Maxine McKew

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The Honourable  Maxine McKew  MP
McKew campaigning in the 2007 federal election.
Member of the Australian Parliament for Bennelong
Incumbent
Assumed office  24 November 2007
Preceded by	John Howard
Majority	1.40%
Born	22 July 1953 Brisbane, Queensland
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Residence	Epping, New South Wales
Occupation	Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care
Profession	Journalist
Website	Parliament of Australia

Hon Maxine Margaret McKew MP MP (born 22 July 1953 ^[1]) is the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care in the First Rudd Ministry, the member for Bennelong in the Australian Parliament, and a former award-winning journalist.

As a broadcast journalist, McKew hosted a number of programmes on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television and radio, most recently Lateline and The 7.30 Report. In February 2007, McKew announced her candidacy for Bennelong. The seat in the northern Sydney suburbs was held by the then Prime Minister John Howard, who had been the member for 33 years. McKew received 39,408 (45.33%) of the primary vote, behind Howard's 39,551 (45.49%); following the distribution of preferences, McKew secured 44,685 votes (51.40%).^[2] She is the first woman to unseat a sitting prime minister in his own electorate.^[3] Howard himself acknowledged in his party's concession speech that losing was a strong possibility.^[4] However, McKew did not formally claim victory until a week after the election.^[5]

Contents 1 Personal 2 Media career 2.1 Honours 2.2 Quotations 3 Politics 4 Other interests 5 Further reading 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Personal

McKew was born and grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. Her father, Bryan McKew, was a boilermaker who at times struggled with alcoholism.^[6] When Maxine was five, her mother Elaine died, and she was sent to live with her grandparents for three years. Maxine and her sister Margo moved to Moorooka to live with their father after he remarried. McKew attended All Hallows' School in Brisbane.^[7] McKew currently lives in the Sydney suburb of Epping with her partner, former ALP National Secretary Bob Hogg (they have chosen not to marry as McKew is Roman Catholic and Hogg is divorced).^[8] McKew had previously indicated active plans to move into the electorate of Bennelong,^[9] before doing so in March 2007.

On March 3, 2007, allegations of death threats against McKew were widely reported. There has been speculation that attempts to tamper with her car were by car thieves looking for spare parts rather than by politically motivated individuals.^[10][11][12]

[edit] Media career

After matriculating, she briefly attended university before dropping out and living in London for two years. She supported herself with a variety of temporary jobs, including relief typing at a London BBC office. A letter requesting a job — written by McKew on BBC letterhead paper — was rewarded with a cadetship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane in 1974 following a brief stint as a news analyst at investment bank Goldman Sachs. In 1976 she moved on to host This Day Tonight, a local current affairs program.^[7] In over 30 years working at the ABC, McKew worked as a presenter on the 7:30 Report and Lateline, and also worked on The Carleton-Walsh Report, AM, PM, and The Bottom Line. McKew was honoured for her broadcasting work with a Logie award, and for her journalism by a Walkley Award. In October 2006 she announced that she was leaving the ABC saying "This is more than likely the end of my broadcasting career".^[13]

From 1999 to 2004 she wrote Lunch with Maxine McKew, a column for The Bulletin, a weekly magazine,^[14] based on her interviews with prominent Australians. McKew frequently elicited newsworthy revelations from her subjects, and was named by The Australian Financial Review as "one of the top ten exercisers of covert power in Australia".^[6]

[edit] Honours

• 1998 Walkley Award for Broadcast Interviewing for her work on Lateline
• 1999 Logie Award for Most Outstanding News-Public Affairs Broadcaster
• 2003 Centenary Medal for services to broadcasting^[15]
• Named as "Columnist of the Year" by the Magazine Publishers Association in 2003^[15]

[edit] Quotations

• "People have a nervous collapse when I've actually broken through and got someone to say something honest. It is either regarded as a gaffe, or people say they must have been drunk, or publicly musing aloud, or they didn't realise the tape was running, or I must have had oral sex with them under the table. I find it absurd."^[6]
• "Women do give up something. It's biology..... Let me tell you what I gave up. I wanted my career. And so I never had children." (Quoted in Jack Welch's 2005 book, Winning^[16])

[edit] Politics

McKew was reported to have been a possible Labor candidate for the safe federal seat of Fowler at both the 2001 and 2004 elections.^[17] In 2004, it was the Labor leader Mark Latham who attempted to lure McKew with pre-selection to the Western Sydney seat. Latham recorded in his diary that his efforts failed because the broadcaster would not move from her home in Mosman to Labor's outer-suburban heartland, an area which he represented as the Member for Werriwa,^[18] while McKew told ABC Radio that a big factor in her 2003 decision was that she regarded the party as being without direction at the time.^[19] McKew had also been approached by John Hewson in the past to join the Liberal Party.^[20]

After resigning from the ABC in December 2006, McKew joined the Australian Labor Party in January 2007 as a special adviser on strategy to Labor leader Kevin Rudd.^[14] The Australian reported in early February that McKew was again in contention to gain preselection for the Division of Fowler, a safe Labor seat held by Julia Irwin who had supported Kim Beazley in the December leadership ballot. However the article also stated that a Labor source had suggested that a different seat was possible.^[17]

On 25 February Rudd's office confirmed that McKew would run against Prime Minister John Howard in the Division of Bennelong at the election,^[21] and McKew announced that she and Hogg were selling their Mosman home.^[22][9] The seat had once been a Liberal stronghold (it had been in Liberal hands since its creation in 1949), but had shifted increasingly to Labor in recent years even though its incumbent was the prime minister. In two out of the three elections Howard had fought since becoming prime minister, he'd needed to go to preferences to win another term in his own seat.

McKew outlined her position on issues such as the environment, education and women in The Bulletin in mid-2007^[23].

Following a redistribution in 2006, the already marginal Liberal seat had become slightly more so, with Labor needing a swing of 4% to win it. Much of the area was already represented by Labor at the state level.

A previous week's Morgan poll conducted for the website Crikey put Labor's two-party preferred vote in the seat at 55%.^[24] On 24 November 2007, it was obvious when the first returns came in that the contest would be very tight. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and several other sources projected on election night that Howard would not be reelected,^[25] and Howard himself said in conceding the election to Rudd that it was "very likely" he had been unseated. However, McKew hesitated in claiming victory, saying that the seat was on a "knife edge."^[26] In a press conference held on November 26, McKew declared Bennelong "a Labor seat for the first time", but stopped short of formally claiming victory.^[27]

On 1 December 2007, while counting was still underway, McKew formally claimed victory in Bennelong, saying that she was "comfortably ahead" on the two-party vote. In her victory speech, McKew thanked Howard for his 30 years of service and could understand why he hadn't formally conceded, saying that "Mr. Howard and his family clearly had a huge amount to do this week." She said that her polling numbers indicated a uniform swing to Labor, with many people who had never voted Labor before crossing over to her. However, she said that many voters felt neglected by him in recent years.^[5] By most estimates Howard would have needed an improbable majority of the outstanding mail-in and absentee ballots to retain his seat.

It was not until 12 December that Howard formally conceded defeat, with the Electoral Commission formally declaring McKew the winner by 44,685 votes (51.4 percent) to Howard's 42,251 (48.6 percent). ^[28] The final tally indicated that McKew had won victory on the 14th count due to a large flow of Green preferences to her; 3,793 (78.84 percent) of Green voters listed McKew as their second preference.^[29] This was enough for her to defeat Howard by 2.8 percentage points on the two-party vote.^[30]

A few days earlier, on 29 November, Rudd announced that McKew would be one of his Parliamentary Secretaries when his ministry^[31] was sworn in on 3 December.^[32] In this role she has responsibility for early childhood education and child care. Less than a week after the official declaration of her victory, McKew launched a book and described the Howard era of government as one characterised by "brutish" politics.^[33]

Maxine McKew delivered her first speech in the House of Representatives on 14 February 2008 ^[34].

[edit] Other interests

McKew is a long-term participant in the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, a bipartisan bilateral civil diplomatic initiative founded by Melbourne businessman Phil Scanlan.^[35] Additional activities include membership of the Women’s Advisory Group to the National Breast Cancer Centre, and membership of the University of Sydney’s Research Institute for Asia Pacific. She is also the Patron of Osteoporosis Australia and is a member of the Sydney Symphony Council. ^[36]

[edit] Further reading

• The Battle for Bennelong: The adventures of Maxine McKew, aged 50something by Margot Saville, Melbourne University Press, 2007

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Australian Labor Party - Maxine McKew - Member for Bennelong
• Australian Electoral Commission - virtual tally room result
• Bennelong on a knife edge: McKew
• MaxineMcKew.com.au
• Parliament of Australia's biography for the Hon Maxine McKew MP, Member for Bennelong (NSW)

Parliament of Australia
Preceded by John Howard	Member for Bennelong 2007 – present	Incumbent

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