NZ-born senator will be missed
Scott Ludlam’s resignation has created a big knowledge gap in Australian politics, says Bridie Jabour.
Brought to politics by his passionate opposition to nuclear power and weapons, Scott Ludlam became the millenial-ish voice in Australia’s parliament, despite being well into his 40s.
After narrowly avoiding losing his seat in 2013 (instead facing a byelection), he was brought down by his own administrative failure – not checking that he had in fact renounced his New Zealand citizenship.
Ludlam spent his nine years in parliament following the model of ‘‘activist legislator’’. He won his seat in 2008, and roared into the broader public consciousness in 2014 with a withering invitation for then prime minister Tony Abbott to visit the state he was representing.
His speech, to a mostly empty Senate chamber during the last sitting before the byelection, racked up almost one million views on YouTube alone – an impressive feat for a senator of whom former Greens leader Christine Milne reportedly once asked: ‘‘Does this guy ever say anything?’’
Born in 1970, Ludlam was raised by hippy-adjacent parents, travelling across Asia and Europe, and going to school in apartheid South Africa, before settling in Western Australia and becoming a citizen a few years later, when he was a teenager.
He was a quintessential nerd – Ludlam once said he had ‘‘a lot of lost Dungeons and Dragons years’’ instead of lost party years.
If he is not the only Australian politician to properly understand metadata, cybersecurity and the internet, he is certainly the one who understands it best. He has fought, at times unsuccessfully, against the slow erosion of civil liberties through data retention laws, and campaigned on the importance of net neutrality.
Ludlam thanked Abbott for sending him the ‘‘geeks and coders, network engineers and gamers who would never have voted Green in a million years, without the blundering and technologically illiterate assistance of your leadership team’’.
For a man who claims to be averse to personality politics, he has provided enough lol-worthy quips and viral videos to build a significant online following.
‘‘Next. Doesn’t your editor want to know about our stance on nuclear weapons abolition?’’ he told GQ magazine when asked about his hair, which has its own Twitter account .
A video congratulating environment minister Greg Hunt on winning best minister of the year – ‘‘an award it sounds like his mum made up’’ – was shared tens of thousands of times.
His response to conservative commentator Chris Kenny that ‘‘nobody watches’’ his show was retweeted hundreds of times.
Ludlam’s activism led to a friendship with Julian Assange, which has come under scrutiny. He said last year he was ‘‘worried’’ about Assange, and when he was interviewed in 2016 he had a signed photo with him in his office: ‘‘Scott – thank you for your courage, perseverance and generosity in my long struggle for justice, big and small. As an Australian I am proud of you! Much love, Julian A.’’
Assange tweeted his support for Ludlam yesterday from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, arguing that Ludlam should have fought to remain a senator.
Reflecting on his crowd-pleasing internet ways and tendency to do magazine interviews while saying he shunned personality politics, Ludlam admitted there could be an element of hypocrisy.
‘‘Maybe I’m just being a massive hypocrite cultivating some kind of anti-brand. If you want to call me out on that, that’s fine. If you’re going to do a profile in a lifestyle magazine, then you deserve to be asked about that stuff, so I was probably being a little petulant in pushing back in the way that I did,’’ he said.
‘‘But also I feel as though that’s the least interesting part of what we’re doing. It really is. There’s much more interesting stuff to talk about than the s... I put in my hair. Seriously, there is.’’
If Ludlam has built an ‘‘antibrand’’, then one of the cornerstones is his ‘‘realness’’ – for want of a less cringeworthy expression. People think they know what Ludlam really believes and that he is not another career politician.
Ludlam could have fought dismissal from parliament over his dual citizenship, and could have won on the grounds that he thought he had taken ‘‘reasonable steps’’ to renounce his New Zealand citizenship.
But he believes the Greens are there ‘‘to demonstrate, hopefully, that there is a different way of doing politics’’.
‘‘You can’t go out and say, ‘We are the ones with integrity’ – you just have to damn well show it, and people will form their own judgments over whether they believe it or not’’.
Integrity was the word used by many in reference to Ludlam’s decision to resign rather than fight what he described as a section of the Australian constitution that is ‘‘crystal clear and it has been tested before by others’’.
‘‘It is not something that I particularly want to put myself, my staff or my party through,’’ he said. ‘‘This is probably a cleaner way to just make a break.’’
Former Greens leader Christine Milne said she would not hesitate in encouraging him to run for the Senate again.
‘‘I’d love Scott to consider having a longer career in the Senate, but it’s obviously something he will consider in time. That will be a choice in the future,’’ she said. ‘‘For now, I want to say how terrific it was to work with him. When leader, he was such a calm, committed, thoroughly good person.’’
Milne also emphasised Ludlam’s credentials when it comes to internet privacy and surveillance, voicing concern that his departure would leave a void in internet literacy in parliament.
‘‘His oversight, particularly on issues confronting technology and privacy, has demonstrated a level of insight way above that of almost everyone in parliament,’’ she said.
‘‘Everyone will remember the wonderful speech he made before Tony Abbott visited Western Australia – it really resonated with the community because it expressed how people felt at the time about the meanness of sprit Tony Abbott was exhibiting.’’
There is certainly an appetite within the Greens, and even parts of the broader community, for Ludlam to stay in the Senate, but it may prove too difficult to convince the most important person in the decision making.
‘‘I don’t want to do this job until I’m properly old,’’ Ludlam has said. ‘‘I don’t want to hang on to it for too long. I want to write. And I want to draw. And I want to design stuff.’’