I first met Senator Kristina Kenneally over the phone in mid-January this year during international tennis superstar Novak Đoković’s Australian detention saga which shocked the world and hurt many Australian Serbs. It certainly made our Federal Court proceedings the most watched event on social media globally. I arranged a phone call with Senator Kenneally in her capacity of the then Home Affairs Opposition Spokesperson to convey the concerns expressed by the Australian Serbian community over Đoković’s unwarranted treatment in the Australian immigration detention—which dragged on for weeks. “I would put my bet on the Government’s case on this one”, she said calmly with the prudency of vast political experience ahead of the second Federal Court’s decision regarding the Morrison Government’s deportation case versus world No. 1 tennis player. She was right.
Her enviable political biography tells us a lot about the person she had become: a powerbroker, an internal political “peacemaker” (e.g. following Labor Senator Sam Destiyari’s messy resignation in 2017 over links to China), first female Premier of New South Wales, and a Labor Party star. Whether her strong reputation led the local Labor branch to persuade her to nominate for the “safe” western Sydney seat (held by Labor since 1984 until the last election), despite her residence on the Scotland Island some 40km away, or was it the friendship with her once deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt (also a veteran of Labor NSW politics) will be difficult to know. What is clear is that the local fire that broke out over the issue of pre-selection of one candidate, Vietnamese-born lawyer Tu Le put (forward by the retiring Labor MP Chris Hayes) was one that Kenneally simply could not extinguish.
Tu Le, who was voted the most influential Asian Australian in 2022, was also not a long-term resident of Fowler, having moved to the area only about a year ago before the elections. However, she worked for many years for MP Chris Hayes who won the popular vote four times in the seat of Fowler and knew his constituents very well. Especially that they would prefer a local representative in Canberra over any political parachuter.
Labor’s Fowler election debacle, which was exacerbated by factional infighting, brought to the Lower House an Independent Dai Le, whose husband Markus Lambert once presided over NSW Liberals’ Cabramatta branch. In 2016, Le was suspended for 10 years from the party after running for mayor as an independent candidate. In 2008 she was a Liberal Party candidate for Cabramatta as the state seat in a 2008 by-election. It will be difficult for mainstream political parties to reclaim Fowler; a loss which Kenneally attributed to harsh local Covid 19 restrictions and popular turn in support away from mainstream political parties towards the Teal candidates. However, Kenneally’s place in Australian politics should not be discounted as she is likely to continue to serve her party’s interests well, whether at home or abroad.