Penny Wong and the thousand cuts of the Kimberley Kitching saga

A certain domestic controversy could not have been better calculated to distress and damage Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.

It was sparked by the unexpected death of Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching from a heart attack on March 10 2022. This was a personal tragedy for Kitching’s family and friends, but the days of headlines that followed touched on multiple layers of pain and difficulty for Labor, and for Wong.

Wong was accused of being a bully — the leader of a trio of “mean girls”, in the words of Kitching’s husband, Andrew Landeryou, who also described them as a “cantankerous cabal”. The other “mean girls” were said to be senators Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher. It was even alleged by one of Kitching’s friends and factional allies that Labor Party bullying by the “mean girls”, and by Anthony Albanese, had caused Kitching’s death. “Her beautiful heart simply gave out.” The “mean girls” line, referring to the well-known teen movie of that name, was made for media, and was repeated in report after report.

Wong’s character was shaped by the bullying she suffered as a child. Perhaps as a result, she is highly sensitive to any suggestion that she can herself be a bully. After the publication of the first edition of Penny Wong, I was told by her friends that the parts she disliked most — that hurt her — were those that talked about her displays of temper, including towards her staff.

She is a warrior with a sharp wit and tongue — as well as that uncanny ability to lower the temperature in a room with her quiet anger. Yet she has also retained key staff members for years. She builds deep and loving relationships. Those who know her best reject the idea that she is a bully. They say that her displays of aggression and temper would be seen differently, and more favourably, if she were a man. That she always apologises and tries to put things right if she steps over the line. And they suggest that the “mean girl” rhetoric implicitly invoked homophobic stereotypes about lesbian women.

Wong has described the aftermath of Kitching’s death as one of the hardest times she has had in politics. It led her to question her commitment to the job. “There are always ups and downs in politics, and the hardest periods are always the ones that are personal … There are times in your career you say, ‘Is what is happening in my life now, and all the personal attacks on me or consequences on family for the time away, is that worth the contribution I’m making?’ “

At the time of Kitching’s death, Labor had the momentum. According to the polls, it was headed for victory at an election expected within weeks. “The final quarter” had arrived and it did indeed seem to be kicking with the wind. The Kitching affair threatened to wreck all that. It exposed Labor’s toxic culture and revived memories of how infighting had hobbled and destroyed the Rudd government. It undermined the imperative of needing to be seen as capable and responsible — and able to govern well.

Finally, the Kitching affair was about foreign policy. In the narrative of Kitching’s supporters, the issue that had divided her from Wong was Kitching’s concern that Wong and Albanese would be too soft on China. That played straight into the “Manchurian candidate” narrative that Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton were trying to promote.

The rape allegations made by Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins in early 2021, as well as allegations that government ministers Christian Porter and Alan Tudge had behaved inappropriately with staff, had put the culture of Parliament House into the headlines. So far, this had counted mainly against the government. Morrison, under pressure, had set up an independent review by sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins, and it had reported just months before Kitching’s death, with a finding that 37% of people currently in parliamentary workplaces had experienced bullying. That made it easy for people to believe the assertions that Kitching, too, had been bullied.

But behind the personal tragedy of Kitching’s death, the controversy was mostly about internal Labor politics and its pathologies, and about the preparedness of some to damage their enemies even at the expense of the party. It was about the enmity between Bill Shorten and Albanese. By damaging Wong, the controversy also damaged Albanese.

Kitching and Landeryou had been long-term, hard players in the Victorian Labor Party. One senior Labor figure described them to me as “political terrorists”. Landeryou is bitterly remembered in Melbourne for running a blog, VexNews, that published a mix of highly skewed, sometimes defamatory gossip and commentary. He broke some legitimate news stories, but also dripped poison about his Labor factional enemies.

He shut it down when Kitching began her attempts to enter Parliament. Kitching had been the general manager of the Health Services Union, an important part of Shorten’s factional base. She had had to give evidence before a royal commission into her time there. The Fair Work Commission found that in the course of filling roles at the union, Kitching unlawfully completed right-of-entry tests on behalf of others. Kitching’s vehement denials were rejected by both the commission and the trade union royal commission, which recommended she be charged for false statements, although charges were never laid.

Kitching had also been a vice-president of the Victorian state branch, and a Melbourne city councillor. She was a great networker, particularly among journalists. Some of them loved her.

Kitching was a divisive figure in the party. Her first attempts to enter federal Parliament were foiled from within. But when right factional powerbroker senator Stephen Conroy retired unexpectedly in 2016, Kitching was preselected to fill the vacancy, supported by Shorten. Albanese refused to support it. But Shorten was leader at the time, and with his support and that of Victorian powerbroker and member of the state Legislative Council Adam Somyurek, Kitching entered the Senate.

Somyurek, meanwhile, in mid-2020 was sacked from the party after a branch stacking scandal. Albanese — who was now leader — with Richard Marles and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews organised a federal intervention into the state party, suspending all committees. Preselections would be conducted by the ALP national executive until 2023. All this benefited Albanese, because it reduced Shorten’s power and that of the subfaction of the right that represented his support base. In other words, the internal politics were poisonous, and Albanese and Wong hardly Kitching’s friends, long before the battle that preceded her death.

I first met Kitching in person — having observed her for many years — in a radio studio in 2020, ironically while promoting the first edition of Penny Wong. The force of her personality, the charm offensive, felt like a door opened on a hot oven, or a powerful suction pump being switched on. It was easy to see why some of my colleagues found her hard to resist. And, of course, she pumped me for information on Wong. Rarely have I felt so comprehensively courted.

First in Melbourne and then in Canberra journalistic circles, Kitching wasted no opportunity to develop the kind of symbiotic relationships that rest on exchanges of information. She particularly cultivated foreign policy and defence sources pushing for a tougher line against China. Her goals included Magnitsky laws — the use of targeted sanctions to address human rights abuses.

At the opening of the Parliament in 2019, she was seen to hug politicians from all sides — even One Nation’s Pauline Hanson. After Kitching’s death, several journalists, including Nine newspapers’ Chris Uhlmann and News Corporation’s Andrew Bolt, revealed that she had been a source and a friend. Significantly, they said she had briefed them against her own — including about her concerns that Wong and Albanese would be soft on China.

Kitching became a junior member of the shadow cabinet with the portfolio for government accountability. She was deputy manager of opposition business in the Senate, and as a result a member of the party’s Senate tactics committee.

In 2022, Kitching’s term as a senator was coming to an end. It apparently came as a surprise to her to find that her preselection for a second term might not be secure. Whatever her intelligence in other fields, this was evidence of political naivety. Due to the takeover of the Victorian party after the Somyurek scandal, her fate rested with the ALP national executive. The day before she died, at a meeting that was supposedly held to repair relations between warring factional bosses, Kitching was told she did not have the unanimous support of the Victorian right.

Kitching had never been a friend of Albanese and Wong, but she had by now lost their trust. Correctly, she was suspected of leaking to journalists. She was hardly alone in that, of course, but it went further. A tipping point had been in June 2021, when Liberal defence minister Linda Reynolds told a Senate estimates hearing that she had been told by a senator that Labor planned to use the Brittany Higgins rape allegations against her. Higgins had been one of Reynolds’ staff members. Challenged on this by Wong, Reynolds showed video footage of Kitching approaching her in the Senate chamber and said that this was when the information had been passed to her. She also showed Wong text messages that supported her account of the conversation.

Kitching denied having leaked to Reynolds, but the evidence made her position on the Senate tactics committee untenable, and she was sacked from it.

Those who witnessed the interactions between Wong and Kitching at this time describe them as worse than difficult. Wong was furious. As well, the way Kitching spoke to Wong was “unbelievable … I have never seen anything like it”, one observer told me. It is not hard to imagine Wong’s chilly fury in return.

And then Kitching died. In the 10 days that followed, Albanese and Wong believed they were witnessing the rolling-out of a campaign that had been prepared before her death, designed to safeguard her preselection. They believed Kitching had been preparing to turn the preselection battle into a public scandal about personal behaviour — or at least to threaten to do so.

Shorten was interviewed on radio the morning after Kitching died, and wept. Alongside his genuine grief, there was fury — a paying-out on those who had condemned him for the loss in 2019, whom he also blamed for attacking his friend. Behind the scenes, journalists were backgrounded by Kitching’s friends and allies. When members of the public protested at the politicisation of a personal tragedy, journalists were able truthfully to say that it was Kitching’s family and friends who most wanted the allegations aired.

The secretary of the Health Workers Union, Diana Asmar, Kitching’s friend and factional mate, told the Herald Sun Kitching had been a “nervous wreck” at the sight of Wong. Albanese was attacked in the media for declining to hold an investigation into the bullying allegations, but the truth was that nobody who mattered in the party believed them. Kitching’s position on the tactics committee had become untenable for good reason.

The other focus of the bullying allegation against Wong concerned a display of temper during a 2019 ALP parliamentary meeting that was discussing whether to back a Greens motion expressing support for schoolchildren engaged in climate emergency demonstrations. Kitching was opposed to backing the motion, suggesting it would be a pointless exercise in virtue signalling. Wong shot back at her: “If you had children, you might understand why there is a climate emergency.” It was a cruel thing to say, because Kitching couldn’t have children. Many of those present were uncomfortable. Shortly afterwards, Wong apologised to Kitching for the remark, and understood her apology had been accepted.

In the 11 days between Kitching’s death and her funeral, the “mean girls” narrative dominated the media. Within the party, it seemed that election defeat was about to be snatched from the jaws of victory. It was impossible during this time for Wong and her allies to fully respond to the bullying allegations. Doing so would have meant speaking ill of the recently dead, not to mention exposing the poisonous internal politics within weeks of the election. Some journalists were briefed in an attempt to counter the “mean girls” story, but it proved simply irresistible for most of the media. Eventually, Wong, Gallagher and Keneally issued a statement denying having bullied Kitching. Regarding her cruel remark to Kitching in 2019 about not having children, Wong said she deeply regretted it but hadn’t meant it as a personal attack.

Kitching had a state funeral in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. It was an extraordinary collection of attendees — Dutton, Tony Abbott, Albanese, Andrews, Bolt, Tudge — everyone who mattered in politics. Wong was also there. The turnout was testimony to the force of Kitching’s personality, her charisma and her networking.

As Crikey columnist Guy Rundle remarked in a tour de force series of articles recounting the factional history: “If somehow Morrison can use this to his advantage and win — and it’s one of the few things he’s got at the moment — then what Bill Shorten and his shrunken subfaction are doing now will rank as one of the greatest betrayals of the Australian Labor Party in its 130-year history. In a wilful connivance with News Corp and parts of Nine, a group angry at being squeezed from party power is building the conditions for a surprise defeat as we speak.”

But Kitching’s funeral brought a stop to the narrative. Shorten, speaking in the church, called on the party to unite — to “channel their grief” into winning the federal election. I was told that he had been warned that if he became responsible for another election defeat, his political career would be over. The background briefings stopped, and, as quickly as it had blown up, the story subsided.

As it turned out, the Kitching affair had a negligible effect on the election. On Saturday 21 May, the ALP won 77 seats, securing a majority government.

Wong was in government. The question she had asked herself — was the contribution she was making worth the personal cost? — now had a very different answer.

This is an edited extract from an updated version of the biography Penny Wong: Passion and Principle by Margaret Simons (Black Inc Books).