Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Martyrdom

Malcolm Farr & Tony Maguire - Daily Telegraph

Just before the last election, when the result was obvious to most, a senior ALP identity raised a point with Simon Crean and was immediately made to regret it.

The point was that Kim Beazley was going to lose, Crean was the obvious next leader and that he ought to think about making Jenny Macklin his deputy.

Crean was furious. To talk about a change in leadership before the voters had even registered a choice was treachery.

The conversation ended quickly.

Beazley's job at the party helm was frequently controversial but Crean didn't contribute to the criticism, certainly not publicly and also not privately.

And that was despite his office and Beazley's sometimes having tense dealings.

He threw himself on a few grenades during that period to protect the leader.

When NSW minister John Della Bosca suggested Federal Labor should stop opposing the GST and get on with other policies, it was Crean who fronted the ABC's 7.30 Report that night for the inevitable filleting.

Loyalty is hugely important to Crean. It is the starting point of any political and personal relationship he has.

His feelings when Carmen Lawrence quit shadow cabinet this week, at a press conference packed with sniffy contempt for Crean and his predecessor, can only be imagined.

He said yesterday: "We've stood by her in the past. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't continue to stand by her. It's just that, at times, people you give loyalty to, you expect a bit back from as well."

That's something Carmen Lawrence, who clearly sees her departure as a sacrifice on behalf of caring attitudes, perhaps should have taken greater account of.

Because a funny thing has happened on her way to martyrdom. Carmen Lawrence has become the persecutor.

The significant perception in the 24 hours after her walk out over Labor's immigration policy has been that she is disloyal. There was a large body of opinion that Lawrence, of all people in politics, should have given a bit of loyalty back.

Former national secretary of the ALP Gary Gray had some testy discussions with Paul Keating when he was prime minister – one of the testiest was over Carmen Lawrence.

She had been linked, when West Australian premier, to the 1992 tabling of bogus documents which contributed to the suicide of a young lawyer, Penny Easton.

In 1995, the Liberal WA government of Richard Court, also named in the dodgy documents, called a royal commission into the matter.

Carmen Lawrence claimed she knew nothing of the documents, but some of her personal staff said the opposite and Lawrence, by then in Federal Parliament, had her credibility shattered.

The royal commission found she had lied, but she was acquitted of criminal charges of misleading the inquiry. She was forced to step down from the ministry.

Gary Gray had wanted the Keating government to cut her adrift entirely, but the then prime minister refused and the result was a lot of money, energy and loyalty being spent.

It was Kim Beazley who put her back on the frontbench and Simon Crean who kept her there.

Beazley already had done much for Lawrence. A 1994 redistribution had made his seat of Swan more risky, so he thought about moving to the relatively safe Labor seat of Fremantle, held by his father Kim Beazley Sr from 1945 to 1977.

However, the party's decision was that the seat should go to Lawrence to facilitate her switch to federal politics.

Beazley had to fight for survival in the marginal seat of Brand, which he has kept ever since.

The reward for Crean and Beazley on Thursday was to hear Lawrence belittle their leadership and condemn their record as caring politicians.

"I don't think Simon's one of those people who stand head and shoulders above the crowd," she said.

The picture painted was of a woman who had suffered fools and cowards for all these years but, after the release of the policy on asylum seekers, could do so no longer. Many of her colleagues fumed as they listened to her.

Even those who backed her demand for changes to Labor policy balked at endorsing her resignation from shadow cabinet.

"I don't see how that will advance the issues she has raised," MP for Sydney Tanya Plibersek said.

The furore over her resignation within the ALP and among voters who recall the Penny Easton ordeal – and the issue of loyalty – has helped Crean.

He has emerged as the victim from a day in which Labor's claim for progress on immigration was shattered by Lawrence.

The allegations of treachery have also made it less likely Lawrence will become a rallying point for policy challenges.

Crean looks like a tough guy who won't accommodate lefties.

Simon Crean's advisers are angry towards Lawrence and will remain so. Anyone who sides with her will be subject to immediate suspicion.

The next question is whether Lawrence has made any significant sacrifice at all.

For some, abandoning the Opposition front bench was a pretty low-rent attempt at martyrdom.

This argument goes that Lawrence, if she felt so put-upon by conservative policy decisions and leadership timidity, should have left the Labor Party – not just shadow cabinet.

She might still do that.

It could be Lawrence is on a quite deliberate road to personal redemption.

There can be no understating the hurt caused to her by the Easton royal commission and the persistent and vicious suggestions she is a liar, amoral and unworthy of elected office.

The party, and where appropriate the courts, rejected those claims, but Lawrence must have felt them deeply.

Carmen Lawrence was Australia's first woman premier when she took on the top job in Western Australia in 1990.

Yesterday was one of the many troughs in the intervening 12 years of highs and lows for the academically minded doctor of psychology from rural WA.

She lasted just one term as premier of WA after Labor in the west was ousted thanks to the antics of former premier Brain Burke and the WA Inc affair.

Just more than a year after being demoted to WA state opposition leader, Dr Lawrence was persuaded to shift to the Federal arena.

She won the seat of Fremantle in a by-election in March, 1994, after the resignation of John Dawkins.

Within two weeks Paul Keating appointed her human services and health minister and his assisting minister on the status of women.

In Opposition she returned to the shadow cabinet and has held portfolios including environment, arts, status of women and industry.

Until yesterday Dr Lawrence was shadow minister for reconciliation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs; the arts and status of women.

She has occasionally confided to friends about her thoughts of leaving politics.

Further, she has considered leaving her present lifestyle completely.

Lawrence has considered the possibility of living and working with outback Aboriginal communities, giving them the benefit of her medical training and political experience and networks.

This could possibly be a means of invoking a moral focus.

Her rebellion against mandatory detention of asylum seekers (which she did not publicly oppose when Labor introduced it) and other policies could be the first step on that path.

To regain her moral confidence, Carmen Lawrence might quit politics entirely. Simon Crean would wish her a speedy journey.