Labor pains can't keep a good woman down

The whole nation was watching as Labor's star recruit got turfed out of politics at last year's election after just one term, just as they had watched goggle-eyed in 2007, when she stormed into Canberra, dragging John Howard's political carcass behind her.

It was no ordinary rejection, despite being assured by all her mates inside and outside the party (including, if you believe a 10th of what you know about ALP politics, probably several people who were glad to see the back of the factionally unaligned and unabashed Kevin Rudd supporter) that there was no shame in losing the marginal seat in northern Sydney - held by the former Liberal prime minister for 33 years.

''It was profound, no matter what people say,'' McKew says in her first major interview since that inglorious night in August last year.

''I can assure you, it feels bloody personal; it feels like a personal rejection and it's a public, personal rejection.'' She is still talking in the present tense.

McKew didn't go quietly that night; she blamed her defeat, and Labor's woeful result, on the party's decision to dump Rudd as leader two months earlier and on a lacklustre campaign.

Then she disappeared from public view. She has spent the past year declining media requests and has knocked back several book offers - ''I'm actively working hard not to write a book at the moment'' - instead working for the non-profit Social Ventures Australia, a job she has just left. She also did the deeply unfashionable thing and hung around Sydney to campaign for a couple of young ALP candidates at the last NSW election.

Now she and her partner, Bob Hogg (the former national ALP secretary and as canny a political operator as the party has ever had) have abandoned Sydney and moved to Melbourne. For Hogg, it's coming home; for McKew, it's a fresh start in a city where she says she instinctively feels at home. ''Melbourne has been in our heads for years, a bit like, 'Next year, Jerusalem.' Bob's family is here - the vast Hogg tribe - so, if you like, I've brought my bloke back to his roots.''

At 58, McKew looks and sounds 10 years younger - maybe she wasn't in politics long enough to suffer the premature ageing effect that afflicts so many politicians - but after spending time with her, there is no doubt she is a smart woman with time on her hands, intellectually. She is still passionately interested in public policy and public life.

She's buzzing. Sure, she's just accepted a position on the board of the progressive Victorian experts panel Per Capita, is off to Kolkata next month with the University of Melbourne's Australia India Institute and she's joined the local branch of the ALP, where she hopes to be useful.

''I love Melbourne and agree with writer Sophie Cunningham that it's a city you get to know from the inside out,'' McKew says. ''You have to walk it to love it and that's what I do. I peer down laneways and enjoy the surprises.

''It's a city of the slow reveal, unlike Sydney's in-your-face splendour and brashness.''

McKew openly admits she misses being in Parliament - ''I loved it'' - but she also rejects several suggestions she is looking for a seat in the Victorian Parliament or, for that matter, preselection in Melbourne for another federal seat. When pressed, she rules out local government, while confessing a certain fondness for it.

She insists she has not received the ''call'' from Victorian Labor HQ but when pressed, finally admits she would ''never say never'' if that call did come. She will not go further.

A ring-around of some ALP heavy-hitters reveals differing opinions.

''She's a superstar, we'd be mad not to grab her,'' says one, who goes on to list from A to Z what McKew would bring to the fairly thin Victorian parliamentary Labor party.

Another feigned surprise that she and Hogg were back in town. ''Really, had no idea. She's too old, surely?'' Kaboom. The gender-age card in one.

Since losing Bennelong, the Gillard government has not offered her a role in public life nor, she hastens to add, has she sought one.

But, as one senior federal Labor figure said, ''it does seem extraordinary that someone of her calibre hasn't been offered a real role in Australian public life''.

Not many were willing to go on the record regarding McKew's potential but Richard Wynne, a former Bracks-Brumby senior minister in Victoria who now serves on the opposition frontbench, has seen McKew in action at his local party events and is unequivocal.

''Since she moved to Melbourne, she chaired a local government forum for me and it was a packed house with a waiting list,'' he says. ''She was fully over her brief and provided really useful insights of her experience of local government. She is a rare talent.''

Another said McKew could certainly give the lord mayor of Melbourne, Robert Doyle (a former Liberal state opposition leader), a real run for his money if she decided to contest the mayoralty.

While she might not be at the top of the Prime Minister's jobs for boys and girls list, McKew is still a true Canberra insider. She's seeing ''Paul [Keating]'' later in the week, a politician she clearly has deep respect for and mentions several times during lunch. ''He is unafraid to imagine the future and pinpoint our critical problems, timidity and even, I would argue, cowardice.''

She also talks often to Labor Party elder statesman and the co-architect of its reform blueprint, Senator John Faulkner, who she describes as a mate. And she and Rudd text often.

''This is an important time, if you care about the future of the party - and there are plenty of people who do,'' McKew says.

''If you care about the reform agenda - and I do, of course - I'm speaking to people like that.''

McKew symbolised the ''It's Time'' vibe of the Kevin '07 juggernaut that fell so spectacularly last year. Aside from Rudd, she is arguably its most high-profile casualty. He still has a job in politics.

The former Walkley Award-winning journalist's stellar 30-year career made her the ultimate star candidate when Rudd lured her to his team in January 2007.

The ALP began ''flirting'' with McKew in 2003 and she says she was flattered. She agonised for three or four years about playing a role in public life as an MP, not a journalist.

''I was deeply immersed in politics and was interviewing senior politicians … and getting a lot of story breaks. At that time, the party was agonising about its future; it was looking for the new Messiah.''

She admits she felt conflicted. How did she juggle this? Did she overcompensate in her journalism?

''No, no, I don't think I did,'' she says. ''It wasn't what I was writing between the lines, it was what was actually on the tape. It was honestly gleaned information.''

Team Rudd wanted McKew in Parliament and were happy to find her a safe seat but Hogg, a political game-changer, convinced her it had to be a marginal seat if she wanted to make a real difference to Labor's electoral chances.

''Bennelong was Bob's idea and he was right,'' McKew says now, even though neither of them could have envisioned what a colossal mess Labor were to make of the victory.

''I was utterly fearless in 2007. I don't know where that came from. I am not a natural risk-taker.

''But when I lock in, I'm fine. I don't jump off the cliff that often. This was my jumping off the cliff.''

And what does Hogg say now it's over? ''He has been fantastic,'' McKew says. ''He upended his life and we had a lovely, comfortable life. I've since said to him, 'Are you a bit angry with me that I turned our lives upside down?' and he said 'No, I've never thought that.' He's fantastic.''

Leaving Sydney has also meant putting distance between herself and the carnivore-like party machine of the NSW right. McKew makes no effort to disguise her contempt for the way the faceless party-machine men in Labor wield their power. The party's former national secretary, Karl Bitar - who was behind former premier Morris Iemma's political assassination and who now works as a corporate consultant, including, controversially, for James Packer's Crown Casino - recently called for less timidity and cynicism in Australian politics.

''Here's Karl, a former national secretary, now chiding ministers for their timidity when Karl helped shop Morris Iemma out of office as premier of NSW because he wanted to do the courageous thing and sell NSW electricity assets,'' McKew says. ''There's a fair bit of hypocrisy around.''

She is scathing in her assessment about how political discourse and decision-making occurs, labelling it ''dumbed-down; a kind of collective madness that takes hold''.

McKew saves her most savage criticism of the Gillard government for its handling of the boat people issue. She is appalled.

''What the government came up with - the so-called Malaysia solution - I think it's a disgrace,'' she says. ''I didn't door-knock nearly a quarter of the electorate in Bennelong for us to have arrived at this position. What we've got is the legacy of Howard and Ruddock still with us and we've now apparently embraced it. I find that profoundly depressing.''

On Abbott she is unsurprisingly critical but, given her background, she knows an effective communicator when she hears one.

''Well, you've got shrillness in the public debate and with Tony Abbott we've got one of the great political ferals who, on a daily basis, seems to be proving that an Oxbridge education is no guarantee of any sensible embrace of public policy.

''But there is no doubt when I put my communication hat on, Abbott has a cut-through clarity that people are finding compelling.

''I am hoping the exceptional support Abbot is clearly attracting is based more on acute disappointment people have with our side, that the more people consider the thinness of his position then they may reconsider.

''But I have to say, that's a heroic hope at the minute.

''Now, I would hope, faced with this reality, we can actually start to lower the social temperature. At the moment, we have tit-for-tat exchange between Tony Abbott and the PM about who's to blame for the latest boat arrival.''

McKew refuses to buy into the Gillard leadership question, instead offering this: ''Julia's job is difficult enough but she does have time. She has to make that time count.''

Since our first conversation, her optimism has risen. She is heartened to see the government has gained traction.

''Getting the carbon tax through [is] a significant show of political bottle,'' she says.

McKew accepts she made her own mistakes and says, as a believer in collective responsibility, the decision to ditch the emissions trading scheme was disastrous.

''I walked away from climate change,'' she says. ''That was important in Bennelong for two reasons. We had a small seat like Melbourne, where you've got that huge Green component. Nonetheless, climate change was important to a small yet dedicated group of people and we had a very effective Greens candidate, that I got along very well with, actually.

''There was no benefit when we walked away from climate change. People said that this was an absolute priority, 'You campaigned on this. If you're prepared to throw this out, what else do you have flexible beliefs about?'''

Many journalists thrive on conflict but McKew was never of that ilk and seemed uncomfortable in Parliament. ''I don't look back at the time I spent in the chamber as my finest hours in politics. There are no great speeches I would pull out.''

For now, McKew is quietly going about putting together what she calls a ''portfolio'' of jobs - paid and voluntary. While there might be a book down the track, there will be no return to journalism.

''An editor said to me recently, 'Ah well, you can just go back to journalism.' And I said, 'Well I never go back,' and they said, 'Oh well there's only two things in life, journalism and politics.'

''I said, 'Well, actually there is no comparison. Look, I worked hard and conscientiously as a journalist. But that cannot compare with the work that you do as a representative.' He was just blinking at me. Journalism is a doddle compared to the life of an MP.''

She goes on to describe how it feels to be driving home through Sydney traffic on a Friday night after a week, perhaps shuffling between Canberra and Sydney. ''And running through your head, you're sorting out the five activities that you've got on in your electorate that weekend.

''And then the mobile rings. And you get that chilling call that says a child has just been found locked up in a childcare centre in Parramatta, I mean that's going to be the front-page story in tomorrow's paper. The responsibility is significant. There is little I can think of in my journalistic career that is on a par with that.

''What you do in public life matters, it has consequence. And I really miss it.''