Maiden Maxine



It's old news now, of course, but Maxine McKew's maiden speech on Valentine's Day was cool. She acknowledged the man from whom her electorate took its name, 'the first of tens of thousands of Aboriginals who have attempted or been forced to straddle both worlds, only to end up lost', and asked us to consider what he was trying to do. She quoted Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail: 'We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.' She paid tribute to John Howard for his extraordinary commitment to public life and his 33 years of service in the federal parliament. She spoke with pride of the diversity of her electorate, with affection and a hint of disaffection for her Catholic heritage, with hope about 'the coming generation', with gratitude of those who helped her into parliament; she identified as coming from a family of builders and as indebted to the work of women educators, legislators and activists; she called her partner 'the reason for everything'. She called for a new approach to nation-building, and for renewed attention to the continuing disadvantage of women. And she said this:
What we need is a new imagining, a revived sense of what is possible. ...

What people want now, I think, is an intelligent national conversation. The prevailing orthodoxy, to this point, has been that, because we are enjoying such bounty, we are indifferent, to the point of being somnolent, about the bigger societal questions. Well, I happen to think that 2007 demolished that idea. Most of the commentators missed the mood shift. But it is there. It is real. All sorts of people know that politics and policymaking matter. Our national spirit matters. The lesson for me from the past year is that there is a great reservoir of goodwill that lies untapped beneath the surface of our national life, and smart governments will find ways to liberate and direct it. ...


Taken together with Kevin Rudd's unashamed reference in the Apology to 300 years of post-Reformation theological debate, this may mean our politicians are now able to acknowledge extracurricular interests beyond cricket, football and Anzac Day.

Posted: Mon - February 18, 2008 at 07:39 PM           |

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