Bracks' Frontbench Gender Gap Is Becoming A Credibility Gap

The Age

Thursday April 19, 2007

Paul Austin - Paul Austin is state political editor.

Kosky and Pike have become the easiest targets in cabinet.

STEVE Bracks has a women problem. After the November election, the Premier cut the number of women in cabinet from seven to four, to the disquiet of the many people in his party who take these sorts of things very seriously. And now the two most senior remaining women ministers, Lynne Kosky and Bronwyn Pike, are living in dangerous times.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu, who incidentally has more women on his front bench than Bracks, says Kosky and Pike have become the Minister Who Doesn't Want to Know and the Minister Who Doesn't Know. It's a clever line designed to reinforce the idea that the Public Transport Minister and the Health Minister have begun the politically deadly transition from figures of substance to figures of ridicule.

For the moment, the "gender issue" hangs heavy over Victorian politics. Some senior Labor figures reckon the two female ministers, Kosky in particular, are getting a harder time of it, from the media in particular, than male ministers would in similar circumstances. But others say that misses the point: that the best ministers, whether male or female, don't get themselves into such circumstances in the first place.

Of the two ministers, Kosky has the lesser problem - in the short-term, at least. The damaging headlines she managed to attract in recent days say more about tabloid news values than major political errors.

But the brief media frenzy about her so-called "Don't bother me" email to caucus colleagues on how to handle constituents' complaints about trains and trams does point to Kosky's sometimes insensitive political antennae - and the fact that at least some in her party would be happy to bring her down a rung or two.

Kosky brings some of this on herself. For an ambitious and otherwise polished politician, she sometimes uses words and phrases that give ammunition to her detractors. For example, Kosky now concedes that the transport complaints email sent under her name could have been worded "more gently". Earlier this year she said, in the context of arguing against public transport being brought back into state hands: "Do I want to run a train system? I don't think so." That helps to explain why some people get the impression that public transport is a portfolio she doesn't really want. That in turn is why Kosky and Bracks have had to go through the extraordinary ritual of publicly declaring that she loves her job.

Kosky is a member of the Socialist Left faction. Some members of the Right are eager to home in on any weaknesses they detect in her political armoury. And some members of the Left criticise Kosky as not being Left enough. They point out that as education minister she paved the way for more selective-entry high schools. And now as Public Transport Minister she has pre-empted a debate some in the Left (and beyond) would love to have about bringing the trains and trams back into public hands.

There is a touch of the Mary Delahuntys about Kosky. Here is a high-profile woman who sometimes gets mentioned as a possible future premier. Yet she sometimes gives her opponents the chance to portray her as a minister who finds it a bit tedious that she needs to deal with hoi polloi. As a result, she is the subject of jealousy and resentment among a small number of her colleagues and - perhaps more damaging - she is becoming a tabloid target.

Those two forces came together when the public transport email from Kosky to Labor MPs was leaked to the Herald Sun. The paper gave her the full treatment. "Minister to commuters: Don't tell me" read the page one headline. Kosky, it was reported, had "told Labor colleagues not to bother her with complaints from commuters about trains and trams". It was an "unprecedented order". It amounted to "buck-passing". All this from the "biggest loser" in the post-election cabinet reshuffle, the minister who "remained on holiday in Morocco" when Siemens trains had to be removed from service because of brake problems.

OK, so it was poorly phrased and seemed a bit stand-offish, but a fair reading of the email suggests it was intended to help MPs direct constituents with minor complaints to the right place. And it does state: "If the issue is of a serious or urgent nature and has not been able to be resolved in any other way, you should contact our office."

The day after the story broke, a photograph was published of Kosky and her husband leaving home to go to work. "She's had over 200 emails," husband Jim was quoted as saying. "If the school bell doesn't ring, does the Education Minister get 200 complaints?" As it happens, he made a good point.

As for Pike, Baillieu's "Minister Who Doesn't Know", her difficulties are more serious. The communication breakdowns in her department on the fight against HIV and over the Broughton Hall nursing home deaths are numerous and shocking. They suggest Pike, four years into the job, has not been able to display the leadership that would be likely to result in her department providing better service to the minster - and ultimately to the public.

Pike hopes the sacking of the chief health officer will both break through the blockage and save her job. And in that latter endeavour she has an ally in federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, who doesn't agree with Baillieu that Pike must go. "Ministers do very much depend upon the official advice that they get," Abbott explained on ABC TV on Monday, "and if she wasn't getting the advice, it's hard to know how she can be held personally responsible."

Bracks' problem is with his women ministers; Baillieu's is with his federal colleagues.

Paul Austin is state political editor.

© 2007 The Age

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