Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms

by Margaret Simons

A fascinating portrait of one of Australia’s most influential women

Elected to federal parliament aged just twenty-eight, Tanya Plibersek has lived almost half her life in the public eye, and is the longest-serving woman in Australia’s House of Representatives. But how much do we know about what drives her, what she values, and what we can expect from her next?

Plibersek was born in Sydney to Slovenian parents, both of whom fled post-war Europe as young adults. Their experiences as migrants would profoundly shape the lives of their children. Driven by a commitment to equity and social change, Plibersek joined the Labor Party at a time of intense factional battles for the party’s future and emerged as part of a new generation of ALP leaders. Throughout her career she has campaigned for social justice reform on issues such as paid parental leave, violence against women and rights for same-sex couples.

Award-winning journalist Margaret Simons draws on exclusive interviews with Plibersek, her political contemporaries, family and close friends to trace the personal and political strands of this modern Australian story. She considers Plibersek’s role in the Rudd and Gillard governments, Labor’s soul-searching years in opposition and Plibersek’s position in the Albanese cabinet. She also sheds light on the personal currents that have carried Plibersek, through moments of joy and tragedy, to become the person she is today.

Genres: Biography, Politics

459 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Margaret Simons (b 1960) is an Australian academic, freelance journalist and author. She is currently the media commentator for Crikey and has written ten books.

She is currently Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Melbourne.

Simons was a finalist for a Walkley Award for journalism in 2007 for the story Buried in the Labyrinth, about the release of a pedophile into the community, published in Griffith Review and her book The Content Makers – Understanding the Future of the Australian Media was longlisted for the 2008 non-fiction book Walkley award.

Simons also writes for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Monthly. For many years, she wrote the "Earthmother" gardening column for The Australian.

Simons has a doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney and was co-founder, with Melissa Sweet, of the community-funded news site YouComm News. She lives in Melbourne.

(from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margare...)

Reviews

[Lewis Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting read. grew up around the corner from rose and Joe and it took me a lot longer than I'll admit to realise the connection to Tanya. there was a lot of focus on the 2007-2013 Labor government, but barely anything on the 9 years of liberal government that followed it.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wikipedia tells me that 154 women have been elected to the Australian House of Representatives since Federation, and women have had the right to both vote and sit in parliament since 1902.  Four decades later, the first women were elected.  It was not until 1943 that Dame Dorothy Tangney,  (1907-1985) became the first female Senator while Dame Enid Lyons (1897-1981) was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and became the first woman to serve in federal cabinet. I have Anne Henderson's 2008 biography of Enid Lyons somewhere in the house... but if someone has written a biography of Dorothy Tangney I can't find it any trace of it, though I expect she gets a mention in A Woman's Place, Women and Politics in Australia (1984) by Marian Sawer and Marian Simms. 

An article published by the ANU in 2021 was about how political biographies focus on men.  Well, yes, of course, you'd expect that to be the case, but would it surprise you to learn that of 31 political biographies published since 2010 only 4 featured women? They were:

Margaret Simon's 2019 bio of current Foreign Minister Penny Wong, see my review;
Lekkie Hopkins' bio of May Holman (1893-1939) whose list of achievements is so long you really must click the link to my review see them all;
Also by Lekkie Hopkins, with Lynn Roarty, a bio called Among the Chosen of Patricia Giles OA (1928-2017) who founded the WA branch of WEL and was a Senator, serving as president of the International Alliance of Women after her retirement;
Pauline Hanson (about whom the less said the better.)

And surely it's a surprise that eight years after our first female Prime Minister had departed the scene, that there was no biography of her?  The ANU article says that she and other women politicians have filled this gap by writing memoirs, but seriously, that is no substitute for a warts-and-all analysis of their contribution to public life.

So Margaret Simons' choice of Tanya Plibersek MHR as the subject of a 2023 biography is interesting.  Why Plibersek, and not Gillard, eh?  I think the answer to that question is partly that Simons is interested in the future not the past.  But her introduction  to Chapter 4 mirrors my own thoughts:

The arc of history is easier to perceive in retrospect.  Looking back, Plibersek's time in parliament can be understood as a series of episodes when, if an alternative path had been taken, Labor and Australia's history might have been very different.  What if Labor had kept Kim Beazley as its leader, rather than switching to Latham in 2004? What if, after the trauma of Latham losing the 2004 election, the party had again stuck with Beazley, instead of moving to Kevin Rudd? What if Julia Gillard had not deposed Rudd as prime minister in what he went on to describe as a coup?  Perhaps the dysfunction in the government would in any case have led to its downfall — or perhaps the cabinet would have confronted Rudd with the consequences of his management style and the ship of government would have been brought back to an even keel.  Perhaps, then, Labor would have won the election of 2010 in its own right, instead of being forced into minority government.  Perhaps Labor would then have retained government at the 2013 election, instead of losing to the Coalition, led by Tony Abbott.  There might have been no Abbott government, no Turnbull government, and no Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Australia would be a different nation. Within the ALP, leadership would have passed to a new generation in a more orderly, less damaging fashion.  But that is not what happened.  Instead, Labor's dysfunction blighted its six years in government between 2007 and 2013. (p.96)

Although I'm interested in politics, the last thing I want to do as a reader is to revisit Gillard's responsibility for some of this mess, and perhaps Margaret Simons as an author felt the same way.  It's interesting to me that Simons, whose journalism I really admire, has chosen to write biographies of two women ALP politicians who are steady, unflappable, calm and methodical.  Both have impressive credentials and electability: they work hard and have a cult-like fan base both within the ALP and beyond; both are thought by some to be future prime ministerial material  but neither are charismatic.  Although both decline to revisit that disastrous history, it is clear from Simons' account of Rudd's downfall that both think that it should never have happened. Both recognise that unity is essential to good government and electability; both are pragmatic, sometimes voting to support issues with which they don't agree, in order to remain in the tent where you may at least have some influence.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/05/16/t...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would dispute the subtitle. Plibersek was raised by poor but loving parents who supported her throughout. She was dux of her secondary school Sixth Form, and had such poise and conversational skills people remarked that she must have come from a rich family and gone to a top private school. But unlike the latter, she was overwhelmingly kind to people and had very high humane ideals. For this reason she joined the Labor Party in the late 90s, but was so disillusioned over ALP asylum seeker policy and for endorsing Howard’s Iraq intervention, she resigned. Two years later she rejoined because of Roxon in particular, to a point Albanese who was a contemporary at University. She was strong on social justice issues and specifically endorsed women’s rights and marriage equality. However, being a Labor politician meant she had to follow the party line even against her conscience: that’s where I disagree with the subtitle, “on her own terms”. Not always. She justified such compromises on the ground that loyalty to the leader was always paramount even when it was clear to most commentators that Albanese was not being loyal to her. Indeed, an issue that arises is what a jealous and manipulative leader Albo was. He played the political game; Plibersek wherever she could played the issues game but that was not always the case. She felt that Labor was the right party for her, and one had to belong to the party for thr greater god of Australians. She was particularly effective on gender issues, housing, and beating the GFC. In fact there is a common comment that she acted more like a first class public servant than a politician: I don’t quite follow that.
The book ends after the 2022 election, during which she appeared to be missing in action. She denies it, but it seems clear that Albanese demoted her to the environment, and for her seniority was given far less public appearances with the PM than others who were less threatening to Albo’s leadership. Two major issues occurred after the book was completed: Plibersek approved fossil fuel giant Santos’s fracking of the Fitzroy Basin, which was an utter disgrace but she would have justified that no doubt as loyalty to the leader. The second was AUKUS, dreamt up by the eccentric some might day mad Boris Johnson, our psychopathic Scott Morrison and Biden who is all for the American interest. Albo, on the advice of Penny Wong and Richard Marles , adopted AUKUS within 24 hours of its announcement without looking at the huge complications it created. Biden won that one and Australis lost, paying out $368 billion to buy and equip UK and US commercial and strategic interests in containing China. Anything Johnson (and later Sunak) and Morrison endorsed should be regarded with the utmost caution. But not Albo who saw it politically: he didn’t want to wedged by Morrison. I wonder what Plibersek thought of that?

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Plibersek turned out to be an absorbing subject. Despite her cooperation with this book, she was always cautious in self-revelation. She was a complex and layered subject, as I hope this book reveals.’

Tanya Plibersek is the Minister for the Environment and Water, and the Federal Member for Sydney. Between 2013 and 2019, Ms Plibersek was the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. She was the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs between 2013 and 2016, and the Shadow Minister for Education and the Shadow Minister for Women from 2017 to 2022.

Ms Plibersek, who was first elected to the Australian Parliament in 1998 at the age of twenty-eight, served as a cabinet minister in the Gillard and Rudd Governments. She was Minister for Health, Minister for Medical Research, Minister for Housing, Minister for Human service, Minister for Social Inclusion and Minister for the Status of Women. She is the longest serving woman in Australia’s House of Representatives. Impressive.

While I admire Tanya Plibersek and would have liked to have seen her lead the Australian Labor Party, I realise that I know very little about her background and motivation. So, I picked up this book with interest.

‘It is hard to write about ambition in a woman. It is part of the background noise of patriarchy, the landscape of politics and achievement that ambition accepted and expected in a talented man will be seen as illegitimate and unappealing in a woman.’

Tanya Plibersek was born in Sydney, the third child of Slovenian immigrants who came to Australia as young adults after World War II. Ms Simons outlines her upbringing, education and influences including a pragmatic approach to achieving change.

Ms Plibersek’s rise began after the 2004 election, when she was given responsibility for youth, work and family, community, early childhood education, and the status of women. I particularly enjoyed reading about the life of the Labor governments between 2007 and 2013. These policy areas have become far more important: childcare and parental leave were once seen as welfare policy rather than economic policy. These policy areas are now recognised as being vital to increasing workforce participation and improving productivity. Ms Plibersek’s activism has been significant.
I was interested in reading about the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Rudd’s micromanagement was a blight on his government’s effectiveness.

Perhaps, as Ms Simons notes, Ms Plibersek’s single biggest contribution to public policy so far is the work she started to develop a long-term national plan in relation to violence against women.

We still have a way to go.

I finished this book wondering what the future holds for Ms Plibersek.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Rosalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF
I don’t know what I expected from this biography by Margaret Simon, perhaps a bit more of Tanya Plibersek’s personality, reasons behind some of her decision more about what makes her tick, all in all perhaps just a bit more of Tanya Plibersek. What I didn’t expect was: the lengthy detail about the internal workings of the ALP; the factions; and the power struggles that have occurred. This was distracting, lengthy and not presenting us with a clear picture of Tanya Plibersek.
I don’t know much about Tanya Plibersek, but I thought that this book would correct that. Margaret Simons knows Tanya Plibersek well, having interviewed her, spoken to family friends and colleagues, but sadly I still don’t know that much more about Tanya Plibersek, other than she is a fan of Jane Austen (as am I). I did like the fact that Margaret Simons did respect the privacy od Tanya Plibersek’s family.
I read about 1/3 of the book and then just skimmed the rest to try and get a better understanding of Tanya Plibersek, but it didn’t really happen. I do think that the ongoing discussion around Tanya Plibersek’s move to the environment and water portfolio as a demotion is unnecessary. What she has done, in her time in this role for the Murray Darling basin is more than has been done in more than 10 years and will have a lasting impact. Giving powers toe the EPA rather than the minister means that this very important river system is given the care and attention that it needs and not become a political football between the Federal government and the States.
I did find this book rather disappointing.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plibersek's personal and public life is revealed. She did not want a biography, but reluctantly agreed to cooperate in order to at least have some agency in it.
Interesting learning the background and what led Tanya Plibersek to politics. Much of Labor's faction fighting in the 20 teens is discussed and is enlightening when you have lived through that, but not understood exactly what was going on. Plibersek is an interesting woman, and hard working politician who has the best interests of her constituents at heart. She is also a family woman.
If you're remotely interested in Australian politics, you could do worse than read this.

[Shelley Baird · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an insightful and impeccably researched book about Tanya Plibersek. In laying out the timeline of Tanya Plibersek's life to date, Margaret Simons has once again demonstrated why her work is so highly regarded and awarded.

The subject of this particular work, Tanya Plibersek, made for an interesting study. The third child of migrant parents, Tanya, exemplifies what commitment looks and sounds like from an early age. Simons' portrayal also reveals a very kind and decent person who understands what values are and how to prioritise them.

If you've lost faith in politicians and the political process, this book will help restore it.

[Ned Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tanya Plibersek, a person once touted as a future prime minister. A book that initially did not have her blessing. It is a good book which is at times difficult to put down. Quite different to the usual political biography. Inter party rivalry is very minor and party squabbling even during the Labor Party bad years is minimal.
There is plenty there to keep the reader’s interest. It goes a long way to explaining how Plibersek retains her quiet and passive nature in the ugly environment of politics.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting biography of an important Labor Party figure who is still a possibility for the Prime Ministership one day. Tanya is not totally open and honest with the author for obvious reasons but we still get a pretty fair idea of the person - her life, her views, her character, etc.

She is revealed as a good person with a good heart and a good politician who is not overly ambitious. Would make an excellent PM.

[Hillcloptushome.com.au · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read about a woman I admire. I would have preferred a more balanced perspective on her political life. There was little discussion of the mistakes and missteps she made. There must have been more than were highlighted over her quite long yet not completed career.

[Kass Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.I learned a lot about Plibersek, things I didn’t know despite her public position. Very readable.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written. Admiring her work but not fawning. No sensationalism - matter of fact.

[Jenny Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took most of the year to read. Learnt heaps. Detailed but interesting. A very impressive woman.