This was published 3 months ago
Opinion
The most popular politicians in Australia are all outspoken women. Come again?
Michelle Griffin
Federal Bureau ChiefWe thought we knew what it took to be a popular politician. He’s a blokey sort in his middle years from a safe seat on the eastern seaboard who loves his sport – someone you could have a beer with.
But the most popular politicians last year, according to the results of our Resolve Political Monitor survey in early December, have upended that trope. They’re not that blokey – they are not even blokes.
Not that blokey: Penny Wong, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Jacqui Lambie.Credit: Dionne Gain
The top three most popular politicians in Australia are, in order: an Asian-Australian, openly gay foreign minister who fiercely guards her personal life; a pugilistic Tasmanian crossbench senator and army veteran open about the struggles she faced as a single mother; and a conservative Indigenous senator from the Northern Territory who talks about domestic violence’s toll on her family.
Step up, Labor’s Penny Wong (14 per cent net positive likeability), crossbencher Jacqui Lambie (10 per cent) and the Coalition’s Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (6 per cent).
These three senators don’t agree on anything much politically, and they wield power in very different ways. If they have anything in common, it is this: they’ve all earned reputations as tough operators who can talk directly without sounding like they’re reciting the talking points.
This defies the commonplace belief that Australians don’t like outspoken women. Unpopular female politicians too often cite this as a reason for any backlash. But 10 years after Julia Gillard said misogyny “doesn’t explain everything, it doesn’t explain nothing”, three women have shown you can venture firm opinions on heated topics without losing paint.
This does not mean nobody hates them. Voters in the final Resolve Political Monitor poll of the year were shown a list of 40 politicians and asked if they had a positive, neutral or negative view of each of them, generating a net likeability rating by subtracting the negative number from the positive one.
To ride out a year as poisonous as 2023 without becoming demonised suggests that being clear about what you think counts for a lot more than dancing around a subject trying not to offend.
But popularity is hard to bank. You have to keep at it.
Price is the new face on the block, a breakout star of 2023 who deployed her natural charisma in the fight to defeat the Voice. As an Indigenous woman, she thrilled some of her fan base by saying what they did not dare, telling the National Press Club there was “no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation”.
But her net likeability rating of six suggests she’s earned grudging respect beyond conservative circles, even from those who disagreed with her. Why? She never talks like she’s reading from prepared notes. She never seems thrown or defensive. She has the best eye-roll in the business.
The next year will test her political skills. In opposing the Voice, a proposal a majority of Australians rejected, she was kicking with the wind. Her plans to focus next, Republican style, on contesting trans rights takes her into a fiercely contested corner of the culture wars, where other conservatives have spent their capital for little gain.
Her appearance at the Press Club demonstrated she could hold her own when fielding tough questions. So, it’s a shame she has been so media-shy, preferring to talk to outlets already onboard with her agenda, such as Sky News’ evening shows. In 2023, she rejected 52 interview requests from the ABC. We didn’t keep count, but we certainly kept trying.
Lambie’s enduring popularity comes off a long run from a low base. People forget that when she began her career in 2014 under Clive Palmer’s thumb, she was mocked as a burqa-banning Pauline Hanson wannabe.
But she learnt on the job, quit the party, got herself some new advice and, certainly post her reelection in 2019, evolved into a genuine independent, a shrewd crossbench negotiator who relishes the freedom to speak her mind.
Wong, currently Australia’s most popular politician, was also built over several years as one of Labor’s best communicators, but her standing will surely be tested this year.
Foreign affairs ministers are rarely at the front line of the contentious debates voters care about, but this time, it’s different. With the community and even her party unable to find common ground on how Australia should respond to the Israel-Hamas War, every syllable she utters can be interpreted as a slight, or worse, a policy shift.
Her call for “restraint” following the October 7 attacks angered Jewish-Australians and her support for “humanitarian pause” disappointed pro-Palestinian Australians. Her insistence just before Christmas that Australia’s vote at the UN General Assembly for an “immediate ceasefire” was actually a call for a pause convinced and appeased nobody.
Wong’s upcoming trip to the Middle East will set the tone for her year ahead. With every word, gesture and look dissected, it will need all her authority, gravitas and cool to hold the line.
Last year was one of the most divisive in memory. That won’t shift in 2024. In the middle of all the white noise, enduring popularity will be earned by convincing people you know what you stand for, even if they hate it.
Michelle Griffin is the federal bureau chief.
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