some trepidation when, during my preselection, I went to see her as a bloke running against three women. I did not get her vote. In fact, at a branch member forum during my preselection she sat in the very front row of the hall—in front of 500 branch members—less than 10 yards away from me and directly in my line of sight. Every time I got up to speak, she glared at me and put the fire in me and the pressure on me. Every time I sat down, she was in the line of sight of the three women running against me, cheering them on and giving them the support that they needed. Despite playing this ballot extremely hard, in the first meeting I had with Joan after the ballot and after that she had nothing but endless cups of tea, mentoring and advice for me.

Given Joan's extraordinary support for women in politics, it can be lost somewhat the enormous support and mentoring she is given to men in politics also. For those men who are willing to listen, she was extraordinarily generous with her time and consideration. As Bill Shorten told the Labor caucus this week, Joan had plenty of advice for Labor men in politics too—it was often just a bit tougher than the advice she had for the women in the party.

I greatly value our correspondence and meetings. Her counsel on responding to family violence was particularly important to me. During our conversations on this issue she offered me the benefit of decades of experience in community organising and political strategy. She understood how gender inequality caused violence against women. Once, I complained to her at the end of a day's worth of meeting with advocates and service providers in this area, telling her that meeting with the people doing this extraordinarily important but extraordinarily hard work was psychologically and emotionally exhausting for me. She gave me a stiff kick up the bum and told me: 'You think you've got it tough now. You should've seen what it was like 30 years ago! We couldn't even convince people that this was actually happening then and, even if we could get that far, we couldn't convince people that it was an issue that was worth discussing in public, an issue that was worth being tackled by political leaders.'

She was right, of course—and not only that, but through the benefit of her hard-won experience she taught me that we can make progress on changing societal attitudes to these issues, that we have made progress however insignificant it may feel, however agonisingly slow it may feel and even if the amount of work required to inch this issue forward over the long-term seems all out of proportion to the gains that we realised. She was convinced that over the long term, over the long arc of history, we can all make progress. Immediately after making this point to me, she was straight back onto the politics of the day and asking me what she could do to help me keep inching the issue forward in the politics of the day.

We are increasingly finding that the way that elected representatives conduct themselves after they have left the political stage is a true mark of their character. On this measure, Joan wins the highest marks. She never compromised her integrity, her dignity or her commitment to the Labor cause. She might have retired from elected politics after losing government, but she never retired from the practice of politics. She kept turning up and giving of herself so that the party, the cause and others could succeed. She was a joiner and a doer: Joan did not just speak out, she offered endless practical support with fundraising, mentoring and networking to so many young people in the party. It is part of the reason that Joan's loss has been so keenly felt. She was not just a political legacy; she was an ongoing part of so many people's a lives.

Even now it is strange to think that she is gone. She never really retired and, despite her illnesses, every time that I spoke to her she retained a palpable sense of energy. Towards the end of Joan's life, I was proud to have been accused in a national newspaper of having fallen under her spell. I sent her a copy of this article, with a note telling her how pleased I was by this. Given how close to the end this was, though, I never heard back from her. But I hope that she was pleased by it, too.

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