Words we need to hear
A FORCE OF NATURE DEFENDS HER REPUTATION IN PARLIAMENT AND THIS IS A PROBLEM EXACTLY WHY?
IUSUALLY stay well away from state parliament, but about a year ago I decided to familiarise myself with proceedings on the floor. Could it really be as lowlevel as the snippets on the telly?
I set out from our Salamanca Square newsroom with one of our political reporters, who walked me through security, showed me the Mercury reporting room from where she sometimes filed and led me into the high, narrow press gallery above the House of Assembly.
At first I felt afraid I might get the giggles and/or topple over and land on the Speaker – it reminded me of sitting in that alarming front row of the Theatre Royal stalls – but I soon settled in to watch the sport.
It was a C-grade game on the day with one star performer. Clark MP Cassy O’Connor. I don’t remember the debate, only the cut of her jib. I liked it.
She was unequivocal, concise and articulate and she appeared to be all over the topic at hand. In fact, with her sharp intelligence, confident bearing and imposing stature all on display, she was nothing short of formidable. In a good way.
There was just one problem with that: she inadvertently made some of the people around her look – and maybe privately feel – somehow inadequate. With her gifts and her rigour, she made every other speaker I saw in that session seem pallid in spirit and rote in action (to be fair, not everyone spoke while I was there; some just groaned etc.)
O’Connor seems well and truly able to look after herself and has no need of my support. On the back of last week’s misconstrued attack on her by rookie Labor MP Ella Haddad, though, and the unseemly pileon that followed by Speaker Sue Hickey and the Labor O’Byrne siblings, I want to walk figuratively beside her here today.
Here’s the background: during parliament’s adjournment debate in June, O’Connor mistakenly said the landowner of a large residential development in Sandy Bay was real-estate investor and Buddhist master Xin De Wang instead of Xanadu Developments, of which the director is Hooey Wang.
After apologising to Master Wang in the Mercury, she put her apology on the record when parliament resumed last week. She also took the chance to reject an earlier slur of xenophobia by Haddad.
Instead of letting it all pass for what it was, a regrettable but genuine error, when it came up in parliament, Haddad decided to smear O’Connor again.
And that’s when things headed south in parliament last Tuesday, with Haddad accusing the Greens MP and state party leader of “racism, pure and simple” over the identity mix-up.
On Thursday at 6.06pm, O’Connor rose to defend herself against “a most terrible slur”, demanding an apology from Haddad, whom she said was “consciously or unconsciously running Chinese Communist Party talking points”.
By that she was suggesting the CCP exploited Australians’ abhorrence of being labelled racist, relying on the sort of epithets Haddad had used against her to shut down commentary about CCP influence in Australia.
Haddad, whether consciously or unconsciously, was the one conflating the regime with the Chinese people and running a weaponised narrative, she said.
It was around this point that O’Connor was clumsily shut down by Speaker Sue Hickey, who was feeling, she said, “personally extremely uncomfortable”. Hickey accused O’Connor of personally attacking Haddad, somehow jeopardising a safe workplace, describing her behaviour as disgraceful, threatening and unparliamentary, the latter apparently in relation to saying “How dare you?” in a loud voice.
(The Speaker later apologised for inappropriately intervening in the debate and “for what Ms O’Connor perceives as bias”).
It gets worse. Deputy Opposition Leader Michelle O’Byrne stood up and rather like a school prefect urged Madam Speaker to assert her rights in the chair “to be protected from that kind of attack”, saying O’Connor had “screamed” at the Speaker.
Her MP brother David O’Byrne took up that line at a press conference the following morning. Responding to a series of questions by journalist Emily Baker, O’Byrne described an “outrageous outburst”. O’Connor had “lost control”. “She was yelling and ranting and screaming.” And “raving”. And “threatening” other members. And “storming out and throwing paper around”.
Appropriate action needed to be taken, he said.
Yes, you are right, David O’Byrne. I’m taking it now by calling out everyone who has smeared Cassy O’Connor over this matter or insinuated she was some sort of hysterical out-of-control woman because she raised her voice to defend her reputation.
I have pored over the Hansard transcripts, I have listened to your exchange with Emily a couple of times, and I’ve watched the video of O’Connor’s exchange with the Speaker and your sister’s righteous little moment afterwards.
I am also open to learning more about the truth of the CCP’s systematic approach to influence and infiltration in Australian institutions.
It’s a difficult conversation, for sure, but it is a necessary one. Cassy O’Connor has the requisite courage to lead it.
Let her speak. Hear her roar.
amanda.ducker@news.com.au