Finding My Place Page 24
On 5 May 2016, Sadiq Khan won the much-publicised election for London Mayor against a conservative right-wing opponent. Less than a week later, Waleed Aly took home the Gold Logie. I figured if the son of a bus driver and a guy named Aly could win, then maybe, just maybe, the daughter of a bus driver named Aly could beat the odds and make it a trifecta.
On 11 July, nine days after the election, the newspaper headlines read, ‘Labor, Anne Aly Claim WA seat of Cowan.’
28
So Help Me God
As the date of my swearing in to parliament drew closer, the Muslim thing became even more significant. I have always been a believer in secularism. The separation of religion and state is, to my mind, the cornerstone principle of democracy. I’m not into the French version that completely removes religion from everything to the point of banning any form of religious symbolism – I’m just not a fan of making decisions for a whole bunch of people with different beliefs based on a single belief system. I suppose it might come down to the fact that I was raised in a Muslim household, went to Christian schools, hung out with Jews and had a fascination with the supernatural. Or it could just be that I’m really not bothered about what other people believe or how they choose to live their lives – if it’s important to them and it makes them happy and they’re not breaking any laws.
In preparation for the swearing in of the 45th Parliament in August, there were a hundred forms to fill in (okay, maybe a hundred is an exaggeration, but there were lots). As I filled in the form with my details and preferences for the ceremony, I hovered over the question asking whether I would be swearing an oath or making an affirmation of allegiance.
Early on I had made the decision that I would choose to make an affirmation of allegiance. I had no problem with others swearing in on the Bible, or Torah or Quran or any other text if they chose to, but I reasoned that if I believed, as I did, in the separation of religion and state, then the manifestation of that belief would be to make an affirmation of allegiance that leaves God out of it. Besides, I would not be the first member with a faith who opted for keeping my religious beliefs separate from my public office. Other members who were practising Christians have also chosen to take an allegiance rather than a religious oath. I would also not have been the first to take an oath on the Quran. Ed Husic, the member for Chifley and the parliament’s real ‘first Muslim’, was sworn in to parliament in 2010 holding his father’s Quran. I stopped for a moment or two at that question and went through it in my head again. Then quickly marked the box that said ‘affirmation’, hit ‘send’ and moved on to the next form.
The decision weighed more heavily on my mind than I thought it would. I discussed it with Dave and my sons. I glossed over it with friends from Christian and Jewish faiths. Not all agreed with my logic and argued that there was more to it than making a point about secularism. ‘It doesn’t matter what you choose to do, they’ll be watching you. If you do or you don’t take the oath, someone will always have something to say about it.’ Dave was right. I decided to call on the only person I knew who would understand.
Ed Husic answered the phone with his usual enthusiasm.
‘Ed, I need to talk to you because I’m really confused.’ I explained to him my rationale for opting to make an affirmation over an oath.
He listened patiently before saying, ‘Well, you know that I’ve never been one for ostentatious displays of religion. But I would say this to you. I chose to take the oath on my father’s copy of the Quran because it was important to me.’
Speaking to Ed reminded me that the reason I so strongly believed in a secular state was because it underpinned a religiously plural, free and democratic society. Secularism, the very principle I was wanting to defend so staunchly, was the very principle that guaranteed religious freedom – it was the very reason that I could choose to swear an oath on the Quran or the Bible or the Torah if I wanted to. And the very reason I could choose to take an affirmation. Ed turned the looking glass and helped me see that swearing an oath was not an assault on Australian secularism – it was a celebration of it. The next day I rang the Parliamentary Office and asked them if I could change my preference.
On 30 August 2016, I was sworn into the 45th Australian Parliament holding my copy of the Quran. Dave, Adam and Karim, who had flown in from Melbourne, watched from the gallery and a hundred cameras could be heard clicking in the press gallery as I nervously uttered the words ‘so help me God’.
The best way to describe the Member of Parliament’s orientation, also known as ‘poli school’, is to liken it to the first day of high school. Thirty-nine new MPs converged on Parliament House for a two-day crash course on parliamentary procedures two weeks before we were to be sworn in. It was my first insight into the personalities of some of the people I’d be working alongside for the next three years or so, and my first face to face with party politics.
I’d had a few passing conversations about factions during the election, but hadn’t really made any serious decisions about whether I would be left or right or even join a faction at all. I had no experience or knowledge of factions or factional politics. Besides, factions and cliques really aren’t my thing. At school there were the popular prefects – the girls who had average grades, who played just one sport (hockey or tennis or netball but never all three) and who dated boys from Trinity Grammar. They were the girls most likely to join the Old Girls’ Union, send their own children to Meriden and remember the school song, even that weird verse about climbing Mount Parnassus to gather lilies.
There were the academics – also prefects, but with above-average grades and no time for boyfriends. The bleachies came from the Shire sporting the obligatory beach-blonde hair and a sun-kissed tan acquired over hours of baking in the sun slathered in Reef Oil.
Little Europe was the ethnic girls’ faction. Their fathers were butchers or continental grocers, working-class migrants who had made good. There were the girls with no faction – the factionless – who formed their own pseudo faction of misfits and transients. They belonged together because they really didn’t belong anywhere else. Some were newbies who spent only a year or two at the school, some were the not-smart-enough Asians, who, had they been more popular and got higher grades, might have hung out with the academics. The Crusaders were the religious girls. Some had scholarships as the daughters of clergymen. They were literally Crusaders – the name given to the extracurricular Bible study group.
And then there was me. I got on well with the prefects, kept on par with the academics, partied with the bleachies (pretty sure my tan qualified me), ate cheese and olives with the ethnics and counted a factionless or two as friends. I even found something in common with the Crusaders beyond our respective religions, mutual histories of religious warfare and cleansing. And though I found a place with every group, I never really found a place for me. I was too working class for the prefects, too brown for the bleachies, too Arab for the Europeans, too Muslim for the Crusaders.
My time at school stood me in good stead for life as a parliamentarian, but it didn’t prepare me for factional politics. I had no idea which relationships were important and which weren’t. I didn’t understand why I had to talk to people just to be seen to be talking to people – it all seemed rather childish and unnecessary to me. Worse still, it represented everything that I hated about politics.
There was a not-so-subtle expectation that I would join the left faction. I think there was and probably still is a perception of me as ideologically aligned to the left. After all, my playlist reads like a social justice warrior’s hymn book (and a testimony to my obsession with the Hilltop Hoods) – songs like ‘Same Love’, ‘War’, ‘Mr Wendal’ and Marvin Gaye’s classic meditation on the state of world affairs, ‘What’s Going On’. But it also includes the obligatory AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, smatterings of R&B and Dance (because who doesn’t love ‘Ice Ice Baby’), and my dirty little secret, Justin Bieber (don’t judge).
Before I agreed to join any facti
on, I had a long conversation with those who needed to know. I spoke openly about my doubts and concerns. I did not want to be labelled. I wanted to fight for the centre. I wanted to have the freedom to be left, right or neutral depending on the issue. I was concerned that politics was becoming too ideologically driven by extremes of left and right that to my thinking focused too much attention on ideology and not enough on pragmatism.
In the end, I decided to join the left on both ideological and pragmatic grounds.
I delivered my first speech as a member of the 45th Australian Parliament a couple of weeks after the swearing in. The first speech, I was informed, is important. It’s important because it sets out what kind of member you will be. It’s important because it sets out your values, your focus and your vision for your time in parliament. I doubt that many Australians can tell you much about the first speech of any of the members who represent them in parliament. Most of them follow a familiar pattern – a personal introduction, a description of the electorate, an outline of the issues and a vote of thanks to family, friends, volunteers and those who inspire. But there are those who stand out either because they are so compelling in their telling or because they make outrageous claims of undesirable others threatening to swamp our shores and erase our culture.
I’ve done enough media and public appearances in my time that I am no longer overcome by the kind of anxiety that makes your heart feel like it will jump right out of your ribcage and lodge itself deep in your throat. But nothing can prepare you for your first speech. I felt small. Really small. And though I was surrounded by my colleagues, all of whom smiled at me reassuringly, the sheer enormity of the chamber felt like it could swallow me whole and spit me out like an olive pip. As I moved through my speech about the importance of compassion and need to address the stark inequalities that faced people living in the outer suburbs, I looked up to see Dave and my sons sitting in the gallery. Next to them, in the front row and directly in my line of sight sat a rabbi, a sheikh and a priest.
It took a while to adjust to my new role in parliament. I had thought that my greatest challenge would be getting used to the politics and I was right. I’ve never liked politics and I doubt that I ever will. I don’t rate my performance in media interviews where I’m pitted against a seasoned politician who barks out attacks and expects me to do the same, and my greatest fear is that I too will become that person.
Soon after I was sworn in, I became aware of a petition started by someone who had never met me and knew nothing about me to have me removed based on some kind of conspiracy theory that I could not hold office because of my religion. It attracted a whopping ten signatures before it was taken down. But that didn’t stop the emails and the social media posts from people with way too much time on their hands and in desperate need of a hobby (I recommend long-distance running). I can’t say that I will ever become accustomed to the hate mail or personal insults, but I have learned not to let them affect me so much – partly because it comes with the territory of being a Member of Parliament. I was not prepared for the death threat that glared angrily at me from my Facebook feed: ‘I would love to kill you and poison your family.’ That one came on the back of Peter Dutton’s comments about Lebanese migrants. Newsflash: I’m not Lebanese. Mostly, I was not prepared for the small but significant ways these comments would affect me.
Returning to my office after a particularly rowdy Question Time, I caught the tail end of a telephone conversation. ‘What was that about?’ I asked Robbie, sensing his unease.
‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it,’ was his response. But I insisted.
Someone, a woman, possibly older, had called my parliament office asking to speak with me. She insisted on passing on a ‘very important’ message: ‘Tell Anne Aly that if she wants to earn the respect of White Australia, she should be quiet.’ There it was again – that claim to ‘White Australia’ as some kind of altar for the faithful. I brushed aside the comment as just one of those things that comes with the territory of being a politician – and brown and other things.
The next day as I took my seat in the chamber minutes before Question Time was about to start, I don’t know why but that call and the blistering words of the caller came to mind – ‘the respect of White Australia’. As the theatre of Question Time proceeded, I opened my mouth but could only manage a silent whimper. I resigned myself from the theatrics and retreated into the shadow of silence because I desperately wanted the respect of some fictional ‘White Australia’. I turned to Tim Watts, who sat next to me in the chamber, and asked, ‘Are we allowed to leave Question Time if we need to?’
I left quickly, fearful that my emotions would betray me and the tears that were gathering in the back of my eyes would flood over and swamp my ‘respecting White Australia’ face. I made it to the bathroom just in time. A kind attendant found me. She brought me a glass of water, asked if I needed help and shook her head in empathy while I blubbered through my emotions. I gathered myself, washed my face, cleared my tears and returned to the theatre for Act Two.
As December approached, the flurry of activity that the silly season brings was miles away from Canberra. I hadn’t found a place of my own yet and was staying in hotels during parliamentary sitting weeks. On our final two-week stint, I booked a hotel close to Canberra city – one of the few that was available. Its reception was tended by a bloke in trackies and a dirty shirt who looked like he’d rather be doing something else. It was straight out of the opening scene of a horror movie, where the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
As I headed back to my hotel on the last sitting night of 2016, I looked back at Parliament House and felt a sense of something, I’m not quite sure how to describe it. It was a mixture of relief with a tinge of sadness. I was surprised that I was feeling sad at leaving that great big bubble. For the previous six months, I’d felt like a lab rat in a maze. Like Alice – only I’d fallen down the other rabbit hole – the one where Alice ends up in the midst of some mad scientist’s experiment where she is made to run from room to room through a maze of corridors in high heels and uncomfortable underwear and hideous fluorescent lighting, all the while watching the clocks flash red, flash green and the incessant ringing of bells beckoning us to the chamber. Pursued by an endless stream of rabid lobbyists calling after her, ‘But what about the children, will somebody please think of the children.’
In the long days spent weaving between meetings, the only constant was Question Time – that hour or so of vaudevillian theatre where insults are hurled back and forth as the audience watch from their galleries aloft. I craved solitude. So much of my time and energy were given to this place that I often had to force myself to call home at the end of a long day. I could see why parliamentary life was such a home wrecker. It can be hard to readjust to life at home. Yet every Thursday as I embarked from the last plane home from Canberra, there was Dave – waiting for me with a smile and hug and the smell of normality I had sorely missed. ‘Take me home and make me feel normal again,’ I would say to him as he took my hand.
It had felt surreal and I could understand how this place, these hallowed halls, could turn me into something I didn’t want to be – a politician. For the first time, I understood why the public was cynical about politicians being out of touch. It was easy in this place for it really is a bubble. A city unto itself. We spent all our time there, returning to our hotel rooms or apartments only to sleep. Some members had their offices decked out with all the little luxuries of home. They showered, dressed, cooked, ate and worked from their suites. I understood the challenge I faced – to remain a parliamentarian, a humanitarian. To stay true to everything I thought I stood for despite this place.
But that night in December, as the car pulled away from the House of Representatives entrance, I looked up and saw for the first time just how beautiful that building was, just how much it symbolised this amazing democracy where even a girl child named Aly, the daughter of a bus driver from the outer suburbs, could find
a voice and a place. I looked up to see a flock of seagulls in flight milling around the flagpole that stands on the tip of Parliament House. With the light of the moon illuminating their wings, they looked like tiny fireflies. And finally I felt it. That thing that I had sensed on the faces of some of the other members in the class of 2016 on that very first day six months ago. I felt proud and honoured and privileged all at once. I felt that mighty sense of awe that had somehow eluded me all these months that had passed hidden somewhere between meetings and events and debates and Question Times. It finally felt like this meant something. That being part of this meant something.
29
Disruptor
The Opposition caucus room was buoyant as we gathered for the first time in the new year. I imagine that, like me, my colleagues had also relished the time away from Canberra – to rest, recuperate and reconnect with family and community. It was nice to come back to the Canberra sunshine, but the three-hour time difference made the weekly trek from Perth even more gruelling. It didn’t take long to get back into the rhythm of sitting weeks in Canberra interspersed between weekends in the electorate, school visits, speeches, ceremonies, media appearances and meetings.
One of the first big-ticket items for the government’s agenda for the year had nothing to do with education or jobs or a decent internet or any of those things that actually matter to people in their every day – it was the amendments to a small and relatively unknown section of the Racial Discrimination Act that made it unlawful to offend or insult anyone on the basis of their race. It seems kind of straightforward. We tell our kids this stuff all the time. We tell them it’s wrong to call someone names or make them feel bad because of the colour of their skin. Even if we don’t tell them, kids somehow know this. They know that it’s just not nice to make fun of someone and they know that the colour of your skin really doesn’t matter. Kids don’t give a shit about that stuff. Adults do. And the adults from the Liberal National Coalition Government gave so many shitloads about it that they pushed to have that tiny little section in the Act changed so that they could offend and insult people and never have to answer to anyone for it.