Penny Wong. My concern now is even if the Parliament railroaded it through it would be such a controversial issue we wouldnt stop talking about the issue, because we built up this expectation that Australians get to have their say on it. She took a job in industrial law with a firm that represented unions on the left, then moved to the Miscellaneous Workers Union to work with Mark Butler, president of the SA Labor party. She also said the government wanted a greater U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific region. The question everyone asks when they know you are writing a book about Penny Wong is whether she will ever be prime minister, and if not, why not. As you can hear in the background, it was a full house for the launch of @UniversitySA's Global Executive MBA (Defence & Space). "The rest of us would be running around, putting up posters, but she would be talking about serious number-crunching deals, preference flows, stuff that made you think - this is really serious business," she says. Weatherill. Last modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 13.51 EDT. Simons shows Wong, in contrast, as able to operate in the same challenging environment and yet be true to herself and her values. With the Kevin 07 ALP victory, she became minister for climate change and water, a frontbench heavyweight. To seize the opportunity and have marriage equality as law in Australia by March next year, with the type of support that comes from the public having endorsed it. At the time Holden directly employed 1,600 people in its Elizabeth plant in South Australia, with a total of 3,000 job losses predicted through the supply chain. Senator Natasha Stott Despoja was a contemporary, as well as Wong's then boyfriend, Jay Weatherill, now a senior minister in Mike Rann's South Australian Government. I made it clear I don't support this," he told ABC Radio on Friday. The Commission was headed by former Governor Kevin Scarce and delivered its final report and recommendation to the Government of South Australia in May 2016. In these populist times, people tend to see her as what they wish her to be, rather than what she is. This is simply a question of respect. It drains her. Published by Black Inc. Books. Whether as prime minister or foreign minister, there is a good chance that she will yet be one of our top leaders, which is a compelling reason for us to know more about the making of Penny Wong. Keneally replaced Don Farrell in that position. So Penny Wong will almost certainly never be prime minister. [31] However, Australia's surging dollar hit the manufacturing industry sector in SA, and growth in indicators such as retail sales and house prices fell. I mean - really. In the six and a half years he led the Government, Jay was one of the most . [83] In 2021, he was reported to have moved to Perth, Western Australia and be working for Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, promoting an early childhood development campaign named Thrive by Five. Asked why no other countries were vying for the privilege if this was such a good idea, he answered: If you regard yourself as an international citizen, if this is the best place in the world to store waste, which has to exist somewhere in the world, it isnt going away., Host Tony Jones joked with him: Do you have a vision here? It provides a fascinating account of Wong's long campaign inside the Labor tent for marriage equality while still observing the party's collective strictures. #qanda Go Jay Weatherill - There is a simple solution and the audience definitely approves, Jay Weatherill making sense for the first time tonight - just pass the bill! Labor MP for Adelaide . Weatherill is a stand-out political performer among premiers and the biggest player in the boutique-size world of South Australian politics but few doubt that his skills would travel, if only he were prepared to do likewise. In 2013 she became Leader of the Government in the Senate, the first woman to do so, and later the upper houses Leader of the Opposition. Nick Xenophon. The book's third surprise is Wong's matter-of-fact segue from a five-year relationship with the then young Labor activist Jay Weatherill later Premier of SA for seven years to relationships with women. Qanda effect or actually more likeable, Ms Wong backed her fellow Labor politician and university boyfriend, adding: I think Jay made the right point.. [25], The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) was opened by Jay Weatherill in 2013, a building often referred to as "the cheese grater" due to its exterior design. Penny Wong and Jay Weatherill Photos Photos - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) talks at the ASC facilities as Australian Senator Penny Wong (L), South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill . In this role, she helped negotiate Australia's interests in the Trans-Pacific Partnership which was ratified in late 2018. ", Wong remembers: "We had these big fights about who would control the Labor Club. Wong first visited Adelaide as a two-year-old on a visit with her mother. [61] He argued that the GST rate should be increased but he would only support an increase if a compensation package was developed for those earning under $100,000[62], In the 201617 Budget, Weatherill introduced Job Accelerator Grants, providing between $4,000 and $10,000 to businesses for creating new jobs, increasing in the 201718 budget. Look, I think with the benefit of hindsight we probably got much more wound up in student politics than we really needed to, but isn't that what you do when you're young?". Other contemporaries include the South Australian Transport Minister, Pat Conlon, the federal Liberals Christopher Pyne and Andrew Southcott, the Labor senator Anne McEwen, the new member for Port Adelaide, Mark Butler, and the South Australian Speaker, Jack Snelling. After Weatherill, her relationships were with women. Theres a lot of hate in the world. SOUTH Australia Premier and Penny Wongs ex Jay Weatherill drew cheers as he called on Australia to take a good hard look at itself. [2] Later, Weatherill would hold portfolios such as Housing (20042008), Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation (20062010), Early Childhood and Development (20082011), Environment and Conservation (20082010) and Education (20102011). Its a shocker of a job, the Immigration Minister, whatever you do, no-one is happy. Jay Weatherill is an Australian politician who was the 45th Premier of South Australia. The relationship between Margaret Simons and Penny Wong was fraught. And we see, over and over, how racism was so pervasive in her life that inevitably it became the paramount issue for her. Wong led final negotiations as Chair of the United Nations Working Group in the closing days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2007, shortly after her appointment as minister. Her South Australian mother, Jane Chapman, had fallen in love with Colombo Plan University of Adelaide architecture student Francis Wong. Simons notes Wong's long-term partners, firstly her five-year relationship with Jay Weatherill, future premier of South Australia, which began while she was at university and he was an industrial officer for the Australian Workers' Union. If you are prone to labels, Penny Wong may seem an unlikely star of a polity currently perceived as redneck, racist and regressingat a rate of knots. There are several surprises in Margaret Simons' biography of Penny Wong.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen. Anna Bligh. Keneally is now shadow minister for home affairs, up against Peter Dutton. Ms Wong came out as a lesbian a month after she assumed office on 1 July 2002. [57] At this point she was named part of Albanese's four-person ALP leadership team, along with Richard Marles and Kristina Keneally. Wee Willie Harris wife: Is Wee Willie Harris married? At Coromandel Valley Primary, Penny and Toby had a terrible time because of the racist bullying they suffered. [72], In 2017, after revelations that upstream states had not been complying with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, Weatherill requested that the Federal Government undertake a judicial enquiry or Royal Commission to determine who was to blame for water theft and whether upstream states had been complicit. [69] In March 2022, Wong was named Australia's most trusted politician in a study by Roy Morgan Research. Another - her former Labor club colleague Amy Barrett, who is now a lawyer in Sydney - says Wong was not given to skulduggery. Ten days later, he took his own life. Some of this was through suspension of major works programs such as the electrification of the Gawler and Outer Harbor rail lines, and redevelopments of Modbury Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Editor at Ghanafuo.com! Six years later, after an amicable marriage breakdown, Jane, Penny and Toby moved there permanently. Despite being from the right, Keneally backed Albanese to be leader, and he insisted on her promotion to the frontbench, making a colleague from the right, Ed Husic, stand aside to give way. There is a cult of Penny Wong. Following the 1995 NSW election, she became a policy adviser to a minister in the new Labor government. She was trying to take the club over and I was trying to defend it. Following the 2019 Labor leadership contest, Wong retained her positions as Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs in the new cabinet of Anthony Albanese. Updated: November 15, 2012 In late 1996, Wong, at the invitation of the SA ALPs left, returned to Adelaide to seek preselection for the Senate. [34] Following an organised campaign by Jay Weatherill and Labor, the Advertiser newspaper, workers at the Australian Submarine Corporation and the South Australian public, a competitive evaluation process was announced by the Federal Government, with the final contract for a South Australian build awarded to French company DCNS with majority of the work to take place in Osborne, South Australia. As the ALP digests its recent report on how it lost the 2019 election, some commentators are calling for a change of leadership. The better answer is that she has never aspired to the job. In Wongs view, this legitimated the kind of racist abuse she and Toby had received. Senator Farrell told the ABC he was not interested in the leadership of the SA ALP, but believed he had something to offer the people of Napier. She is assumed to be more conventionally left wing than she really is, and somehow above or outside the dirty business of politics when one of the central points of this book is that she is decidedly in the room, inside and of politics. A real advantage for biographers of the dead is that the subject cannot say what they think about the book. At the University of Adelaide, Wong studied law and political science. Wong is a member of Labor Left,[40] and is a member of EMILY's List Australia,[41] the support network for Labor women, and sat on a number of Senate committees, primarily those related to economics.[42]. There seems to be an enormous focus given to Pauline Hansons right to speak. 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