IT’S THE CYCLE OF LIFE
Federal Minister Karen Andrews has never taken the easy road – first as a mechanical engineer, then entering the world of politics while raising a family. But just like in her first career love, she’s found a way to make it work
I am a mechanical engineer and I will always be one no matter what else I do
IT all started with a washing machine.
The year was 1968, a year before man would walk on the moon and a young girl sat on the floor of the laundry in her family home transfixed by the machine.
The eight-year-old focused intently on the movements, fascinated by what made it work.
That child grew up to become an engineer and is today best-known as the federal Science Minister.
This is the origin story of McPherson MP Karen Andrews.
Ms Andrews was first elected to federal parliament in 2010.
Her entrance to political life became national news when she trounced her nowcolleague, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, for Liberal Party preselection in the southern Gold Coast seat.
But the story of Karen Andrews doesn’t start there – it goes all the way back to that washing machine in Townsville.
“When I was about eight years old, I liked to look at the washing machine. It had a central agitator and it went exactly the same distance clockwise as it did anticlockwise and I was fascinated in trying to work out how it did that,” she said, speaking to the Bulletin in her Varsity Lakes electoral office.
“That was probably my first real interest in what turned into mechanical engineering.
“I am a mechanical engineer and I will always be one no matter what else I do. It is a part of who I am, it is part of my life and I am very proud of being an engineer.”
Ms Andrews was born in Brisbane in 1960 and grew up in Townsville.
Excelling in science and math as a student, she set her sights high but her school had other ideas.
“When I got to Year 12 there was me and two boys. They were encouraged to do engineering while I was told to become a math teacher,” she said.
“But we all did it and by the end I knew more about what an engineer did than the boys because I had to go and find out.
“I think what it demonstrated to me, even now, is that there are problems attracting girls to do math and science in school and go into engineering.
“If we can only show girls and boys what engineering is all about they may have a greater interest.
“It is not the ideal career path for everyone, but there is a lot we need to do to make sure we are getting the right messages through to school kids about what the jobs of the future are like.
“Engineering is a job which will continue. It will change, the skills are different now from what they were 30 years ago.
“I am sure there are lots of girls out there that if they only knew what engineering was all about they’d realise ‘that’s for me’.”
Ms Andrews went on to study at the Queensland University of Technology which she found “quite different” from school and admits she “wasn’t a good candidate” for a gap year.
But before graduating in 1983, the budding engineer said she learnt something which has remained a valuable lesson through her different careers.
“You have to be unstoppable. If plan A doesn’t work, you have to go to what the next options were,” she said.
“It’s the innovation story. The first time may not be successful but what you learn from that can be used to modify things to make the second, third and fourth attempts work.
“I have been very resilient because of a lot of that training.
“I aim to get it right the first time but I also am willing to accept I may not get it right the first time but I will try subsequently.
“That’s what life is about. Why should politics be any different?”
After university Ms Andrews went to work for the Queensland Electricity Generating Board where she took up postings at various stations, rotating in and out every six months.
The scarcity of women working in the field at the time came with some advantages – she was housed alone rather than having to share with groups of male workers.
“They had never had a woman in the scheme before and this was an issue with what to do with a woman in shared accommodation,” she said.
“The upshot was I had a house to myself which worked very nicely but what it showed was that they had not had to deal with this social issue before but they were good about it.”
By the late 1980s the future MP was living in Victoria and working in a supervisory role in the oil industry.
Becoming interested in workplace conditions, Ms Andrews studied a graduate diploma in industrial relations.
It was in her new career direction that she met her future husband, Bond University academic Chris in the early 1990s.
“At the time I was running an information session on enterprise bargaining and needed someone to help me run the course so I went to the organisation Chris worked for and he was the one who came,” she said.
“I walked in to the office he worked in and didn’t know anyone but he was standing at reception with his boss and I looked at Chris and thought ‘if I get married I hope it will be someone like you’. I didn’t think it would be him.
“I invited him for coffee after we finished the seminar and his view on it was how disappointing it was that he’d flown in early for it and that all he was getting was coffee.
“Now he knows me knows that coffee is pretty much all I drink.”
The marriage went on to produce three daughters, Emma, Jane and Kate.
Emma is completing a masters degree in clinical psychology, Jane studies international relations and
Kate is still at school but hopes to become a paramedic.
It was during the early 1990s that Ms Andrews became interested in politics after a conversation with a colleague.
She went on to join the Liberal Party but parked her political ambitions while Chris continued his studies and they started a family together. Ultimately she chose to run for parliament in 2010.
However, Ms Andrews admits the experience of becoming a political identity had a larger impact on her family than she realised.
“I didn’t realise the impact until I took the signage off the car and my daughters said it was nice that people weren’t looking at us when we are at the traffic lights,” she said.
“I thought, here I was focused on the impact on them at school that I didn’t even think about those little things.
“Sometimes it is so hard to manage, like when the girls have been sick and I haven’t been able to be there or if something has happened that I can’t give them a big hug and say it’s okay.
“They hear you on the other end of the phone and that is better than nothing but it is not the same.
“I am very lucky that I have a strong support group. Chris is fantastic, my mother has been brilliant with the girls and helping out at short notice and my sister now lives on the Gold Coast. She’s terrific.”
During her decade in federal politics Ms Andrews spent the first three years in Opposition before the Abbott Government was elected in September 2013.
In 2014 she was appointed Assistant Minister for Science, a position she retained after Tony Abbott was replaced as Prime Minister by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015.
She admits the third week of August in 2018, when Mr Turnbull’s prime ministership was destroyed in a party room coup, was the most difficult of her career.
“A leadership spill is horrendous, you are being lobbied left, right and centre but when you go in to vote for the leader you know you are voting for someone to lose their job and potentially be absolutely crushed by that outcome,” she said.
“They are terrible times because there is the really personal implication that you know this individual and know you are making a decision which will affect so many people. It is very difficult and no matter who you vote for, not everyone will think it’s a good idea.”