Perhaps unexpectedly for a man who has spent 13 years in government, Simon Corbell looks back at his early years in opposition has some of his most rewarding.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Under Wayne Berry, Labor was hit with its worst ever defeat, winning just 27 per cent of the vote in 1998, and was humiliated, its numbers reduced to six. With a new leader in Jon Stanhope, "we simply had to do everything on our own to get back into government", Mr Corbell recalls, seeing the time in opposition as an invaluable learning experience. When he leaves next year, none of the Labor team will have the benefits of opposition.
Is that a negative, we ask Mr Corbell on Friday.
"Your worst day in government is 100 times better than your best day in opposition. In government you get to achieve things and get things done," he says. "But there is great benefit in having members with experience of opposition and what that means and the skills you learn from that."
Asked about the leaders he has worked under – Andrew Whitecross, Wayne Berry, Jon Stanhope, Katy Gallagher and Andrew Barr – Mr Corbell says they were all capable and driven, but he points especially to Mr Berry as a man for whom he has "an enormous amount of respect" and who was one of the first people to call him on Friday after his announcement, and Mr Stanhope, an "outstanding leader" who took Labor back to government in 2001. Since then, Labor had made its own luck, Mr Corbell says, by staying united, disciplined and managing leadership transitions without ructions.
Despite his fondness for the Berry and Stanhope years, Mr Corbell says ultimately politics is about winning government and his most fulfilling time has been in government, including the renewables agenda.
Mr Corbell has led an ambitious agenda in government, but there is nevertheless a feeling among Labor colleagues that Mr Corbell, an introverted personality, didn't enjoy the political side of the job – the business of campaigning, politicking and selling a message.
Asked whether politics had sat heavily on his shoulders, he agreed and admitted to a sense of relief at finally settling a departure date.
"The simple fact is it's 20 years in this building. Don't get me wrong, I love this job, I love politics, and I love the Labor Party and the Labor agenda, but I'm also a person beyond politics and in 14 months it's time to reflect on and explore that a bit more too," he said.
He entered the Assembly at 26 and will leave at 45.
"This is the majority of my working life and very large part of my adult life. My son wasn't born when I was elected to this place, he's now eligible to get his driver's licence and he's off to college. So these things make you think about whether this is the only thing you're going to do in your life.
"It's something I've reflected on for a long period of time and in the last two three days I've come to the conclusion that with the party ballot preselection process due to kick off in the next month or so that I need to make clear to people whether or not I intend to follow through," he said.
Mr Stanhope said Mr Corbell would be a great loss to the Labor team.
"Simon was certainly one of the deepest thinkers within the cabinet, incredibly intelligent with enormous breadth of understanding of a range of issues, and very committed to the government and to causes that were important to him," Mr Stanhope said.
Asked about the view of Mr Corbell as less enamoured of the political side of the job, Mr Stanhope said it would be a fair comment that he found politicking "something of an irritant, a necessary evil perhaps, something that he had to do".
"At times I don't think politics came naturally to him. He would have avoided some of the hurly burly, he was strong when he needed to be strong, but he very rarely engaged in some of the push and shove of politics for the sake of it and he was uncomfortable, perhaps, with some of more the base aspects … of being a politician."
With Mr Berry's daughter, Yvette Berry, in line to succeed him as deputy leader, Mr Corbell said assuming that transition would be highly speculative and assuming she would win the position because of her factional allegiance (she is in the left and Barr in the right, with the top two positions usually going one to each faction) would be "quite flawed analysis".
