For those of us not on the political frontlines, an election is an opportunity to reflect on the future of the country and on the practice of its politics. This year, for some of us, that reflection has been deepened by the recent death of Petro Georgiou AO, the former federal Liberal MP for Kooyong.
It is just over a decade since we lost Petro’s former boss and great friend, Malcolm Fraser. Petro’s account of the essence of Fraser’s stance in public life – a ‘fusion of political strength, compassion and social conscience’ – applies equally well to Petro.
I worked for Petro during his final years in Parliament. He was strategic, incisive and quickly across any brief. His presence would have improved any cabinet lucky enough to have had him.
Working for Petro was like an advanced degree in politics and government, with the curriculum ranging from policy advice to political strategy and tactics to speechwriting (as he often said, ‘Speeches aren’t written, they’re rewritten’).
Petro’s fearsome reputation had preceded him. It was either exaggerated or he had mellowed by the time I came to work for him. Either way, I can report that he would endure occasional bursts of idiocy from your correspondent with the patience of Job. The admonitions were mild, and the flashes of wit – cutting but never cruel – not long in coming.
One of the first things Petro asked me to work on was a speech for Parliament on the Darfur conflict (much of which would, tragically, still be relevant almost two decades later). It was an indication of the man’s humanitarian nature that he was concerned about such a conflict, distant though it was.
Petro’s decades in public life changed Australia for the better, through reforms successfully proposed and implemented and through the witness he gave to our shared humanity with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
“In life there are many things that you'd like to walk past and not notice. But sometimes you do notice—and when you notice, you have to do something.”
He was instrumental to the adoption and implementation of multicultural policy under Prime Minister Fraser, for whom Petro worked as senior adviser. While the ‘White Australia’ policy had been finally buried by the Whitlam government, the challenges of building a non-discriminatory immigration policy and social cohesion for a more diverse society were immense. While 86 per cent of Australia’s migrant intake in the 1960s came from Europe and less than 5 per cent from Asia, by 1980 the Asian component had reached 30 per cent. The Fraser government re-established the Department of Immigration, adding ‘and Ethnic Affairs’ to provide ongoing support to diverse communities. Broader reforms followed, including the creation of SBS and the establishment of a dedicated Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs, with Petro as inaugural director.
Multicultural policy was never just about institutions and numbers. At its core, it removed the demand for assimilation and enabled (in Petro’s words) ‘a society where, within a framework of key shared values, people had the opportunity to choose who they wanted to be … [T]he key premise was that confecting or promoting a specific national identity was beyond the state’s proper duties and competence. Rather, its role was to foster the development of an environment in which people have a reasonable opportunity to define who they are and wish to be.’
Multiculturalism has never been universally popular. There have, for example, been periodic calls to restrict Asian or Muslim immigration. In Parliament and following his retirement, Petro continued to advocate for non-discriminatory immigration and inclusive citizenship. From the perspective of today’s Australia – one of the world’s most diverse societies – the logic of multiculturalism has never been more compelling. It is also broadly recognised as a core national asset for prospering in a dynamic region and a multipolar world. None of this was inevitable. When it comes to today’s diverse, inclusive society and the policies that enabled it, we can say of Petro – as was said of Christopher Wren: ‘If you seek his monument, look around you.’
The question of how to respond to refugees and asylum seekers has challenged Australia for decades. The response of the Fraser government to the fall of Saigon and the exodus of asylum seekers from Indochina was to take in boat arrivals, adopt Australia’s first refugee policy, and lead within the international resettlement effort, enabling around 130,000 Indochinese to settle in Australia.
Later governments introduced harsher measures, including the mandatory detention of asylum seekers under the Keating government and John Howard’s ‘Pacific Solution’. In the 2000s, Petro worked with a group of Liberal parliamentary colleagues (Judith Troeth, Judi Moylan, Russell Broadbent and Bruce Baird) to roll back this regime’s most harmful elements. Their drafting of private members’ bills created leverage for negotiations with the Howard government. These resulted in the release of families with children from detention, new investigative powers for the Ombudsman and, ultimately, some 80 per cent of the people concerned gaining permanent protection.
In 2006, Petro and colleagues went further, crossing the floor to vote against Howard’s bill to excise the Australian mainland and Tasmania from the ambit of the Migration Act. The purpose of this bill was to deny asylum seekers reaching the mainland consideration and protection in Australia. They would instead be sent to Nauru for potentially indefinite detention. The government withdrew the bill after Senator Troeth made clear she would oppose it in the upper chamber. ‘The bill did not pass,’ Petro observed with quiet satisfaction on his return to Melbourne. These were important wins, but they did not overturn what remained a punitive asylum policy focused on deterrence. As Petro noted in a 2010 speech: ‘The bottom line…, when one stood back and looked at the total impact of all these efforts, was limited. The thrust of the anti-refugee policy was not blunted.’
Although primarily known for immigration and asylum, Petro’s work impacted a broader range of policy areas, including human rights and government oversight and integrity. Climate change is another example. Between 2006 and 2007, Petro chaired a House of Representatives committee on science and innovation inquiry into carbon capture and storage.
The title of the eventual report – ‘Between a rock and a hard place’ – was also an apt description of the position of the committee’s chairman, caught as he was between the need to take climate change seriously and the fixation of other Coalition committee members on rejecting climate science. Nevertheless, Petro landed a serious and reality-based majority report – with his foreword affirming that ‘[t]here is now compelling evidence that human activity is changing the global climate’ – that helped lay the groundwork for stronger climate policy. In parallel, most of the other Coalition members beclowned themselves with a dissenting report expressing disbelief that ‘the evidence unequivocally supports the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming’. Their literally otherworldly intervention (‘Global warming observed on other planets,’ it trumpeted) presaged the ‘climate wars’ that have done so much damage.
In his valedictory to Parliament, Petro recalled telling the late Michael Gordon: ‘“In life there are many things that you'd like to walk past and not notice. Lots. But sometimes you do notice and when you notice, you have to do something”. Well I have noticed some things, and I have tried not to walk past.’ Some found it counterintuitive that this particular Good Samaritan was a forthright, Liberal political operative. His role in the dismissal of the Whitlam government would not have endeared him to left-wingers of a certain generation, although Gough himself came to admire him (as Petro’s son Dino recounted in his moving eulogy).
Petro’s example shows us that integrity and principle can go hand in hand with tough, partisan politics. His contributions to public policy came within the context of a career mostly spent working for the Liberal Party. As senior adviser and chief of staff to federal leaders, state party director and federal MP, he fought the fight for his party hard and successfully. In Victoria, his contributions to the election of both the Kennett and the Baillieu governments cannot be overstated.
In Australia, governments will continue to be dominated by established political parties for the foreseeable future. The difficult work of squaring principle and party will continue. Petro’s vision of politics as a tough battle between opponents rather than enemies, with the demonisation of the vulnerable off-limits, is still the right one.
In partisan politics, the opportunity to serve the public good comes from success in internal party politics and in engagement with voters. Petro excelled at both. The final general election he contested, following the crushing defeat of a preselection challenge, was in 2007 when the Howard government was turfed from office. In the face of a national two-party preferred swing against the Coalition of 5.4 per cent, the swing against Petro was basically zero (0.05 per cent to be precise). His first preference tally actually went up.
I spent that election day in the 4WD with him, going from polling booth to polling booth. His profound connection with his constituents was plain to see. He shared and represented their views, never took them for granted, and never treated Kooyong like a safe seat.
Petro Georgiou was a man for others, practising politics as a vocation of service. It was a vocation he pursued with integrity, wisdom and humour. In my mind’s eye, I can see him receiving visitors in the federal parliament, or heading off to vote in a division; surrounded by books and speech drafts in his office on Burke Road; and holding court over lunch at a certain Chinese restaurant.
He leaves a legacy, an example, and many who will miss him dearly. As the Greeks say, aionia i mnimi – ‘memory eternal’.
Stephen Minas was a staffer for the late Petro Georgiou AO.