Finding My Place Page 25

  I took the opportunity to debate the proposed Bill and spoke about Christine and Silent Iris. I asked the prime minister to explain what it was that those in his government wanted to say to people, about people, that they couldn’t already say now. I never got my answer and I still don’t have one. If I can be called a ‘fucking useless cunt moslem goat fucker’ what else is there?

  But then I made the kind of mistakes that cause a big pit in your stomach and make you reach out to the ones you love and ask, ‘Tell me again who I am and why I’m doing this job.’

  It started when I agreed to talk about the issue to a journalist from a conservative newspaper. Lesson number one: when you become a politician you have to be very careful about what you say to journalists. The media lament that politicians don’t answer questions and that they treat the public as if they’re stupid, but often they only report half of what you say (if that), stick a sensational headline on it and turn it into a controversy because that’s what sells.

  When the journalist asked if I thought there was scope to include other categories such as religion along with race in the Racial Discrimination Act, I pointed out that Jews and Sikhs were both already covered in the Act due to legal precedents set by cases outside of Australia. I suggested that maybe, just maybe, it might be time to look at other forms of offence like, oh I don’t know, maybe the kinds of vilification against Muslims.

  I said, ‘there is scope to, I guess, reassess how we look at racism in terms of its targets and its impacts and expand the scope of what we mean by racism . . .. I find it a little bit strange that someone can call you “a dirty Arab” and that be covered under the Bill, but if they called you a “dirty Muslim”, you’re not [covered].’

  Yes. I used the M word. Lesson number two: never use the M word unless you are talking about terrorism or violence, in which case it is perfectly okay to use the M word as a qualifier.

  We won the debate and the Bill to change the Racial Discrimination Act never got through. Tim Wilson, the Member for Goldstein and an Institute of Public Affairs golden boy, had been one of the government’s most vocal supporters of the Bill and was smarting from the loss. (I remembered Wilson from my second appearance on the ABC TV show Q&A when he was the Human Rights Commissioner. He didn’t impress me then either.) Presented with my comments, Wilson, in what could only be explained as a spectacular feat of completely missing the point, came up with ‘blasphemy laws’. Wait! What? Blasphemy laws?

  According to Wilson, my suggestion (because that’s all it was, a suggestion) was part of a ‘mad, ideological drive of the modern Labor Party to use laws to shut people up’ that would ‘turn Australia into Saudi Arabia, where people can be hauled before courts for criticising religion’.

  Like the witch-hunting townsfolk of Salem, the social media commentators called for my burning. ‘Get fucked you fucking rag head cunt’; ‘sack the fuckn dog’; ‘how can a muslim be insulted when they arent human beings’; and ‘hang her from the closest tree’ were posted along with a picture of lifeless bodies dangling from a tree crudely captioned ‘Islamic wind chimes’. Ironically, Wilson and his friends got what they wanted – the right to offend and insult.

  Months later, in another bizarre turn of events, Wilson and his Coalition colleagues were brought into a debate on religious freedoms and protections when parliament discussed the Marriage Equality Bill, which would allow same-sex couples to wed. Several amendments were proposed (which ultimately failed). As I listened to Wilson’s colleagues argue that individuals should be afforded the right to express their religious beliefs without being discriminated against, I could not help but wonder at the irony of it all. The final straw was watching Wilson vote with colleagues in favour of an amendment to the Bill that, among other things, basically stated that a marriage should only be between a man and a woman and till death do them part, and that men and women should only have sex within marriage. And, wait for it, called for the protection of religious beliefs.

  Fake news travels fast. Whether it’s about blasphemy laws that were never suggested or an Anzac Day refusal that was never refused, the slightest controversy can become a raging fire on the internet.

  As the Anzac Day long weekend approached, my office prepared for the commemorations – there were wreaths to be bought and attendance at Anzac ceremonies at schools and community centres to be arranged. At home, I prepared for another kind of remembrance. Tracey was coming to visit. It had been thirty-five years since I had last seen her, and after months of trying to organise a trip she was finally coming. I wasn’t sure how I would react to seeing her after so long and how she would react to me knowing about her father, but I needed to know she was okay. When I finally did see her I found myself searching her face for the thirteen-year-old girl I used to know – her shy grin, the way she screwed up her nose when she smiled, the way she giggled into her hand whenever I said something rude. I wanted to know if the years of pain had robbed her of all of that. I hoped that it hadn’t and maybe, somehow, I thought I could bring it back for her – if only for a couple of days.

  After an early start at an Anzac dawn service where I laid a wreath and gave a short speech, Dave and I showed Tracey around Perth. We talked over old photos and shared what we knew of the old neighbourhood kids – who had become a teacher, whose parents divorced, who moved away, who stayed and who ended up in jail. I’m not sure how the subject of Tracey’s father came up – we kind of drifted into it. I let Tracey talk about it, but I just couldn’t find the words to say to her, so instead I let her read the chapter I’d written about her.

  ‘Did my father ever touch you? I need to know,’ she finally asked.

  ‘No, never,’ I assured her, but I didn’t want to tell her exactly why my mother had barred me from going swimming at their house or having sleepovers there. When I told my mother about Tracey, she nodded her head knowingly. ‘Why do you think I never liked you going there?’ she’d replied. I watched as the tension I had seen in my dear friend’s face since we had first said our ‘hello agains’ disappeared. For so many years she had carried this – the thought that the man who had abused her might also have abused her friends. As if the pain of her own experience wasn’t enough, she had also carried this burden. I understood then why Tracey had come all this way and why it was so important for her to see me again, and I felt that perhaps I had given her some comfort – as small as it was.

  By dinnertime the fire had spread. Robbie’s text message sounded the warning. ‘What’s this about you not laying a wreath? You went and laid a wreath this morning, right?’

  ‘Yes. Why? What’s going on?’ I replied.

  ‘Check Facebook.’

  My social media and emails were filled with people asking me why I had refused to lay a wreath for Anzac Day (they were the nice ones). When I responded with a comment clarifying that I had in fact laid a wreath and given a speech at a ceremony in another suburb, the townsfolk called for the proof – in pictures – that I was even there before they would put away their pitchforks.

  The rumour had originated on the Facebook page of the anti-Islamic ‘Love Australia or Leave Party’. Apparently, some guy who went to a ceremony in the suburb of Wanneroo contacted the page and claimed that, not only was I not capable of being in two places at once, but that I had actually refused to be at two places at once to lay a wreath. Within hours, every anti-Islamic hate page had picked up the ‘news’ that a Muslim MP had refused to lay a wreath – it was like gasoline to a candle flame.

  It took a couple of days for the fire to simmer down and turn to ash, but not before the founder of the Australian Liberty Alliance called and apologised to me for ever posting the fake news in the first place. I joked with journalists who called to speak to me that a solution could be to clone myself. I appeared on The Project and laughed about Australia not being ready for 100 Anne Aly clones to attend every Anzac ceremony, but secretly I knew that this was about a section of the public who were prepared to believe the worst abou
t me and for whom the truth didn’t matter. But I guess that’s their problem, not mine.

  On 2 July 2017, the first anniversary of my election as the Federal Member for Cowan, I found myself right back where I had started. Under the auspices of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian Ministry for Expatriate Affairs had brought together thirty-two women of Egyptian heritage from countries across the globe to talk about their successes. In my broken Arabic I pieced together my journey from Alexandria to Canberra and places in between. I was bombarded by a barrage of journalists all wanting an interview or a photo or a selfie. In the meantime, Adam had moved out of home and all the way to Tasmania to work, and Dave and I were adjusting to life as ‘empty nesters’. I had turned fifty that March and jumped out of a plane to commemorate half a century.

  I’d started to find my sense of place in the second half of my first year as the Member for Cowan. Slowly but surely, I am piecing together the Rubik’s Cube of parliamentary life, beginning to understand how the three roles of parliamentarian, community advocate and politician fit together.

  I watched my colleagues. The ones who seem to do it well – who get up early in the biting cold and jog or play sport. I watched them glide through the building and I wondered if they ever wonder if they made the right choice too. Once or twice I’ve caught them staring out of the second-floor window down at the kids in the parliament child-care centre with their jam-smeared faces and their sand-clogged shoes. Sometimes, I catch something that looks like despair (or maybe it’s just exhaustion) that’s escaped ever so briefly before it’s admonished to the shadows of the mind where it belongs. I know that look.

  We’re not allowed to talk about being politicians. We’re not allowed to talk about how hard it is or how much we miss our families or how the constant public scrutiny can get you down. We can’t mention the stress or the sheer frustration or even the fear that a bad media interview or an opinion piece by a non-journalist journalist (there are plenty of them around) will unleash a public backlash so bad there would be people who call for you to be shot and hanged. We can’t answer emails that ask, ‘Dear Muslim, Are you an Australian Citizen who has no allegiance to a foreign power such as Islam?’ with reasonable responses like, ‘Dear Idiot, Are you a dumbarse with an allegiance to stupidity?’ We can’t talk about how much more we used to earn or what we used to be before we became politicians. The public doesn’t want to hear that.

  We have to be grateful and gracious. We have to smile and say what an honour it is to serve and how privileged we are to be in this place so far away from home. And it is an honour. It is a privilege and it can be rewarding and joyful and all those things. But it can also be bloody hard.

  I am at my best when I’m in my community. I love that part of being a Member of Parliament. I love the meetings with community groups and volunteer organisations and young people and caregivers. I love it more than I have loved any other part of any other job I have ever had. I can safely say that the reason I love it so much is because that part of my job gives me hope. Hope is the penicillin for despair and frustration.

  ‘When you enter politics, you leave your brain at the door,’ one former female politician told me. Yeah, I get it. Politics is not a meritocracy. The best and the brightest don’t necessarily make it to the top – they don’t necessarily become ministers responsible for areas they have any expertise in. That’s pretty obvious when you consider that someone with two years of experience in his father’s real estate company can become the minister responsible for counterterrorism. In the real world, that takes some doing – you have to write books and do lots of research and actually talk to people (and read letters).

  The House of Representatives is a collective of diverse backgrounds and types. It should be a microcosm of the society its elected members represent. But it is in danger of becoming a collective of monotypes – political advisers, Institute of Public Affairs graduates and party players – alpha males (and females), stress junkies, arrogant arseholes.

  I’m not ready – not even close to being ready – to leave the parliament to the arseholes. I don’t know if I can make the kind of difference I want to make and I don’t know if that’s going to frustrate the shit out of me. I don’t know if I’m going to have to leave my brain at the door or under the seat, but I’ll fight bloody hard not to. After 365 days as a Member of Parliament, I still don’t know a lot of things. But I do know that just being here is making a difference. I see it. I see it as I walk through the halls of Parliament House flanked by the portraits of old white men who seem to be asking, ‘What the felafel are you doing here?’ I see it in the ways in which people have to look twice, think twice, about what makes a politician. I see it in the ways their thoughts and assumptions are disrupted by the presence of that someone, that something, that wasn’t there before.

  And at the end of each long journey home as I walk through those doors and into the arms of Dave and as I whisper in his ear, ‘Take me home and make me feel normal,’ I know that I am still Anne: girl child, wife, mother, daughter, aunt, horror-movie fan, pracademic, average cook, disruptor, Australian.

  Photos Section

  Every family has one.

  Looking pretty for my passport photo

  My father (on the right), in his bachelor years

  Family photo for our Australian passport, in 1972

  The Aly kids in the Aussie bush

  Sitting with my sister, Rhonda, on our first car in Australia

  With our mum, visiting a friend’s house, in 1973

  Rhonda and me outside Mrs Radcliffe’s house in Brisbane, shortly after the 1974 floods

  When a brown, bespectacled Muslim girl showed up at Belmore North Primary School, Christine and Silent Iris found their target.

  With our mum, at our flat in the suburb of Belmore, western Sydney

  During my undergraduate days at the American University in Cairo, in 1987

  One of my favourite photos of Dad and me, in Cairo

  My ‘natural’ looking make-up for my first marriage ceremony, in 1988

  As a newly married real housewife of Egypt – complete with pillow shams!

  With my girlfriends at my graduation from the American University in Cairo, in 1990. I am 3 months pregnant with Adam.

  Teaching English at a Perth college, while pregnant with Adam

  Adam and Karim with my parents in Western Australia, in 1995

  Getting ready to attend my graduation for my Master’s in Education (my third degree), in 1996

  With my parents at my PhD graduation, in 2008 – the day I became Dr Anne Aly PhD

  Accepting my induction into the inaugural WA Women’s Hall of Fame, with then-Governor of Western Australia Hon Dr Ken Michael, in 2011

  That time when Kevin Rudd came to WA to launch my book Terrorism and Global Security, in 2011. Here we are, with Karim and Adam.

  One of my first national TV appearances on ABC TV’s Compass program, in 2014

  ©ABC 2014 – Photographer Ian Barry

  Dave and me, with my parents, at our Muslim marriage ceremony, in 2012

  Adam and Karim getting ready to walk me down the aisle for my secular marriage ceremony to Dave, in 2013

  Blushing bride (again)!

  With other participants at the White House Summit, in 2015

  Listening in awe to then-President Obama speak, I just had to snap a pic.

  Giving a talk at the Australian Institute of Criminology on failed propaganda campaigns in the war on terror

  At the Club de Madrid, in 2015. The look on my face says it all.

  Addressing the crowd on election night, 2016

  Daniel Wilkins / Newspix

  Announcing my win for the seat of Cowan WA, nine days after the election, with Dave and Adam by my side

  Rebecca Le May / AAP Photos

  Back to school. Pollie school, that is. My very first time in the House of Representatives Chamber, Parliament House, Canberra

  David Foote / Ausp
ic/DPS

  Getting teary during my first speech, in October 2016

  Lukas Coch / AAP Photos

  Interjecting during Question Time

  Lukas Coch / AAP Photos

  Talking to Prime Minister Turnbull, as we are leaving the Chamber

  Lukas Coch / AAP Photos

  With Linda Burney, the Member for Barton NSW, showing off our silks

  Accepting the prestigious Australian Security Medal from Hon Philip Ruddock, Canberra, 2016

  Marching for marriage equality, in November 2016

  Celebrating the first anniversary of my election to parliament, with my supporters and friends

  Strutting the catwalk for a good cause during Thomas Puttick’s runway show at Fasion Week Australia 2017

  Stefan Gossati / Getty Images

  Dave and me attending the annual Midwinter Ball, Parliament House, in 2017

  Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax Syndication