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Since the day I arrived at Ruyton, I have known one thing – Lauren
Yip would be school captain. The Year 12s have all known this deep
down, but imagine for a minute that she hadn’t been picked. Not
through any fault of your own, Lauren, but because the school had
decided they needed a celebrity captain who could boost the school’s
image in the wider community, and so brought back Olympian Kim
Crow to captain the school. Okay, obviously, this is utterly ridiculous
and is not a democratic process. But this is exactly what happened on
the national stage with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s so-
called ‘captain’s pick’ of indigenous Olympian Nova Peris. The
controversy and the consequences that have followed in the wake of
this decision only highlight that political parties must move away
from choosing celebrity candidates.
When Ms Gillard first announced in mid-January that the first
indigenous woman to compete for Australia at the Olympics would
become the first indigenous woman to be a federal senator, it was
hailed as the ‘righting of a national wrong.’ And while I admit that
the move looks good, once you get into it, it becomes clear that it’s
not all sunshine and rainbows. First of all, in order to select Nova
Peris for this senate seat in the Northern Territory, Julia Gillard had
to ditch Trish Crossin, the hard-working senator who’d held that
seat for 15 years. Crossin was ordered to fly to Canberra the day
before the media announcement and was told that she’d basically
been sacked. Ms Gillard saying, ‘I’m offering you nothing.’ Just like
that, Crossin was gone. I mean, she was free to run for the seat, and
she did, but Julia Gillard demanded Labor members vote for Peris,
and they did. That’s democracy for you.
But while intrinsically one would have thought Julia Gillard
would have been a better prime minister for having selected the first
indigenous Labor senator, her brutal method actually only damaged
her already bruised image. When she announced the selection of
Peris, she attempted to present herself as assertive and pioneering,
but her sudden cruel dumping of a hard-working local only fuelled
criticism from the media and even from within her own party that
she was dictatorial and showing ‘utter contempt’ for the Northern
Territory’s local processes. We could see this selection for what it
was; not as many had trumpeted, the ‘righting of a national wrong’,
but mere celebrity politics, designed to shore up Labor’s plummeting
numbers in the NT. Why else would a popular Olympian have been
Untitled
Janet Davey
Alan Patterson Public
Speaking Competition
Finalist
12