Ros Kelly announced yesterday that she will leave Federal politics; she will remain in the Australian public perception as the Minister for Sports Rorts _ the Minister who had the “”great big whiteboard”. That may seem unfair from her point of view, but in six years in the Federal Ministry there are few achievements to outshine or mitigate the Sports Rorts Affair _ not her work to boost private-sector development in Canberra nor her tireless work to help the aged and young families in her constituency. Indeed, the affair appeared to diminish her two most abundant political talents: self-promotion and survival. Ros Kelly had an extraordinary talent for getting herself in the right place at the right time _ photographically. When Hawke fended off Keating she was near Hawke as he came out of the party room. When Keating won, there she was walking purposefully next to him down the corridor towards the waiting media.
In Parliament she sat near the dispatch box and was thus seen frequently on television. As a local member, before her days in the Ministry she was always in the right spot for the camera-person’s eye. Her children, too, were frequently used in the public domain. She proudly used her children as illustrations for political messages. Her detractors said she used her sex, her hair, her friends and even her dog in successful self-promotion. It is a skill not to be under-estimated, especially in politics where perception is more important than reality. Not only did she get herself into the right place at the right time photographically, but also politically. In 1987 Bob Hawke wanted three women in his ministry. Kelly had had the nous to align herself to the ascending Hawke. Kelly was appointed Minister for Defence Science and Personnel. She had displayed no pre-predilection for such a task. To her credit, however, she launched herself into improving the soldiers’ lot _ especially housing. However, she showed early signs of a perennial weakness: failure to brief herself of policy and departmental details. She proudly announced as new some leave allowances for transferring soldiers which had been in place some time.
She was promoted to Communications and Aviation Support in 1988. Then after the 1990 election she was promoted to Cabinet in the Environment portfolio. Once again her detractors said she was a token woman. She was the first woman from the House of Representatives in Cabinet; other women in Cabinet had come from the Senate, including Senator Susan Ryan who had left politics two years earlier. The promotion caused resentment and jealousy among men and women in the party. It also caused some dismay among environmentalists who saw her as a poor replacement for Senator Graham Richardson who not only was seen to have genuinely travelled the road to green Damascus but could actually deliver on policy. Ros Kelly, on the other hand, just disengagingly announced: “I’m a greenie,” as if that were enough. The Environment portfolio has been a very difficult one in Labor Governments since Labor came to power in 1983.
It has always required a careful balancing between Labor’s union support base which frequently puts jobs before the environment and the green movement which has played the preferences card at every opportunity. It was not a job for someone who wants to be all things to all people _ as Mrs Kelly so often wanted to be. Once again she got into strife. This time she told green lobbyists at a briefing that Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s new federalism was “”crass politics”. It showed that Mrs Kelly was “”green” if not a “”greenie”. The lobbyists, predictably enough, went to the media. The Opposition demanded tapes of the meeting be tabled. It became known, as these things are wont, for a few weeks as Kellygate. Kelly survived, showing great resilience and charm, but without convincing many that she was holding a solid environmental position. In the end it did not matter a great deal because the issue was a matter of chaff, not wheat _ unlike the later sports rorts affair. It was followed by the environment book fiasco. Kelly endorsed an environment book that gave farmers a bit of a pasting. Kelly defended the endorsement saying she only saw the cover and it was for departmental people to check the details. It was almost a foreboding of things to come _ no attention to detail, blame the department, the cover not the book, form not substance. The apparent endorsement of a booklet that bagged the farmers undermined perhaps Kelly’s best job in the portfolio: brown issues, things like soil erosion and lead pollution. Farmers can be good conservationists, too; their livelihood often depends on it.
Her Rio trip to the world environment summit was full of show and gloss, but not a great many environmental points came from it. Australia still rates very poorly among OECD countries on greenhouse gases; rainforest destruction and species extinction.
The incidents indicated that Kelly may have risen too rapidly from local member to Cabinet Minister. Ros Kelly was the quintessential local member. Arriving in Canberra as a school-teacher in 1969 she quickly became involved in local Labor politics and secured a seat on the advisory ACT House of Assembly. She was on the Act Schools Commission from 1976 to 1979, chairing it for the last two years. It was an ACT equivalent to a traditional union-politics background for aspiring Labor Members in the states. From that position she laid the groundwork for a crack at the Federal seat of Canberra which Labor had lost to the Liberals in the Whitlam backlash of 1975 and failed to regain in 1977. Kelly got preselection easily and won the seat in 1980. It was a natural Labor seat, but Kelly never took it, or her subsequent pre-selections for granted. She learnt the lessons of the Whitlam years: never abuse the business community. She took up the cause of bringing more private enterprise to Canberra and of changing the public-private balance in Canberra more in favour of private enterprise. Alas, at that time private enterprise meant development _ offices and housing for public servants with a bit of tourism thrown in. No-one carried the argument for developing industry, especially hi-tech industry. Kelly’s association with developers helped her get development in her electorate. She also secured major Commonwealth investment in her electorate with the building of the Department of Social Security at Tuggeranong.
At the time it was fought over bitterly in the bureaucracy, parts of which argued that prestige departments should be near Parliament or at least in Civic, not in the sticks. Kelly won the day. Arguably, Social Security bureaucrats now thank her because they have not been ensnarled in the hassles of parking in Civic. She supported the casino and the Raiders, arguing both were good for Canberra’s image _ so other Australians would not see the city as solely a place of government. She was quite unabashed about her support for the Raiders and got as many photo opportunities as she could from them. She worked the electorate tirelessly. She was clearly more at home fighting for the Post Office at Kambah or a aged-persons’ village than pitted against intellectually tough ministers in the resources portfolios. On entering Parliament, Ros Kelly was one of a group of very few women. Moreover, she was in her early 30s. In her first term she had to cop schoolboy taunts as a pioneer woman in House.
Michael Hodgman made some cheap comment about Mrs Kelly being a frequent visitor to his office. (He was Minister for Territories when Kelly was one of four territory MPs.) Amid laughter, the Speaker, Sir Billy Snedden, made a sniggering suggestion that perhaps Mrs Kelly would like to make a personal explanation. Kelly had the satisfaction of forcing an apology for Sir Billy. Ros Kelly can take some credit for improving behaviour towards women in the House. In 1983 she became the first sitting MP to have a baby. In the end, though, she was more about politics than policies. And this was her nemesis. As Minister for Sport her portfolio had some $30 million in grants to give out. The policy behind the grants was to develop sport in parts of Australia which otherwise would go without. It was a perfect opportunity to dish out money to Labor electorates because in the nature of things Labor electorates are more likely to be deprived of sports facilities. Perhaps, Kelly’s colleagues had intimated as much to her, but if so they must has assumed (quite wrongly) that Kelly would have the nous to cross every bureaucratic t and dot every legal I. (Subs lower case I please). Not so.
The Auditor-General saw something seriously wrong. And the Opposition saw something seriously like ministerial blood. The Auditor’s concern was that taxpayers’ money had been spent without appropriate documentation to justify under the authorising Act. Moreover, every time he asked the department for the documents, the department said the grants administration and decision-making had been done in the Ministers’ office. Kelly kept referring the Auditor back to the department. Eventually the Auditor reported his concerns to Parliament and told a parliamentary committee that the administration of the grants would attract fraud like bees to a honey pot. The Opposition had other concerns. Without a decent chance for audit, the grants could be made unfairly made to Labor electorates. They had a clear case that there was no rebuff to the assertion and fairly good evidence that that was precisely what was going on. When the Opposition suggested that Prime Minister Keating knew of the rorts, Kelly became too great a liability even for the Labor mates system to withstand.
The final straw in February last year was her pathetic explanation that the grants were worked out in her office on “”a great big whiteboard”. And she resigned as Minister. She went quiet for many months. Speculation mounted that she would quit politics, which Kelly denied _ now further adding to the great store of legitimate mistrust Australians have of anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth. Canberra may have lost a hard-working local member, but there could have been no question of a ministerial comeback. There is no question of the nation losing any ministerial talent. When Ros Kelly became Minister for the Environment she said: “”If I fail they will say the job was too big for a woman.” No-one said that. Rather they said the job was too big for Ros Kelly.