PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

AND

STATE LIBRARY OF WESTERN

Transcript of an interview with

Hon. Wendy Duncan

b. 1954 -

STATE LIBRARY OF - ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION DATE OF INTERVIEW: 2017-2019 INTERVIEWER: ANNE YARDLEY TRANSCRIBER: HANSARDS – PARLIAMENT OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. DURATION: 16 hours REFERENCE NUMBER: OH4338 COPYRIGHT: Parliament of Western Australia and the State Library of Western Australia.

NOTE TO READER

Readers of this oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a verbatim transcript of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The Parliament and the State Library are not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for the views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.

Bold type face indicates a difference between transcript and recording, as a result of corrections made to the transcript only, usually at the request of the person interviewed.

FULL CAPITALS in the text indicate a word or words emphasised by the person interviewed.

Square brackets [ ] are used for insertions not in the original tape.

DUNCAN INTERVIEW

CONTENTS

Introduction 1 - 2

Interview - 1 3 - 21 Family history. Menangina Station. Aboriginal playmates and workers. Childhood memories and activities. Traditional Aboriginal lifestyle. Farm work when child. Schooling by mother, school of the air . Christmas play. Family interest in politics. Non-judgemental attitude. Interaction with Aboriginals. Father’s knowledge of Aboriginal language and customs. Skills and diets of Aboriginals. Boarding school. Religion. Rotary exchange to South Africa. Shock of apartheid. Appreciation of Australian democracy. Involvement in Evangelical group. Rock climbing in South Africa. Travels in Africa. Decision to enrol in political studies on return to Australia. Arts degree history and political science, anthropology. Gough Whitlam free education opportunity for women. Post-graduate course Canberra. First job National Farmers Federation. Australian Woolgrowers and Graziers Council. David Trebeck’s Executive Assistant. Meeting procedure skills.

Interview - 2 22 - 38 Study at Canberra College Advanced Education. Backpacking in Europe. Study tour China. MBA studies. Impact economic rationalism. Impact of FBT. Outdoor activities. Work with solicitors Kalgoorlie. Engagement, marriage. Return to Menangina. Isolation, fear of Aboriginals. Post-natal depression. Purchase of Esperance farm. Work law firm. Community activities. Four children. Driving forces. Family political background. Pub nights to combat isolation. Lack of understanding of regions. Anti-Labor sentiment. Wool price plummets. Killing sheep. Becoming unwell. Planting Tasmanian blue gums. Husband regional manager Integrated Tree Cropping.

Interview - 3 39 - 58 Voting history. Environmental issues. Recherche Advisory Group. Work with Shire of Esperance, Industrial Park, foreshore planning. Personal financial difficulties. EO Esperance Wool Exporters. Soccer club. Finance Officer aged care facility. Work with Ross Ainsworth MP. Job sharing. Electorate issues. Lack of understanding regional Australia. Poor infrastructure/services in regions. Joining National Party 2001. Party finances. Esperance Branch National Party. State presidency. . Book “Blood Nose Politics”. Impact One Nation. Creating centre-right party. Recognition Aboriginal people. Support of Alan Holmes. Monty House’s Rural Leadership Program. Ability to chair meetings. State Conferences debates. Young Nationals. Leadership style. Party finances. Corporate support. Len Buckeridge.

Interview - 4 59 - 76 i

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Hendy Cowan leadership. Hilda Turnbull member Collie. Nationals philosophy. Relationship with Chinese. Achievements of Hendy Cowan and Monty House. Telecentres. Tensions between Liberals and Nationals. Debate over amalgamation v independence. Impact of One Nation, gun laws. Farmers’ generational changes. Disarray in party. Loss of members to One Nation. 500 Club fund raising. . Influence of Doug Cunningham. Darren Moir President Young Nats. One vote one value legislation. Decision to be stand-alone independent party and reaction. Extensive travel attending meetings, talking to members. Increase in membership. Balance of power ad. Building communities focus. Commitment to due process in party. Redistribution of seats. Submission to Electoral Commission on boundaries. Changes in political advertising.

Interview - 5 77 - 93

Joined Nationals 2001. Murray Criddle. Vote transfer from lower to upper house. Member of executive and State President. Contest for seat of Roe. Jane Coole. Standing for Agricultural Region. Advice from Mick Cotter. Pre-selection second after Murray Criddle. Importance of upper house and preference negotiation. Dr Graham Jacobs’ campaign. Driving 1,300 kms distributing flyers. Grant Woodhams. Changes to campaigning. Decision not to preference One Nation. Labor preferences to Nationals. Preferences to Greens in metropolitan areas. 2007 stood for Senate. President Royal Flying Doctor Service won Federal seat of O’Connor 2010. Nationals’ Strategic Plan. Support for Nationals. Strong team with Brendon Grylls. Max Trenorden’s resignation. Terry Waldron deputy leader. Resolution that Nationals would be independent stand-alone party. Focus on policy development. Brendon Grylls’ announcement of 25% of Royalties for Regions.

Interview - 6 94 - 107

48-11 Strategy, message on balance of power. Marketing strategy. Lack of government expenditure on regions. Development of Royalties for Regions. Lack of support from Labor and Liberals. Involvement of political analysts, Professor Dean Jaensch. Meetings with David Black, Harry Phillips, Peter van Onselen, Peter Kennedy. Campaign focus on voting for Legislative Council. Winning balance of power in both houses. Labor and Liberal difficulties. Winning Mining and Pastoral seat. Colin Holt won South West Region. Seats won in lower and upper houses.

Interview - 7 108 - 131 Came into Parliament 2008 as upper house member Agricultural Region. Retirement of Murray Criddle. Relationship between Max Trenorden and Brendon Grylls. Stumpy’s agreement. Challenges of Agricultural Region. Office Esperance. Parliamentary induction process. Helen Morton mentor. Respect for Giz Watson. Office space in Parliament House. Murray Criddle Minister for Transport achievements. Committee work. Winning Mining and Pastoral Region. Day light saving debate. Health services in regions. Negotiations with Labor and Liberal Parties on Royalties for Regions. Involvement of ii

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Karlene Maywald from South Australia. Choosing between Liberal and Labor. Doug Cunningham, Brendon Grylls’ chief of staff. Conflict with Liberals on claiming credit for projects. background and working relationship. Speaking in parliament, 1st and 2nd maiden speeches. Colin Holt elected State President. Role of . Vince Catania defection to Nationals.

Interview - 8 132 - 154 Vince Catania move to Nationals, campaigning skills. Royalties for Regions impact on Esperance. Alannah MacTiernan. Lead clean up Esperance. Esperance water. Lack of unskilled labour, potential to give work to Timorese. Relationship with police union. Lack of regional accommodation for public servants. Power sharing arrangement with Barnett government. Legislation for CHOGM conference. Royalties for Regions bill debate in Legislative Council. Basis of 25% of royalties allocated for Regions. Scepticism prior to success of bill. Regional strategic plans. Impact on indigenous people. Influence of Andrew Forrest. Ord Stage 2. Support for Indigenous people to enter workforce. Brendon Grylls’ negotiations with Indigenous communities. Importance of meeting with Aboriginal elders. Funding for Royal Flying Doctor Service, purchase of jet.

Interview - 9 155 - 176 BHP-Nickel West Ravensthorpe nickel mine closure 2009. Government investment in mine. Impact of closure. Regional attitudes to day light saving. Day light saving trial, referendum 2009. Introduction of Country Age Pension Fuel Card and taxi fares. Extension of card to other groups, negotiating with Federal government. Predation by wild dogs in pastoral industry. Replacement of doggers by aerial baiting. Rangelands reform program. Pastoralists and Graziers Association lack of support. Sandalwood industry sustainability. Mt Romance. Illegal activities. Death threats. Amendments to Biodiversity Conservation Act. Reorganising sandalwood contracts, indigenous involvement. Agreement between Federal and State Governments on tracking system. Ian Keeley Dept of Conservation and Land Management Order of Australia. Dignitary protection. Local Government amalgamations. Max Trenorden regional councils bill. Dilemma of representing vast areas. Reasons for objection to extension of trading hours. Regulations extended trading hours in tourist and mining areas.

Interview - 10 177 - 193 Review of grain transport networks. Concern over closure of railway lines in Wheatbelt. Royalties for Regions funds upgraded wheatbelt roads. Opposition to Brendon Grylls within Nationals, subsequent move to Pilbara. Conflict over multi-peril crop insurance. Standing for Kalgoorlie seat. Infrastructure issues in electorate. Differences in campaigning for lower house seat versus upper house seat. Tony Crook federal member. Liberals preselection of Rick Wilson. Impact of workload on Brendon Grylls. Reactions to accusations of pork- barrelling. Liberal minister for agriculture in Barnett government. Conflict with Liberals over credit for regional projects. Reasons for not standing against Graham Jacobs. Campaigning in Kalgoorlie, involvement of . Impact on health. Manning polling booths.

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Issue of doctor shortage and speedway drag strip. Winning seat with Labor party preferences 2013 election. Melissa Price’s daughter’s death, winning seat of Durack. Cabinet positions after election. Impact of advertisement in Kalgoorlie Miner. Deputy Speaker position. Physical separation from colleagues in Parliament.

Interview - 11 194 - 211 Concern about Brendon Grylls’ wellbeing following 2013 election. Number of projects and amount funding allocated under Royalties for Regions. Looming GST issue. Brendon Grylls’ decision to leave ministry. Terry Redman Leader. Mia Davies Minister for Water. Experiences in being a member of both houses. Competition between staff of houses. Level of formality and question time in each house. Dorothy Dixers. Legislation committee workload and issues. Shelving of legislation. Scrutiny of legislation in Council. Council adjournment debate. Bringing electoral issues and grievances forward in Council and Assembly. Petition processes in each house. Legislative Council inquiries. Importance of Legislative Council. Involvement in Environment and Public Affairs committee. Paper on shield laws for journalists. Separation of powers. Dependence on expertise of parliamentary staff. Differences in exercise of balance of power. Review of standing orders. Apolitical nature of Deputy Speaker. Qualities of a good Speaker. Support of Hansard and media staff. Relationship with Whips. Role of Whip.

Interview - 12 212 - 233 Withdrawal of support for by WA Nationals. Ms Duncan’s written statement on matter. Overseas trips. Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Exchange with Canadian provinces and MPs. Canadian parliamentary processes, strategies relating to First Nation people. Visit of First nation female MP to WA. Need for professional development for MPs. Presiding Officers and Clerks Conference Samoa. Goldfields Arts Centre. Diggers and Dealers event Kalgoorlie. Student accommodation for WA School of Mines. Focus on international students. Mental health issues, need for step-up, step- down facility in Kalgoorlie. Problems in Laverton, successful implementation of community safety plan. Federal government decision to cease support for some remote communities. Relationship with Daisy Ward Warakurna community. Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal Constitutional Recognition, resulting recognition of Aboriginal people in Constitution. Unsuccessful Bill relating to statute of limitations for abused children.

Interview - 13 234 - 256 Tuck Waldron standing down. Overlooked for ministerial position 2014. Accusation of not being a team player. Ministerial positions filled by people from wheatbelt and south west. Loss of Pilbara, Kalgoorlie, Mining and Pastoral seats. Personality clashes. Electoral staff, Young, Sarah Downe Esperance. Office manager Frances Archer working remotely from Broome. Dorothy Henderson and Margie Thomas-Close Esperance, Mandy Reidy, Beth Richardson Kalgoorlie. Assisting young people in difficulty. Elijah Doughty case, role of media. Dealing with issues in Kalgoorlie, community coming together. Importance of involvement of Aboriginal leaders. Decision in 2015 not to contest next election. Problems with electoral office building in iv

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Kalgoorlie. Difficulties on farm in Esperance. Announcing retirement in Kalgoorlie. Support of friends Jane Coole and Louise Paterson. 2016 health issues. Reflections on being a female in Parliament and representing regional areas. Disruption to family life. Importance of preparation. Dealing with bullying. Ageism and sexism.

Interview – 14 Final 257 - 276 Ageism and female politicians. Advice from Lenore Layman. Dealing with media. Bullying of women in parliament. Me Too movement. Need for women to learn assertiveness. Attributes women bring to political sphere. Cyclical nature of National Party. Focus of party turned to south west. Decision by Brendon Grylls on BHP and Rio paying $5 per tonne for lease rental. Reviewing state agreements. Brendon Grylls leadership. Colin Holt dropped out of ministry. Prediction Nationals would lose 3 seats. Anti-Nationals campaign in Pilbara. Proud achievements. Disappointments. Nationals struggle with in-depth policy analysis. Langoulant report. Royalties for Regions local government fund. Around 7,000 projects, $3 billion spent, infrastructure upgraded. GST effect. Parents Maxine and John Tonkin commitment to the community, reasons received Orders of Australia. Retirement. Involvement in regional telecommunications review. Advice to political aspirants.

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INTRODUCTION

Wendy Duncan, MLA, MLC, was elected to the Legislative Council to represent the Agricultural Region for the National Party in January 2008 to fill a casual vacancy. She was re-elected in September 2008 for the Mining and Pastoral Region and served in that capacity until she won the Legislative Assembly seat for Kalgoorlie in 2013. She retired at the March 2017 state election.

Wendy was born in Kalgoorlie to Maxine and John Tonkin and raised on the family sheep station north-east of Kalgoorlie; a childhood she describes as ‘exciting’. Along with her siblings, her early education was by correspondence and School of the Air augmented by the wisdom and bushcraft of local traditional Aboriginal people. At of 11, Wendy left her isolated home for boarding school at MLC in . The experience of being thrown into unfamiliar city activities left its mark on the young Wendy: “Everybody has a reason for being like they are … when I first went away to boarding school, I couldn’t skip and I couldn’t play hopscotch and I was ridiculed, that was hurtful and, really, it’s from there that my desire to represent those people who weren’t understood came from.”

This desire eventually saw her enter parliament to, as she puts it, stand up for regional WA. Prior to that, Wendy Duncan completed a Bachelor of Arts at UWA, post graduate studies, married pastoralist Ian Duncan and while raising four children, worked as a research officer for Nationals MLA Ross Ainsworth. Wendy joined the National Party in 2001, was elected to the party’s state executive in 2003 and became the party’s first woman state president in 2004.

Wendy was instrumental in steering the Nationals to a balance of power position in both Houses at the 2008 election. Together with Brendon Grylls, she developed the Royalties for Regions scheme which ensured regional areas would receive 25 per cent of mining royalties for projects in areas such as health, education, infrastructure, emergency services and Aboriginal initiatives. In 2014, she was co-editor of a history book on the WA Nationals, “Blood Nose Politics” 1.

Wendy Duncan fulfilled many roles during her 14 years in the Parliament. She served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Regional Development and Lands; Minister

1 Layman, L and Duncan W (eds), 2014. Blood Nose Politics A Centenary History of the Western Australian National Party 1913-2013. The Nationals WA. Perth 1

DUNCAN INTERVIEW

Assisting the Minister for State Development and Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2013 to 2017. In addition, Wendy was a member of the Standing Committee on Environment and Public Affairs and the Parliamentary Services Committee. Emeritus Professor David Black describes Wendy Duncan as “one of the most influential and respected women in Western Australian politics2.”

Despite her extensive experience, election to a ministry eluded her. In 2015 she announced that she would not contest 2017 state election.

Wendy Duncan, MLA, MLC, was interviewed by Anne Yardley between June 2017 and February 2019 for the Parliamentary History Project of the Parliament of Western Australia and the State Library of Western Australia - J S Battye Library of West Australian History.

2 Black, D and Phillips, H (eds), 2012. Making a Difference – A Frontier of Firsts. Women in the Western Australian Parliament 1921-2012 Parliamentary History Project, Parliament of Western Australia. 2

DUNCAN INTERVIEW

WendyDuncan_1

Ms Anne Yardley: This is the first in a series of interviews with Wendy Duncan, who was National Party MLC for the Agricultural Region in 2008. From 2009 to 2013 she was an MLC for Mining and Pastoral before successfully contesting the seat of Kalgoorlie in 2013. She retired at the 2017 state election. The interview is being conducted at the Legislative Assembly meeting rooms. Today is Monday, 19 June 2017. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Wendy, let’s start from the beginning with your full name and place and date of birth.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: My name is Wendy Maxine Duncan and I was born in Kalgoorlie on 7 October in 1954.

Ms Anne Yardley: Who were your parents and your grandparents? What was the history of your family in that region?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, my father was in the pastoral industry, as was his father. My mother came from farming areas around Quairading and her family actually came out pretty well on the first wave of migration to Western Australia. My mother’s name is Shirley Maxine Davies, known by Maxine. Her family came out on the Rockingham and they apparently foundered off the shore there. There are tales of the family sitting on the beach for six months, with the grand piano I am told, waiting to find somewhere to settle. They settled in the Avon Valley. My father is Stephen John Tonkin, known as John, which is quite interesting. He was born in 1926 in Kalgoorlie to the youngest of 16 children of an Anglican pastor from Cornwall. He took two wives to get to the 16 children. Of course, they didn’t have a lot of money. In fact, that family, the 16 of them, ended up all over the world— in South Africa, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Canada—as they went off to spread the word of God, except for my grandfather who wasn’t that way inclined. He actually came out to the north west to seek his fortune and started off as a mule team driver carting wool from the north west into Onslow. He saved up enough money to become part-owners of Red Hill Station in the Pilbara, and was actually backed by a benefactor that he was very grateful for.

He met my grandmother up there. She came out to Australia to visit her sister. Both of them were born in London—daughters of a pharmacist in London—and actually had a fairly comfortable life there. I remember my grandmother saying how much she loved the 3

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First World War because there was just so many soldiers home on R and R and they had a ball. But the difficult part about it was that she and her sister had to work in a munitions factory, which wasn’t a lot of fun. The tragedy of it was that her sister fell pregnant to an Australian soldier, came home to her mother to break the news and her mother said, “I don’t want to hear about your filthy behaviour. Get out of the house; I don’t want to see you again.” The sister then came to Australia with soldier, who was given a soldier settlement block in Onslow. My goodness; just a dreadful part of the world to end up! It wasn’t good country. And they were incredibly poor. Of course, my great aunt was incredibly homesick, so my grandmother came out to visit her and that’s when she met my grandfather, who was carting wool from their property.

Ms Anne Yardley: What’s the story then with the pastoral holdings that you grew up on?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Our original pastoral property, Menangina Station, was purchased by my grandfather when he’d saved enough money from having been part-owner of Red Hill. He brought my grandmother down to Kalgoorlie. Menangina is 120 kilometres north- east of Kalgoorlie, and, you know, a pretty rough block really—a lot of mulga and granite country, some lake country, which is good for sheep. He took my grandmother out there and set her down and she said, “Well, where’s the house?” and he said, “There isn’t one.” Not much later, in December of 1926, my father was born. My grandmother recounts the fact that she had the child wrapped up in swaddling clothes, which is what you did in London, and the child, my father, was covered in this red horrible rash. To someone passing through she said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with my baby. It’s covered in this rash.” They said, “Perhaps you should take the swaddling clothes off. It is December and 40 degrees outside.” Poor darling. They made a homestead for her out of hessian and daube, and she cooked on an open fire. There was a well down in the creek; she had to go and draw water by the bucketload. This is a lady from London. While my grandfather was away for weeks on end fencing, really the people who cared for my grandmother were the Aboriginal people—and her babies. She had two: my father and subsequently his sister, known as Constance Dorothea because my grandmother’s name was Constance, but she was called Judy.

Ms Anne Yardley: What about you? You’re the middle one of three. What are some of your earliest recollections of life?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Life on the station was pretty exciting in those days, not only because there was a lot of Aboriginal people passing through—their kids were really our 4

DUNCAN INTERVIEW playmates in many ways—but also there were much larger complements of staff on the pastoral properties then. It was about the time in the 50s when wool was a pound a pound and they were actually starting to make a bit of income, so there were married couples and single men in the quarters and mum had someone helping around the grounds of the pastoral property. In fact, in the end, mum also had someone helping in the house once our education came on the scene. She tried a few times to employ governesses for the three of us—I’ve got an older sister and a younger brother—but we hated school so much because we really loved being out. My earliest memories are just out in the bush with our horses and our dogs. Not very politically correct in this day and age, but we had air rifles and we were shooting parrots and we’d take them over to the Aboriginal camp and trade them. They’d take the parrots and they’d make us little carvings and things for them. That was great fun. We spent hours on those enterprises—shooting parrots and rabbits and so on. But school we hated. We were pretty enterprising. One of the things about station kids is that they are really mature beyond their years. When you only have adult company, you have to learn to fend for yourself pretty quickly. So the governesses didn’t last, poor darlings. You know, there was a tarantula in the bed or a stick up the tail of their horse when they were riding; it was terrible, dreadful. In the end, mum thought the only way she could control these little ratbags was for her to teach us and to get some help in the house. How she did it? I mean, she was cooking for staff seven days a week. She felt embarrassed that on Sunday mornings she gave people baked beans on toast because she was actually being a bit slack; every other morning it was chops and eggs. She was managing all the station properties and the books and the staff and the kids—a big job.

Ms Anne Yardley: You said in your inaugural speech, this was for the Assembly — … my siblings and I had the amazing upbringing that many view as typically Australian, but few experience. I think this is what you’re talking about. I would like to know more about this—more about the schooling that you did receive from your mother and the school of the air and just life as a child on a station, because we actually don’t know what that’s like.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No. That’s right, isn’t it. And yet the international picture of Australia is about the outback—the movie Australia. It’s about horses. It’s about red dirt and dust and drought and floods. All of that we experienced. Of course, at the time that I was a child, the Aboriginal people were still very traditional, so we learnt to build little what they called a wilja in that tribe, their language, which is the little humpies made out of branches. I learnt to dig up honey ants; to recognise the signs at the base of a tree as to whether there were honey ants there or bardi grubs—witchetty grubs. We learnt to track.

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We’d dig up goanna eggs. You could tell by looking at the shell of an egg how far advanced the foetus is inside; whether there’s a yoke, so then it’s good to eat, or whether it’s a baby goanna and you put it back in for it to mature so you can eat the goanna [chuckles]. And I’ve eaten all those things. Of course, my father put me on a horse when I was probably about four, but I wasn’t allowed to have a saddle until I learnt to ride without one. All those things are things that everyone looks romantically on as the typical Australian lifestyle, but as we’ve become very, very urbanised not many people have the wonderful opportunity of experiencing it.

Ms Anne Yardley: When you look back at it now, do you see it as romantic?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Romantic? I don’t think romantic’s the word, really. I see it as—it was very challenging, but it was very exciting. We loved it. It’s interesting to hear people talk about child labour, you know, and particularly farmers—how dare they make their children work—but we just could not wait to get out of the classroom. We loved the physical challenge and being out there working alongside our parents and alongside other adults and being treated like adults from a very young age. So there was no drudgery to it. I mean, it was exhausting and there were times when we were very physically challenged, but I don’t ever remember resenting that.

Ms Anne Yardley: What sorts of things are we talking about here—that you were working at?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It would be going out around the run checking on the watering points. Then it would be your job to climb up the side of the tank to tell dad how full it was and to clean out the troughs, because the animals need clean water and you don’t want bird poo or dust or algae in there. You had to physically empty out and scrape out the troughs and then put the plug back in. If you didn’t put a handful of sand in and make sure it wasn’t leaking! Then you had to test the ball tap at the other end and make sure that’s not leaking before you left, and if it was, you were in serious trouble. I remember when we were old enough to do mill runs by ourselves, which wasn’t that old, you’d get home and dad would say, “How full was the tank?” and you’d say, “Half full.” He’d say, “So, was there any water dripping from the outlet pipe? Is the mill pumping?” and you’d go, “Oh gosh, I forgot to look at that.” “What the hell did we send you out there for!” You really learnt to be very observant; you had a checklist of things to do. So that was that. The other thing we really loved doing, of course, was droving sheep. That was originally on horseback, but then later on it was on motorbikes. We were all riding motorbikes at quite a young age 6

DUNCAN INTERVIEW through the scrub—no helmets; we did have boots on though. Always had to have boots on a motorbike. Of course, then probably the most exciting time of the year was shearing. So you were working in the shed and in the yards, pushing sheep up, pushing them through the dip—I was only thinking last night about how you’d be in the spray of the diazinon and wondering why we aren’t all sick [chuckles]—and then lifting little lambs onto the fence to have their tails and ears done. We’d do that when we were smaller, but once we were bigger, we were actually putting the rings on the tail and on the nuts, as dad called them, and putting the earmarks on. We’d come home covered in dust and blood and love every minute of it [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: When your mother was able to pin you down into the classroom, how did she go about teaching you? What were the mechanisms? Did you have correspondence?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. We got lessons out. The mail truck came out once a fortnight with fresh bread. Mum made bread the rest of the time, but we had fresh bread on the mail truck. Mum used to order a whole loaf just to be eaten on mail day and we’d sit down and slather it with vegemite and so on. But also on the truck would come our lessons. Then as the truck did its circuit and came back through, it would take our completed lessons. So that was how we did the classes. You had to complete a certain amount in a fortnight. There were two ways to deal with it. One was to get it done as quickly as possible and get out or the other was passive resistance, which we sort of went through various phases of it.

Towards, I suppose, the middle of our education, mum, who was also very civic minded, was campaigning to get school of the air to Kalgoorlie, and that she eventually succeeded in. I think it came to Kalgoorlie in about 1962. After the school of the air arrived, you still did your fortnightly lessons, but you’d have half an hour a day on the two-way radio talking to the teachers and they’d be reinforcing what you were learning and checking your progress. Playing the recorder, my goodness me—dreadful! You know, singing songs. Actually, mum deserves a medal. She came up with a bright idea for our end of year Christmas get-together. At the end of each year we’d all get together and see the children that we’d been speaking to over the radio for the whole year. It was really interesting because you’d have this picture in your mind of what someone out on the Nullarbor Plain who was your age looked like and then you’d meet them and they were totally different; you’d made an opinion just on their voice. But mum had the bright idea that we were going to put a play on at the end of the year. So everybody just had a sheet of paper with the 7

DUNCAN INTERVIEW movements—you know, exit stage left and come and stand about here where X marks the spot and you say that while someone else, imaginary until the end of the year, comes in and stands beside you. We practiced that over the two-way radio and then came into Kalgoorlie and had one live rehearsal in the morning and then put the play on in the evening. It was The Wizard of Oz and I was the Witch of the West, and I loved it. That was brilliant. It was such a logistical and technical challenge, but those mothers all worked together. They made their costumes out there. We all had costumes. In fact, my mum, who was a bit of a sewer, probably made most of the costumes in the end. Funny that I ended up doing the same when we were down in Esperance and I had four children; three girls who were dancing and I seemed to end up making the costumes for the entire dance troupe as well.

Ms Anne Yardley: Your father was also a councillor, so he was involved in local government. Were you a politically aware family? Was this something that was talked about around the dinner table?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. We were very much put on silence while the news was on, and that was always timed. Always sat at the dinner table—quite a formal occasion— and then you would listen to the news. The interesting thing is that there would be then quite interesting debate about what we heard on the news. Mum and dad would often play the devil’s advocate; they would put an alternative point of view. There was always very rounded debate about politics. Mum particularly became involved in the Liberal Party; she was secretary of the local branch. Interesting with dad, and it’s probably more aligned with my politics as well, in that he was actually asked to stand by both Labor and Liberal in the goldfields. And it’s just because both of them had an amazing social conscience. One of the things I really love about mum and dad and something that I’m proud to have picked up from them is that they were very non-judgemental. They entertained the Governor at the homestead there and out would come the china and the silver and all the good manners and the serviettes and so on.

But I remember one Christmas when the roo shooters came through—there were two couples in two vehicles, husbands and wives covered in roo blood. I remember them sitting out—it was around Christmas—in the back of this ute, in amongst all these roo carcasses, having a Christmas drink with these people and there was no judgement whatsoever. It’s a story I tell, and I might’ve even told it in one of my inaugural speeches, that we are all precious Australians; everyone has a place. I tell a story about when I was in a pub in Wiluna—driving through. I think it might’ve even been before I was a member of 8

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Parliament; I was actually state president of the Nationals. I was in the pub in Wiluna and I was with my daughter. We were driving from Esperance to Broome. I was taking her up there for her gap year in her little car. I said, “You can do that as long as I come with you for the trip, and as long as you put up with me calling into every local government to talk about politics.” And that was fine. So we stayed at the Wiluna pub and she was immediately swarmed on by all these mining types who thought she was gorgeous. I’m there and this fellow came up to me and he had dirt under his fingernails and teeth missing and dust in his hair. We were chatting and I sort of said to him that I was trying to get a better deal for the regions and that people in the regions need to be recognised for their value, and he said to me, “Do you know, love, I’ve worked in and I’ve lived in Wollongong, but now I drive the grader in Wiluna and I love it.” He said, “I do the roads. Everybody really appreciates what I do. I know everybody in town. If I’m sick, people will look after me. It’s the best place on earth.” He said, “The only thing missing, love, is I haven’t got a good woman. Will you marry me [chuckles]?” I tell that story—my daughter said, “Oh mum, that man that you were talking to.” I said, “Elise, he is a precious Australian. We need people like that to grade our outback roads, and we should never look down on people like that. He is a wonderful Australian, just like Sir Angus Houston is.” That I learnt from my parents. They would take anybody in who was coming past; they would never judge. Same from the race point of view. They never judged. Mum was a nurse and she was very greatly valued there, administering insulin injections, looking after little bubbies that might’ve fallen in the fire, mending gashes from, you know, accidents or even the unfortunately quite prevalent violence that happens. Mum was always there but never judged.

Ms Anne Yardley: You’ve mentioned learning from the Aboriginal people in their camps. Who were these people? What was the relationship between your family and the local Aboriginal people?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was an excellent relationship. My father knew a lot of their language and customs. He made it known that Aboriginal people were always welcome to stay and, in fact, built shelters and provided sort of rainwater tanks and water and firewood and so on, because at that stage the Aboriginal people would come through on their dreaming tracks. We were on the track coming through from the lands— the central desert. They’d come down through to the goldfields and they would camp on the other side of the creek. There was really a big mound on the other side of the creek because there was a couple of permanent rock holes, which obviously had been their stopping place for tens of thousands of years. The mound of charcoal and so on had built 9

DUNCAN INTERVIEW up over time. I remember lying in bed at night listening to them singing, especially if it was a full moon. Singing at night was just the most wonderful thing. In fact, even now when I can’t sleep, I’ve actually got a recording of Aboriginal people singing which helps me go to sleep.

But the relationship that we had with them, which is something that’s quite hard to explain, is that dad very clearly understood their patterns of movement and so there was no requirement that if you’re going to work for me, you need to be here 12 months of the year. So there became a really great relationship where we’d have people arrive, especially around busy times of year. They knew our times of the year and dad would almost try and time it anyway, shearing or mustering and so on, because Aboriginal people are highly skilled. They would help with the mustering. Three or four of the Aboriginal people would be involved in mustering or helping in the yards and so on, but you’d have 30 or 40 that we would actually be feeding and caring for. This is where people say, “You know, you didn’t pay a proper wage.” I know when I first went up there as a young wife of a pastoralist, having been to university and studied anthropology and how the station owners had exploited the Aborigines, that I actually kept, and I’ve still got it, a cashbook when we employed the Aboriginal people to help us over shearing, of everything that we provided, which was clothing and food, nappies and medicines, all that sort of thing, against the wages of the few that were working for us, and they never ended up with any money. In the end, this is why Aboriginal people couldn’t stay on the stations, because we were being accused of not paying them. But we would say, “We can’t feed 30 of you when three are working.” The interesting thing is that dad would always go out and shoot a roo for them or provide them with bullets to go and get themselves goannas and that sort of stuff, but once their, I guess, diet became more westernised and they were wanting more bought food, it just did not add up. It was tragic, and nobody understands that dilemma of people in the pastoral industry. We just could not do it. I remember at one stage ringing the Department of Social Security and saying, “Look, I’ve got 20 people out here. Two of them are working for us. They are wanting us to buy packets of disposable nappies for them. I can’t afford them and neither can the two people who are working here. What are we going to do?” Anyway, out on the mail truck came about 20 bags of what I would describe as rags. It was clothes. They said, “Here you are; here’s some clothing for the Aborigines.” It was just disgraceful. The zips were all broken, they were torn, they were filthy. I thought, you know, what are you supposed to do? We were out there was when the price of wool was very low and we actually did not have the wherewithal to support ourselves and that many people. It was heartbreaking.

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Ms Anne Yardley: So it was different in your parents’ era, was it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was. It was different because the Aboriginal people were still very self-sufficient. They were still living on the Karlkurla pears, the silky pears, the bardi grubs, the goannas. Dad would shoot kangaroos for them. If he did kill a sheep for them, they didn’t like it much because mutton’s very fatty. Even eggs—they preferred goanna and mallee fowl eggs to hen eggs because it would upset their stomach. Back then, everyone said, “Oh, well, all the pastoralists give them is tea, sugar and flour”, but that’s actually all they wanted—seriously. The idiom about exploiting the Aboriginal people and making them work for you, only giving them tea and sugar, is not entirely true. It’s tragic because even now, when I was member for Kalgoorlie and talking to some of those older Aborigines, they said, “They were our happiest times”, because they just came and went as they felt welcome and able to just come and go as they pleased. They would get a bit of work, which would give them a bit of cash, but they could live off the land, which is what they are best at, and it’s actually better for their health. One of the reasons that Aboriginal people suffer so badly from diabetes and kidney disease and all those things is because the western diet doesn’t suit them. They are used to eating emus and kangaroos and eggs and grubs and silky pears.

Ms Anne Yardley: What you’re describing, then, during your years of growing up is a very finely balanced, tuned, reciprocal relationship.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was, absolutely.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is that how you’d describe it, between the two communities?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was, yes. I remember reading some descriptions where Aboriginal people were following through their lands and they discovered fences across their path and so on. Obviously, there were tensions—I don’t deny that—and there’s no doubt that some Aboriginal people were very badly treated. But then if you read Albert Facey’s book, A Fortunate Life, in that era some white people were pretty badly treated as well. So whether it was specifically dealt to them or whether it was just part of the era— look, I do not deny the photos of Aborigines in chains and so on. There has been some dreadful stuff; I’m not denying that. But certainly the relationship that my family had with Aboriginal people—I think the fact that my father was actually asked to do eulogies at Aboriginal funerals and so on is indicative of the fact that the relationship was really good and valued. 11

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Ms Anne Yardley: You in fact have talked about the Aboriginal women and what you learnt from them.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely. That was one of the most, I guess, delightful parts of our childhood. I used to say to mum, “Didn’t you worry about us?” We used to just go bush when the sun was up, especially on the weekend when we didn’t have to be at school, and we’d come home when the parrots all started going to water—you knew that sunset was coming soon, and we’d start wending our way home. Mum used to say, “I never worried about you because the Aboriginal women always knew where you were.” They could track us and so on. But then, they’d take us out with them too, especially if they had kids our age. We’d all go out together and we’d sit under a tree and we’d dig up honey ants and eat them on the spot, live; same with bardi grubs. So the understanding of the land and the relationship with the land was something that I found very precious. I guess it is what has given me my incredible respect for Aboriginal people and desire to see them find a better place.

I remember a story dad told about how they were bringing in a mob of several hundred sheep for shearing, on horseback, so up high, above the land. One of the Aboriginal fellows came over to dad and said, “Do you know there’s a mob of sheep gone that way”, so at right angles, and this was after the several hundred had gone over the top. Dad said, “Really?” and he said, “Yes, I can see the tracks.” Dad said, “Well, do you think you could go and get them?” He said, “Yes, no worries.” So off he went on his horse, and a few hours later in he comes with a little mob of 30 sheep to add in. Their skills were incredible. The tragedy is that a lot of that has been lost. In fact, I’ve spoken to my father about this. He knows where many of their sacred sites are that they don’t anymore. I said to him, “You really should document that”, and he said, “Oh, it’ll only cause trouble.” I don’t know if I agree with him.

Ms Anne Yardley: No. But he probably has some knowledge that maybe you don’t, do you think?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely, and particularly as he’s a male, so there is knowledge that he has that I’ll never have. There are very, very distinct bodies of knowledge in Aboriginal culture that belong to the males and belong to the females and are never shared across, yes.

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Ms Anne Yardley: When you were 11 you had to go to boarding school.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: How difficult was it for you to leave this upbringing and come to the city?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was dreadful; it was terrible. We loved our life so much, but I think also I loved education and I was greatly, I guess, encouraged, maybe even praised, for my intellectual capacity. I know when we were doing our correspondence that the best way I could see for us to get out onto the horses or the motorbikes was for me to not only do my work, but to do my sister’s and brother’s as well, when nobody was looking, so then we’d all be free. I think the thing that got me through was that I just love learning. To go away to boarding school was something that I realised was necessary. I’ve been thinking about that, because there’s two ways to deal with going to boarding school; that is that you hate it and you want to go home and you get miserable and go into a sort of passive resistance phase and you refuse to learn. I think that my brother and sister, both of them almost to a certain extent, adopted that attitude. I went to boarding school and I had day one or two of being a bit homesick, but after that I thought, no, I’m just going to make the most of absolutely everything on offer here. So even though I’m tone deaf and can’t sing a note, I decided to learn an instrument until I got kicked out, because I was no good. I went into the school play and managed to score myself a singing part and, in fact, also got relegated to a speaking part. But I just tried everything. I can’t sing; I love music, but I can’t play an instrument. I learnt jujitsu, I did debating, I went to art classes. Everything that was going on, I got into.

I recount in one of my speeches the initial experience of going to boarding school. That is, I went there being highly skilled at riding a horse and riding a motorbike. My dad put us on bucking bullocks in the laneway and we competed against each other and the Aboriginal kids to see who could stay on the longest, and I was pretty good at that. I could track, I could dig up honey ants, I could tell you how to tail a lamb—all those sorts of things. Sheep psychology was something I had a master’s degree in. I got down to boarding school and I couldn’t skip and I couldn’t play hopscotch. Knucklebones were things that you fed to the dog. I couldn’t swim. I remember the kids sort of laughing behind their hands and saying, “She’s really stupid and dumb”, and it was probably one of the first big life lessons for me—to realise that you shouldn’t judge people on your first impressions because how they are is probably a product of their environment. I was highly skilled for my environment; I 13

DUNCAN INTERVIEW was totally a fish out of water when I got to boarding school. How I responded to that was to say, “Well, I’ll show you I’m not dumb”, and I set about proving that. My sister, who had gone to boarding school a bit ahead of me, she just hated it and really refused in many ways to embrace the city life. Fortunately for my sister, she was very musical so she started learning the piano and singing and that was her niche away at school and it gave her that feeling of belonging. In the end academically I excelled, and I showed them [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: That was quite a life lesson to learn there.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was.

Ms Anne Yardley: I was wondering about the place of religion in your family, because there had been the Anglican pastors. You went to MLC, didn’t you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was that an important part of your life?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it. We were all christened and we had correspondence lessons of Bible stories come out to the station, but we didn’t really go to church; it wasn’t really possible, although the bishop came out and visited and we entertained him with the nice crockery and the silverware. In fact, my mum tells a story of how mortified she was when my sister was probably only five, sitting on the knee of the bishop and patted him on the tummy and said, “Oh my, you’ve got a bellyful of onions [chuckles].” That didn’t go down terribly well. I think the philosophy of the Christian religion was always very strongly there—that sort of service of community and caring for those that are less fortunate than yourself was always there, but we weren’t deeply religious. I remember as a child though, coming to think of it, kneeling down to say my prayers before I went to bed at night, so that probably happened, and of course we had religious education. In fact, I won the religious art prize at MLC, which was just because I couldn’t win in the main category, I think [chuckles]. Interestingly, when I went to South Africa on Rotary exchange, I became very actively involved with an evangelical youth group, but when I came back to university, I sort of moved away from that because I felt there was a certain hypocrisy, particularly in evangelical religion, where it seemed to be all about scoring scalps—you know, “Look at me, God, I’ve got someone converted to Christianity. Now, who’s next?”, rather than the after-service care that a newly converted Christian 14

DUNCAN INTERVIEW might need. I was a member of the evangelical union at university, when I first went there, but I then dropped out of it and became just a private practising Christian, but not a churchgoer.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s go back to school. You did do well academically, but most importantly, where? What were your strong points, and what did you think you might do after school?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That was one of the big dilemmas for me. It’s interesting; one of the things, I suppose coming from pastors back to the fourteenth century is you have to be humble, but I was good at everything. That was one of my biggest dilemmas because I did really well in science and I got a place in the state in history. When I got to the end of my schooling I had no idea what I wanted to do because I really was so blessed that I actually excelled across arts and sciences. The career counsellor said, “Wendy, with your brain you need to do medicine.” Of course, mum and dad who both left school at 15, both highly intelligent though just the same, were very excited at the thought of their daughter doing medicine, and I was keen to please so I thought, “Well, that’s what I’ll do.” Having helped dad kill the sheep, I was pretty familiar with all the insides; I had no fear of blood [chuckles]. I thought, “Yes, okay, I’ll do medicine.” So having completed school, I was right up there; I wasn’t dux, but pretty close, and I managed to get into medicine.

Ms Anne Yardley: You didn’t take that place immediately, though, did you, because you went away on a gap year. Why did you want to go to South Africa?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I actually didn’t want to go to South Africa; I applied for a Rotary exchange scholarship. I had studied French all the way through to matriculation. Those were the days when you did two exams in every subject. You did your ordinary level chemistry and then that afternoon you did the matriculation level chemistry, in every exam if you wanted to go to university. I had studied French, I thought, at a reasonably high level—although, subsequently going to France, they weren’t too impressed with my French, and I think it was because my teacher was Scottish. I don’t think that did much for my accent. Anyway, having applied for a Rotary exchange scholarship, I was pretty keen to go to France, but you actually don’t get any choice. So then they told me I was going to South Africa and I was quite sort of shocked and not really that happy with the decision, but then I thought—this is typical of my attitude to life, I think, in many ways—well, actually, Africa’s a place I probably wouldn’t go in the normal course of events, so how lucky am I?

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I’m going to South Africa. I was based in Cape Town for 12 months as a Rotary exchange student.

Ms Anne Yardley: This would have been the early 1970s; is that correct?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: 1972, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was your experience there?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was quite a culture shock. Of course Rotarians, particularly in South Africa, are very wealthy people so my host families were involved in the financial sector, property development, one of them was a chemical engineer, one was involved with the Cape Times newspaper, so it was very, very sheltered, but I was just aghast—I suppose aghast might not be quite the right word—really surprised at the level of servants in the house. There was the gardener and getting into trouble for polishing my own shoes because the maid does that—those sorts of things I hadn’t really expected. But I think, more to the point, was the shock of the separate development, because apartheid was well and truly in force. To get on a bus and see a big metal barrier—you just couldn’t even see through it—between the front and the back, and the whites got on to the front of the bus and the non-whites at the back. And the beaches; there were beautiful white beaches, like Esperance, but some had big signs on saying “White” and others saying “Non-white”. I really had difficulty fathoming that. One of my host sisters was a teacher and she was at a university where there was a mixture of white and non-white lecturers, and she was actually in a relationship with a non-white fellow, and they had to leave the country when it became apparent that this was going to be exposed and they were serious about their relationship.

But probably the thing that really hit home to me the most was one night sitting around the table with my host family who were involved with the Cape Times newspaper, to say that one of their journalists had disappeared out of his bed at three o’clock in the morning for something he had written that was against the government. I was just shocked at that. Finally the penny dropped for me about how precious our rights and our freedoms and our democracy were in Australia. I’d never really appreciated them up until then; I just thought the whole world lived like we did, so for me that was a real revelation. I also became aware of Nelson Mandela. As I said, I was involved with an evangelical youth group there who were also very, very anti-government, so I became aware of Nelson Mandela and Robben Island and some of his I guess teachings. I don’t think he’d quite renounced violence by 16

DUNCAN INTERVIEW then, but just the fact that he was jailed for far too long, that made me start to change my mind about medicine.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was your evangelical church group like? Was that mixed race or was that white people only?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, no, they were all white. I don’t recall churches being mixed race. They were all white kids, but it was a great group. It was interesting because that’s where we did a lot of excursions, trips and camps. A few of the group were keen rock climbers and, of course, with Table Mountain in the middle of Cape Town, why wouldn’t you be? That’s actually where my love of rock climbing started. Our station homestead in the goldfields was at the back of a belt of granite and as kids we used to just free climb stuff that was very, very scary and not even realise that we were probably risking our life; then to discover that people actually did that as recreation. I started rock climbing while I was in South Africa as well, and loved it. To get up to the top of Table Mountain, just scrambling with your fingertips and toes, was good fun.

But, yes, so it was a great experience. The interesting thing is too that in our breaks, we would join up with other Rotary exchange students and on one trip we went up to South West Africa, which is now Namibia, to the game park up there. Of course, there was a civil war going on at that time, so there was an awareness of security issues. The other really fabulous trip, which is, I think, where my love of trains came from—I’m a train tragic—we went on a steam train from Cape Town to Salisbury, through Botswana, without any chaperones. Here we were, 16, 17-year-olds, mixed sex, on a train; gosh. They wouldn’t do it in this day and age, to go to what was then Rhodesia—which was the nation that was vilified for its racism—and discovered that actually it wasn’t half as racist as South Africa. In Rhodesia there wasn’t those sort of physical separations of people in shops, in banks, in post offices and in buses. There was obviously not democratic equality—they didn’t have the vote—but they were far more equally treated in the community in Rhodesia. I had a ball and loved Rhodesia, as well.

Ms Anne Yardley: You went to South Africa planning on doing medicine; you came back from South Africa and enrolled in politics. That’s a huge change. Can you talk me through the processes that were going through your mind then that brought about this change of heart?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, look, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I do say often—I’ve said in my maiden speech—that the reason I changed from medicine to study politics and Australian history was this sort of, I guess, epiphany in South Africa to suddenly discover how precious our democracy was. Of course, also, I think medicine’s six years and arts was three, and I’d got the travel bug a bit, so, to be perfectly honest, I think there was a bit of that in it as well. I had got a state place in history, so I was okay at the arts and Australian politics. We’d always loved politics in the family and even though I couldn’t really see where it was going to lead me as a career, I just felt that that was what I wanted to know more about. I wanted to know more about democracy and systems of government. I studied Europe, I studied the and I studied Asia just to sort of quench my thirst to understand how nations are ruled because I’d gone to South Africa with this view that the whole world had a Westminster system where everybody had freedom of speech and freedom of association, and then you discover that that’s not the case. I also, as part of my degree and following on from my strategies at boarding school and, in fact, when I was at school in South Africa, where they said, “Oh, you’re in the A stream; you need to do physics and chemistry and II maths”, and I said, “No, no, I’ve done all that; I want to do the things I wasn’t allowed to do as an A student at MLC. I want to do biology, physiology and home economics.” So I did all that when I was studying in South Africa at my high school because I wanted to just do everything. So when I did my arts degree at UWA, I did Australian history and political science, but I also did some anthropology because I wanted to understand more about Aboriginal people. I also studied some maths, just because I didn’t before. I wanted to know how to do differentiation and I hadn’t done it at school. So it was quite a mixed degree by the time I’d finished it.

Ms Anne Yardley: You mentioned to me another realisation, I suppose, that came out of your experience in South Africa and that was to do with gender. Tell me about that.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, this is quite a strange story because when we were growing up as kids on the station there was no such thing as the weaker sex. We just all did what we were told to do. We were out on our motorbikes bringing in the sheep or we were in the sheep yards, and if we got hurt or we couldn’t cope, we were all treated equally and just told to pull yourself together and get on with it. I love my dad dearly but he was very, very, I guess, demanding of us and expected the highest possible standards of strength and capability. I remember getting into trouble one day for actually getting sunstroke: “What’s wrong with you? You’re an outback girl. How come you’re sick from being in the sun all day?” And I’m going, “Oh, sorry, dad.” But I didn’t know how I could’ve not got sunstroke. So from that where I was very capable, probably of my siblings I was 18

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the best horse rider, and I really did well as the kid on the station, to an all-girl boarding school. Again, it was all just competing against your equals. There was no gender introduced there at all.

I went to South Africa where we were in a mixed school. I was getting around with a bunch of girlfriends and didn’t really, I guess, have any gender challenges there either. But there was a really funny experience where we were actually up in Namibia, south west Africa in this game park, again, unchaperoned—unbelievable—and the Rotary exchange students, all around 17 or 18, and the boys were in the pool having this big wrestling match. Anyway, I leapt in to be part of it, because I could wrestle as good as anybody with my brother and anybody else who wanted to be in on it, and I got told to get out of there in no uncertain terms. I was quite puzzled as to why I couldn’t join in this fight, and to be called things that were just foreign to me, you know, sort of being a loose woman. I remember being really puzzled and then just thinking about it and thinking: oh gosh, so girls don’t wrestle when they’re 17 [chuckles]. It was quite a revelation to me really but I think it’s been good in life because I’ve really never seen myself as not being equal to whoever I’m up against. I’ve never really felt gender discrimination. There are times where it’s in your face, you can’t avoid it, but it’s not something that I’ve expected, if you know what I mean.

Ms Anne Yardley: And perhaps if you don’t expect it, it doesn’t happen to you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well I think that’s the case too because you do just—and one of the things that—I stopped midsentence there. You do just confront that sometimes. One of the things my staff always find quite endearing about me, I guess, is that I will not suffer discrimination or confrontation. I will always call it out. If someone sort of writes a letter to the editor or something like that, I will always call them out. I’ll ring them and say, “Come and have a coffee”. I won’t let people get away with putting me down. They just said they’ve never seen anyone quite like that. Probably what has helped me through is that the minute there’s any discrimination apparent or a lack of appreciation of my capability, I call it.

Ms Anne Yardley: When you were at UWA, I wonder whether there was a sense of occupations that were acceptable, or that girls were expected to go into?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Do you know I think that around that period of time it was when there was quite a big shift. One of the things I regret about going to South Africa in 1972 is its timing and the election campaign where Gough Whitlam won power. I was totally oblivious of that. It’s interesting, when I went into my politics classes in 1973, that’s what 19

DUNCAN INTERVIEW everyone was talking about and I was going, “What? What happened?” But I actually think that prior to 1972, girls did medicine or teaching or nursing or commercial—you did a secretarial course. But after 1972, and I think with that sort of Gough Whitlam era and free education and that sort of more free society, there was a much broader opportunity for women. In fact, one of my peers that I went to boarding school with was one of the first women to do civil engineering. We were all going, “Wow! Go, Bev!” But it was also a point. We were all saying, “Yes, but she can do it.” We all knew she could do it and in fact she did, magnificently. Even with me doing my arts degree, I still had a bit of a dilemma as to where to from there. This is probably not the way to choose your career but I decided at the end of it that I would make application on a few fronts and whatever I succeeded in was—maybe it’s the leftover from my Christian years, but I thought, “Well, let the Lord provide.” But I got sprung because I actually applied to go and do a post-graduate course in Canberra, which was actually called secretarial studies—I know, dreadful name—but it was actually a course that involved economics, finance, administration and Hansard speeds of shorthand and typing. It was all about getting yourself in and around federal Parliament. The other thing I applied to do was a masters in social work, because there was still, and still is, that social conscious very strong in me. I thought: Righto, whatever I get accepted for, I will take. Of course, I got accepted for both. This is very mercenary. This is still in the era where isolated children got free airfares to their point of education. I thought, well, I live above the twenty-sixth parallel, I get free airfares to Canberra, so that’s what I’m going to do [chuckles]. And I loved it, I loved it. The course I’m so glad I did. Social work would never have worked for me, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: The course that you chose to do is one that was very much a female- oriented course, surely.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was, but it was always a path to other things. I always could see myself—and I’m very scary that way. I always had a fairly set path, not down to the specifics as to which to do, but a university career for a bit, travel for a bit, get married, have a boy and a girl, back to work. The reason I did that course is because I could see that it would give me the capability to not only work in and around politics, but actually to be able to work towards probably what were more CEO-type positions. That’s where I started to see myself: in organisations, moving up the management of organisations. In fact, when I was in Canberra, and in my first job, I continued to study part-time doing an economics degree—economics and statistics and accounting—because I felt that that would help me in my new vision, which was to be the CEO of something [chuckles].

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Ms Anne Yardley: And what was your first job?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: My first job was with the National Farmers’ Federation. It’s interesting because by that time, my father was vice-president of the pastoralists and graziers here in Western Australia and I could quite easily have rung him and said, “Hey, Dad. I’m applying for this job with the”—it was actually the Australian Woolgrowers And Graziers Council, which was the affiliate of the pastoralists and graziers in Western Australia—“can you put a word in for me?” But I didn’t. I was so determined to just get this job on my own merits, so I applied and got the job before I’d even sat my exams in the secretarial studies diploma. It was just fantastic. I loved it because at that time they were working through amalgamating the various farmer organisations in Canberra. There was the Australian Farmers Federation, the Australian Woolgrowers and Graziers Council, which I was working for, and the Australian Wool and Meat Producers Federation. It was a huge task, a bit like trying to get the WA Farmers Federation and PGA here to amalgamate, which they’ve tried several times and they can’t do it. But the beautiful thing is that the executive officer of my organisation, the Australian Woolgrowers and Graziers Council, was David Trebeck, who had really been chosen to lead this whole process, and I was his executive assistant. Between the two of us we were really negotiating some very delicate arrangements and writing the new constitutions. I was intimately involved in that and very quickly moved from being, really, his glorified secretary to actually being actively involved in pulling that whole thing together. I was also then made secretary, which girls always are, of the National Rural Press Club and then coordinator of what we called operation farm link over there, which was trying to get city and country communication going better. I really found myself already starting to move into a bit of leadership, and what I particularly appreciated about that job is that I did the minute taking of these meetings where meeting procedure was just so important because there were quite a lot of difficult debates to be had, so people had to be very disciplined in how they debated. Learning meeting procedure at that time was probably one of the greatest skills that I’ve valued since then, particularly when I was state president of the Nationals. It’s just so important to know your constitution and know your meeting procedure to be able to get an organisation to run smoothly, so I had a ball [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: We’ve been talking for a while now. I’m interested in how you had your life planned out ahead of you but I think we might leave that until next time. Thanks for today.

[End of WendyDuncan_1] 21

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WendyDuncan_2

Ms Anne Yardley: This is the second interview with Wendy Duncan, who was a National Party MLC and later MLA until 2017. The interview is for the parliamentary history project. It’s being conducted at the Legislative Assembly meeting rooms and today is Thursday, 29 June 2017 and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Wendy, last week you touched a bit on this but I suspect there’s more for you to say about what you learnt in those years in Canberra that was useful to you in your later career.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, well, I had a great time in Canberra. I moved there in 1976 to study at the Canberra College of Advanced Education to do my diploma of secretarial studies, which was pretty unfortunately named because it was a very broad-ranging course and quite challenging. Then, of course, I think we talked about the fact that I found my first job before I’d even sat my final exams, which was with what was then the Australian Woolgrowers and Graziers Council in the process of forming the National Farmers’ Federation. Yes, it was a very useful time for me not only working in and around Parliament and, of course, meeting people like , and Phillip Lynch, the movers and shakers of government, as I trailed along with the executive officer David Trebeck. But also, of course, being his executive assistant, I took all the minutes of the council meetings and the meetings that were leading towards the amalgamation of these organisations. I also helped in sort of preparing and drafting the constitutions, and that experience, I think, has really stood me in good stead. I’m a fairly humble person but I think one of my strengths is that I’m a good chairperson and, very early in my career, I learnt about meeting procedure and about understanding and respecting a constitution. I think when we were in those very delicate negotiations and establishment of the new organisation, it was just so important that everybody felt they’d been heard, everybody felt that they’d been treated fairly. In situations like that, fastidious meeting procedure is so important to make sure that people get the opportunity to put their motions, that they’re properly and fairly debated, that for and against is heard, that if there’s alternatives they are laid on the table—all those sorts of things that some people think are pretty stuffy procedures, but in fact they really do help you through difficult situations. I resorted to that knowledge quite often in my role as state president of the Nationals at a time where we were making some very challenging changes to our philosophy and our vision and we needed to make sure that the whole grassroots organisation felt included, felt consulted and came along. I think that that experience for me was fantastic.

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Ms Anne Yardley: During your postgraduate studies, you had a two-week study tour in China.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What did you learn there that was significant for you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That was sometime later. I did do some postgraduate study when I was in Canberra. I decided I was going to do a degree in economics. I got quite a few credits for the study I’d done at the Canberra college and at UWA, but I was focusing really on economics and statistics and loving it. But then, of course, I got the inevitable travel bug and decided to just take a break and go backpacking around Europe and I’d come back to finish it. The study tour I did to China was actually sometime later. That was in the late ’90s and 2000s when I had decided, having beaten my head up against the glass ceiling a few too many times to be comfortable in my role working with the Shire of Esperance, that I really needed to get some extra qualifications under my belt. So, with four babies and a part-time job, I decided to do an MBA externally through Curtin Graduate School of Business, and that took forever and was very, very challenging. I remember the best way to get my study done was to stay up, get the kids to bed, read their stories, you know, spend some time with the husband, go to bed with him until he started snoring, then sneak out to my study and study all night until about two or three in the morning, and then sneak back into bed before he woke up and get up, get the kids bathed, dressed, lunches made and off to work. I did that for nearly five years in my endeavours to get my MBA and did really well. There was sort of a reward that if you did well in that course, you could go into this “doing business with China” unit, which was for MBA students. I was successful in that and part of that unit was two weeks in Shanghai. The sad story is that doing that MBA externally at that time, there were two units to complete the MBA that you needed to be resident for in Perth and I couldn’t do that so I didn’t ever get my MBA, two units short, but they gave me a graduate diploma of business [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: That is a lot of work.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was huge and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my husband, which you’ll hear all the way through these interviews.

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Ms Anne Yardley: I was looking at the book “Making a Difference” where you said that your studies in economics had led you to believe that economic rationalism was fatally flawed. What’s wrong with it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: [Laughs] Economic rationalism, I think, is fatally flawed for Australia because it really is based on the sort of user-pays system, paring things down to making sure that governments only do things when the business plan stacks up. In fact, I remember back in my studies at MLC probably when we were told that actually governments should step in where private enterprise and commercial interests fail, and that is absolutely so important in Australia. One of our biggest challenges is trying to extend government out into remote and regional areas where it is so expensive. The other thing—my comments about economic rationalism being fatally flawed is that in economics 101 you learn about the fact that the whole basis of economic study and economic theory is on the fact that there is universal knowledge about what’s out there in the marketplace. I guess we’re seeing that a bit more now with the internet and so on. There is universal access to the market and also that actually it’s a level playing field. But, in fact, all three of those are false assumptions in my understanding now of the world, particularly for people in regional areas. You look at farmers trying to deal with Coles and Woolworths, for instance, and they really are in a very uneven playing field. You look at people in regional areas trying to access services and so on but they don’t get choice. There’s no choice; you actually have to accept whatever is delivered to you at the price that’s nominated, so there’s no negotiation of price, you know, the two curves meet in the middle. Sure, but it meets at the point that is dictated by the person or the organisation or the government delivering the service.

From my point of view, I think economic rationalism has done a huge amount of damage to Australia. I remember, actually, when I was working for the National Farmers Federation—this is in the 70s—when they first talked about fringe benefits tax: in fact, that it was unfair and unreasonable that people who provided accommodation in remote areas to enable them to conduct their work are getting an unfair advantage to those in the cities who have to pay for their own accommodation; so, therefore, the employer should be taxed for providing that accommodation to their employees. I remember back then where we were sitting around the table and we were in an agricultural organisation and everybody said, “Well, that will be the demise of a residential workforce in regional Australia.” And that’s exactly what happened. That’s why we see FIFO these days. Our regional towns and cities, particularly now in the mining areas, have withered and died while our companies have all moved to FIFO and the reason they have moved to FIFO is that they 24

DUNCAN INTERVIEW get taxed for providing accommodation for their employees at the location of their enterprise but they get a tax deduction for the cost of flying employees in and out. Inevitably, the imbalance of our population—I think the census came out this week—over 80 per cent of our population live in Sydney and Melbourne. That was just exacerbated by that government policy. It always breaks my heart that because our Parliaments are so dominated by city members of Parliament because of the imbalance in our demographics, then our Parliaments don’t have a vision for populating all of Australia and supporting our regions. They say to themselves, "Oh, well, nobody wants to live in somewhere like Kalgoorlie, Karratha or Port Hedland.” But in other parts of the world we see very large populations living in those climate zones and living inland away from the ocean, and people do live there and they do enjoy it. But at the moment our whole economic system is actually biased against that.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’ve got us ahead of ourselves a little bit because, really, where we should be is looking at what you did after your couple of years in Canberra, because we will be coming back to this theme, I suspect, quite often.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes; absolutely, absolutely. We can come back to Canberra because the seed of my, I guess, desire to make a difference was sort of sown in Canberra sitting around that table just saying, “Government policy just doesn’t seem to understand the needs of regional areas.” But as I said to you last time, I’m quite a scary person inasmuch as I like to plan ahead and have these milestones of my life that I am determined to achieve and one of those was that I wanted to travel the world before I settled down.

Having had a few years in Canberra and worked for a while and had an absolute ball there as well in my personal life because I became involved with people who loved bushwalking, rock climbing, ice climbing, white water rafting and abseiling, I did all those things and, in fact, had a boyfriend over there who was very much involved in that, so the two of us decided we were going to go off backpacking around Europe. I had bought myself a return ticket to Canberra and I actually had a job lined up with Julian Cribb, who is well known now in this day and age as a specialist in world food supply and the need to support agricultural industries in the world that we mustn’t neglect; we mustn’t get too city focused. He was a new young journalist and he’d started himself a new newspaper called The National Farmer. I’d sort of agreed, “Yes, I’ll come back and I’ll be part of your team here and I’ll write.” Journalism, I thought, “Right, okay; here’s a new possibility for me, and be part of this new organisation, trying to get the word out into the world about the need to respect and value agriculture.” With that security all lined up, we sold all our possessions 25

DUNCAN INTERVIEW and drove my little Ford Escort across the Nullarbor and left it with my parents in the Goldfields and the remaining precious bits and pieces that we didn’t want to sell, loaded up our backpacks, which were incredibly heavy but we were very, very fit, and set off to explore the world.

Ms Anne Yardley: Where did you go; what did you learn in this trip?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: [Laughs] We flew to Greece first and just loved exploring the ancient world, ancient history, particularly Crete. We enjoyed looking at the ancient ruins but, of course, we then also challenged ourselves by backpacking through the Samaria Gorge, which is a place that only people can get to by walking and you come out at the other end at a little fishing village and the only way you can get out is to catch a lift on a fishing boat. It was very challenging and we actually ended up arriving at this little fishing village after dark, absolutely exhausted. Nobody could speak any English; we were just begging for some food. It was a fantastic experience, very physically challenging. We stayed there a few days. It was just stunning; beautiful clear water, warm sandy—pebbly— beaches actually, I think, but beautiful, beautiful place. Then, of course, got the mandatory ride on the fishing boat around to the next part. We sort of island hopped for a bit around the Greek Islands, then went across to sort of Italy and Spain. The same thing, we went up to the north of Italy again walking around Murano where they do all the white-water rafting and so on. It was all sort of focusing on places where we could walk and explore. I remember we found ourselves in the Alpes-Maritimes in the south of France where we then decided we were going to walk. We were up in the Alps and a snowstorm came in and we were most unprepared for it—typical young people, you know. We ended up in this hut where we had no bedding or anything, you know, and there were these other rock climbers and walkers were there, again—couldn’t speak any English—who basically took us in and looked after us and helped us through the night and gave us a lift out the next day. We had the most hair-raising trip I’ve ever done in my life. They were young university students. We were very grown up. I was 25, I think, trying to tell them in French to slow down and don’t be stupid. If I hadn’t frozen the night before, I was certainly going to die on the way home. That was good fun.

We spent some time in Switzerland. Both of us passed the physical test to be able to climb the Matterhorn. You have to be able to prove that you can walk a certain distance going a certain altitude and, of course, lack of oxygen. We both did that but in the end I decided that my partner at the time, he was so determined to climb the Matterhorn and I was a little bit unsure that I might hold him back, so, in the end, I decided I’d stay at the base camp

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW while he climbed it. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it because the weather came in really badly and they were surrounded in cloud and really struggled to get back down so I was quite glad of that decision. Then we travelled through France and into the UK, again just walking and exploring and so on. It was in the UK that our relationship sort of came to an end and we parted ways. I then decided to fly back via South Africa to catch up with relatives in South Africa and friends in Zimbabwe. I did that and then flew home to Kalgoorlie towards the end of 1979.

As I said before, I had my ticket on to Canberra but I got to Kalgoorlie and discovered that my mother was not well. She was struggling with changes in her life. She was really not in a good place mentally. She said to me one day, “I don’t know why I bothered to have daughters”, because my sister had married a pilot who was subsequently flying with Air New Zealand, so she moved to New Zealand. I was living in Canberra and I could see that she was in dire straits and there was nobody on her side, so I decided to stay and just look after her for a bit. I got a job with the local firm of solicitors, actually, called Bannerman and Lalor. Of course, Chris Lalor was one of the principals who subsequently was well known for his mining exploits with Sons of Gwalia. Also working in that firm was a very young and brash newly from university, Tom Percy, and also a very full of himself young gentleman fresh out of university, David Johnson, who subsequently became, of course, a Liberal senator. It was a very fun place to work but, yes that was really how I ended up back in Kalgoorlie.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did that feel for you, because you’ve had that experience in Canberra and you intended to be back there, then that experience travelling? How was it coming back to Kal and feeling that that was where you were going to be living?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it was interesting. I mean, I love Kalgoorlie and I love the outback. I was really very much at the crossroads and still really could see a vision for myself of having a career. But I also had this list that I was checking off of course, and, having done the travel, the partner and a boy and a girl were sort of next on the list. It is interesting you asked earlier on how I ended up meeting Ian, who subsequently became my husband. I actually had met him eight years earlier. It was a very funny episode because I’d just come back from South Africa from Rotary exchange scholarship and before I started university, so I was still only 18. My very best friend from school—we’d known each other since we were 12; she was a city girl but loved horses and came to the station every school holidays to ride horses and motorbikes and live the life—had gone on Rotary exchange to Canada or to Seattle, US, but very close to Canada. We both got back 27

DUNCAN INTERVIEW at the same time and we were both broke, so my dad had organised that we would be jillaroos over the summer holidays. He was very long suffering because I don’t think we did a lot of work, really; we just had fun.

Mum was away and we were there by ourselves with dad, and dad cooked up this grand plan where next door the nephew of the people who owned the magnificent Edjudina station had moved down there to learn the ropes. The whole deal was that he was going to inherit the place. His name was . Anyway, I was a bit romantically attached with someone in South Africa, being at that age. Dad had decided that we needed to nip that in the bud so he invited this John Howard over, thinking: here’s a perfect match. A bit like Isabella of Spain really; we can get these two together, amalgamate the properties and things would be really good. That was fine. Most pastoral properties in those days had tennis courts, you see, so dad invited John Howard across to play tennis with his cousin, who was also working there at the time. He’d been a jackaroo up on Albion Downs, which was where his uncle worked. His uncle was actually John Howard’s father. Jack Howard owned Albion Downs station. John Howard’s cousin was one Ian Duncan. Anyway, they came across and these two boys walked in. They were in their early 20s. I think Ian was about 22. There are three years’ difference in our ages. He was a very good tennis player, and so was I. Anyway, these two boys walked in and Glenda said to me, who has always, always wanted to live on a sheep station and live the dream from all the Lucy Walker novels that she’d read during her adolescence, she said to me, “I bags John.” I said, “Look, you can have both of them. I’m not really interested. I’ve got this bloke back in South Africa and I’m going to university and I’m not interested in men at all, full stop.” That was fine. We had a fabulous day of tennis and really enjoyed it. I went off and didn’t think any more of it. Glenda threw herself quite seriously at John. In the end, they did get married and she ended up back on Edjudina. Everything was heading towards fulfilling her dream of inheriting the property.

I was at university just doing my own thing and I got a call from this Ian Duncan, who said, “Look, I’m best man at a wedding and I need a partner and I don’t really know anybody in Perth who could come with me. Will you?” I thought, “Oh, poor darling, isolated child.” I said, “Okay.” I went with him to this wedding and subsequently found out that he’d actually spoken to the groomsman and said, “I want to invite this girl, please. Can you make a seat for her at the table?” You’ve got to give him points for trying because, really, I was, again, working through my list, which was to then finish my education, get a job, travel the world. It was all there and this was in 1973. We went out together off and on. I was sort of resisting all the way because there was no way that I wanted to end up back in the pastoral industry. 28

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It was actually something that I didn’t want. But we had a ball together. We really enjoyed each other’s company. Slowly but surely, he wormed his way into my heart, I guess, so in 1975, before I went to Canberra, we actually got engaged. It really was, I guess, to just take the pressure off. I still insisted on going to Canberra and doing that post-graduate course.

I was going to come back and work in Western Australia but while I was away I thought, no, I’m just not ready to settle down, so I broke it off. The rest, as we say, is history. I did my study over there and worked and travelled and ended up back in Kalgoorlie and Ian, God bless him, decided to have one last-ditch attempt and everyone was saying to him, “You’re mad; why are you just setting yourself up to get hurt all the time?” Anyway, we started going out. I got back in November. We announced our engagement on 1 January 1980 and got married on 1 March. It all happened in very rapid time but the deal was, I said to him—we did love each other; there’s no doubt about that—“You don’t want to marry me because I don’t want to live on the station.” I said, “How about we make a deal? We’ll get married. I’ll give it five years; I’ll give it a go and after the five years we’ll review the situation and if I can’t do it, then we have to agree that we move to somewhere where I can actually work and where the kids can”—the thing that was scaring me was teaching my own children as well, having seen what we put our poor governesses and my mother through. Intellectually, I’m quite capable of teaching my children but personality-wise I probably wasn’t. That’s how it happened [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: Where was his station? How far away from yours and how remote were you once you got married?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The property that he was working on when I first met him was about 100 miles—I don’t know what that is in kilometres, getting up around 150 kilometres or something—out of town.

Ms Anne Yardley: This is out of Kal?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Out of Kalgoorlie, north east—on the way to nowhere, really. The property that my family were on, Menangina, was next door, so that was 120 kilometres out of town— 74-odd miles. Interestingly, my parents then bought the property immediately south of Menangina, closer to Kalgoorlie, called Gindalbie. That was only 70 kilometres out of Kalgoorlie. They actually moved there because it was closer to town and so on, so they put a manager on in Menangina, none other than Ian Duncan! They’d 29

DUNCAN INTERVIEW already set their heart on having him in the family before I’d even said yes, I think. I remember when they employed him. I said to them, “What the hell are you doing; you’re just making it difficult for everybody?” He was already managing our original family property when we married, so that’s where we went back to, which was my childhood home, and the four generations of stuff in all the storerooms and the house.

It was lovely to be back there but it was very, very challenging. Things had changed a lot as we talked about in our last interview in that we didn’t have the large numbers of people. Things were just too tight then to have the big lot of employees and, of course, most of the Aboriginal people had then sort of moved to town. Unfortunately, when drinking rights were given to Aboriginal people, that was really the end of them living out in the bush. It’s the biggest cause of Aboriginal despair and dysfunction—alcohol. We were sort of pretty well on our own. We did have one or two people working.

But also there was still that sort of movement of Aboriginal people through from the Central Desert through to Kalgoorlie and they’d come through all the back roads because usually their vehicles were unlicensed and so were the drivers and they were probably unroadworthy as well. We were getting a lot of people through but, you know, they weren’t the traditional; these were the next generation, who were angry about things that had happened in the past and who were affected by alcohol and drugs and, as I think we touched on in our last interview, I think they’d been poisoned against the pastoral industry. Even in my most recent times in Kalgoorlie talking to some of the elders, they now say, “Actually, the time when we were on the pastoral properties was the best time since white man got here.” I was talking to my mum and dad last night about it actually; I stayed with them and dad was saying that the previous generation, his father and his generation in the pastoral industry, were very hard on Aboriginal people but as I think we said, they were hard on everybody. But they were saying that, really, the time that they had on the property was the heyday of the relationship between pastoralists and Aboriginal people. They said it was just the most wonderful time.

When I was out there as a young wife and a young mother of two baby girls—I had Katharine in 1982 and Anna in 1984, I was often on my own with two babies—a truckload of Aboriginal people would come through. They’d all just get off the truck and they’d say, “We want fuel.” You couldn’t really say no. I’d have to go over and unlock the bowser and fill their vehicles. You could hear them following me and making snide comments and so on. I was alone and afraid. We had a big cool room there and they’d just walk into the coolroom. If there was a kangaroo hanging on the hook or a box of oranges, just help 30

DUNCAN INTERVIEW themselves to your food in your coolroom. What could you do? You couldn’t do anything. You’re on your own and vulnerable. That just became too much for me. In the end, it’s interesting, the Shire of Menzies—because the main road just came right through the homestead complex—put in a bypass so the road bypassed the homestead but, of course, people still came in. After Anna, our second child in 1984, after she was born, I had easy pregnancies, but terrible births with both the children. With Anna I ended up back in intensive care and unwell when she was only sort of five months old. Out on a station by yourself with babies, no-one to talk to about it was just too hard and in the end I got very severe post-natal depression—and eventually by 1985, which was five years after we were married, I just said, “Look, I can’t do this”, and that’s when we decided to move.

Ms Anne Yardley: Where did you move to?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: God bless my parents, you know, because they could see the writing on the wall and with their very, very substantial financial help, we bought a farm in Esperance just 20 kilometres out of town on a sealed road with a school bus going past the front door. They were very astute business people, my parents, so there was a legal agreement and we needed to pay them back for that farm, and that caused us a huge amount of financial stress. We went straight into that period where we had the recession we had to have, thanks to Paul Keating. That’s the other time I learned to hate economic rationalism. Interest rates went to 23 per cent and we were trying to buy this farm so, of course, I went to work in amongst having the babies and, really, Ian was working on the farm to pay the interest and I was working to feed us.

I remember when our daughter Kat— who subsequently went into the fashion industry and who lives in Melbourne—was always wanting to look pretty. Just going back a step, I was very much, as you know, a tomboy and very upset when my brother was given a Tonka bulldozer and I was given a doll when I really wanted a bulldozer too. I decided that was not going to happen to my child. So Kat—Katharine, her name was when she was young— out there she was always dressed in overalls and I gave her a Tonka grader for her second birthday. She actually put it in the little doll’s bassinet and put a blanket over it and gave it a bottle. I thought: hmm. As soon as she could speak, she said mummy, “I want to a wear a dress.” Kat, going on her first year five camp in Esperance said, “Mummy, I need some new clothes to go on camp.” I said, “Righto. We’ll do that.” So, in we went to the Red Cross and we just got second-hand clothes. I made her a new handbag out of an old pair of

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW jeans. I cut the legs off and had the pockets on the side and I put a bit of braid on it and so on and she just thought she was just the best off to camp with her second-hand clothes and her homemade handbag. Yes, things were incredibly tough in those days, but I was much, much happier because I started working at a law firm in Esperance, Birman and Ride, as a law executive, so I was drafting wills and doing that sort of work. Of course, following in my parents’ footsteps, I became very active in the community; became president of the childcare centre and got a new purpose-built building; applied for the funding and did all the lobbying. I was on the childcare centre committee, the P&C; just followed my kids through. I was president of netball, even though I had never played it myself; president of swimming, gymnastics, tennis—all those things. Harking back to my experience in Canberra, that’s where my ability as a chair became recognised and I would agree to do it and I would do it for three years and then continue on guilt-free. That’s my philosophy. Pull your weight, do your bit and then you can still be part of it all without feeling guilty.

Ms Anne Yardley: So you have, by this stage, four children?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. It took us 10 years to get to the four children because after Anna, the doctor said, “Really, you shouldn’t have any more.” So, we waited a while. But the old saying is that the size of the average farm family is determined by when the first boy arrives. Of course, as I said to you before, I’d had this list where I was going to do all these things and get married and have a boy and a girl, which is exactly what my brother and sister did. They both had a boy first and then a girl and then they each went on to have four children. I’m thinking: this is just not fair. I would have happily stopped at two, as much as I adore all four of my children.

We waited the four years until—the doctor didn’t, but I did think—I was sufficiently recovered, and had another beautiful child, another girl, Elise, our little God’s gift. I remember my brother ringing me after she was born and he said to me, “What a bugger, Wen. You must be so disappointed.” I’m going, “Oh, I’m not sure if that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone has their third girl”, but she’s adorable and we loved her greatly. Again, I was most unwell after she was born and it took some time to recover from that. But our gorgeous friends, the doctor who delivered our first two children were also good family friends of ourselves and he had three girls and a boy as well. But then he came over this fabulous recipe which was really quite scientific, all about —

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Ms Anne Yardley: How to achieve a boy?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: How to achieve a boy! So we thought. “Right; we’ll have one last go [laughs]!” So in June 1992, James was born. I was so pleased and we put the notice in the paper, “Ian thrilled, Wendy retiring”, and then I put “CFA”, which actually is a notation that you put against old ewes. It means cast for age, not up for having any more babies [laughs]. So, yes, we had the four kids and I really would have probably enjoyed to spend more time parenting them, but that wasn’t a choice; I had to work. So, with each of them I went back to work when they were less than one-year-old, but not full time. For some of my jobs I did manage to negotiate a sort of nine to three regime. But I always loved working and I loved being part of the community groups that I took leadership roles in. I’ve never been a great watcher of TV and my husband has. He would settle down in front of the telly at night and I would be always on my computer typing minutes or submissions or doing things for the community.

Ms Anne Yardley: What do you think drives you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, isn’t that interesting. I think that there is that sort of underlying—we talked about, I guess, religious philosophy, that sort of desire to serve, but I also think that the very sort of harsh and challenging upbringing that I had where the demands were placed on us as kids to be the best and to perform and I guess to seek approval from our very wonderful but quite harsh and judgmental father, is probably what’s driven me all my life, also sort of seeking to meet those goals, that vision for me that others had. I think that when you scratch the surface, that’s often what drives a lot of us is to sort of reach the goals that your parents or others have determined for you. My dad was on the Menzies shire for 40 years. He was president for a long time and he was really asked to stand for Parliament on several occasions and never did for various reasons and I think regretted it. So I think, really, and particularly being the member for Kalgoorlie, it was not only closure for me, a wonderful achievement, but it was probably closure for him as well. He was just so thrilled to see that.

Ms Anne Yardley: Again, I think your parents will pop up as we talk about other things later on as well, but I’m wondering where you were through this period politically. Where did you place yourself?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, look, my family were conservative and supporters of the Liberal Party. So, was my husband, really. But I was all over the place. I would vote according to what was going on at the time, so I have on occasion voted Green, voted Labor, voted Democrat, but at that time, with Paul Keating and the dreadful economic circumstances that people on the land were paying—anyone who had a loan or a mortgage in business—it was just devastating. Sure, it might have been the recession we had to have, but it took a lot of prisoners. A lot of people were just devastated by that. So I think at that stage I’d started to move away from the Labor Party anyway, particularly realising my hatred of economic rationalism.

It’s interesting though: at that time there were quite a lot of young farmers trying to get established. Esperance is a very new farming area. This is indicative of, I guess, our community spirit. None of us could afford to go out anymore, so we were all starting to become very insular, very depressed. I became very worried about my own cohort of people farming in the region. We were lucky; our farmhouse was massive, so we started what we called pub nights. Once a month we invited all the young farmers, young people with families that were battling, trying to pay their loans off, to our place. All you had to do was bring something to share to eat and your own alcohol. We just provided the venue and the music and it just happened for nearly two years where we were the social hub of the young struggling farmers in the district. Some survived; a lot didn’t. They ended up in mortgagee sales and so on, but it’s so interesting because nobody said, “Oh, it’s our turn, let’s have it at our place next time.” It just always was us and they still talk about how we helped to get a lot of them through, just by having that moral support, that time to have a bit of fun. Our kids all ran riot; we didn’t stick them in a back room with a video. They were all out playing murder in the dark and having a ball outdoors. I guess that’s probably one thing that I’m really proud of. Even if you can’t afford it, you can still find a way to help others. It’s not selfless; you get a great deal of personal reward from that. Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: They were tough times and you clearly are very concerned about your community, but it sounds to me too like you were really blaming the Keating government for the recession we had to have.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you believe there was another way?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I don’t know. Probably in retrospect, that period was maybe due to international circumstances as well. I don’t know. I just think that there was a real lack of sympathy or understanding of what was happening to people in regional areas. While we were trying to pay those interest rates, we were also being asked to pay full costs on things that had been equalised before. For instance, there used to be what was called the fuel equalisation scheme. The cost of fuel was actually equalised across the nation in an understanding that our nation’s economic wealth depended on people in regional areas. Back in those days it was farming; in more recent days, it’s mining. You do have to travel long distances, put fuel in your car if you’re out in those areas, but we are all doing our bit for the economy. A couple of cents a litre for city people meant you could bring the price up to being equal across the nation. I still think that that is reasonable. But, of course, the government didn’t. Even now you see the debate happening in these last couple of weeks about the tariff equalisation contribution for electricity tariffs and they’re saying, “Why should mums and dads in Perth pay one or two cents extra a unit in their electricity to subsidise people out in the regions?” Yes, you can well ask that question but people in the regions are Australians too and we’re endeavouring to contribute to our economy. And, in fact, the wealth of our nation is generated out there. If you do ask people to pay the full cost of power, then they’re not going to live there anymore. They’re all going to move to Perth. If you take this to the Nth degree, why don’t the people in Collie have the cheapest power and people in Perth pay more expensive? It’s actually an argument that’s framed to suit the majority, who have the power in Australia.

Ms Anne Yardley: When you were having your pub nights, politically where were your neighbours? What were their leanings but also what were their issues?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, they were all very antigovernment, anti-Labor, anti-Paul Keating. I’m not quite sure the years that this happened, but when the wool stockpile was allowed to blow out of proportion, the price of wool plummeted. We were told our sheep were worthless and we actually paid 21c a head to kill our sheep. These farmers, who couldn’t afford the bullets, were dealing with their sheep in the most horrific way that was just tearing their hearts out. People, you know, get told by PETA and others that farmers are heartless and cruel people. But to be destroying your own sheep that you have spent years breeding up and getting the type of wool you want or the type of flock you want and taking a great deal of pride in that work, to then be told, “Actually, your sheep are worthless and we’d like you to get rid of them”, I am surprised that we didn’t have some suicides. There were actually one or two. But that was one of the reasons we decided to have this pub night, because people were just bleeding. It was awful. 35

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I suppose in this day and age people will get thingy about talking about such things, but people were clubbing their animals on the head or putting them into the back of grain trucks and pumping the exhaust from the truck in there and then tipping them into great pits on the farm and pushing sand over them. It was just horrific what these men were going through and the government just didn’t care—didn’t care. Seeing my husband come home after doing that for his day’s work, he was in a dreadful place. They all were. Terrible, you know, mentally trying to get through that.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did you respond to that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, you just try and pick up more and more of the burden, don’t you? And so I was just working harder. My husband was just not in the right place to be parenting, so I was taking the kids to sport and, you know, doing all the parent–teacher nights and just trying to keep the show on the road, really, while these boys were all trying to just stay alive.

Ms Anne Yardley: What happened to pull you out of that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think, really what happened was that I hit the wall, inevitably. It had to happen, really, because I just couldn’t save the world. Towards the end of 1998, I actually got pneumonia really bad. I’d been denying it, so I wasn’t going to the doctor or anything and my husband wasn’t noticing how unwell I was because he was in a totally different place. I rang the doctor’s surgery and I said, “Look, I’m really sorry; I know you’re having a really bad flu season but I’ve had a temperature.” There was a shortage of doctors, of course, so it took two or three weeks to get into the doctor. I said, “I’ve had a temperature of 40 degrees for longer than I can remember—four or five days— and I just don’t think I can keep going.” I was sitting in my car actually outside the supermarket trying to get the strength up to do the shopping and just feeling so unwell, so I rang the doctor and they said, “Oh, you’d better come around.” I walked into the surgery and they just took one look at me and put me into hospital.

Then during that week my sister came over from New Zealand, my brother visited from Kalgoorlie and my parents came down, and it was only later that I realised that I was actually really in trouble, because I was so unwell, I didn’t realise how unwell I was. I came out the other side of that. I think when you do have those crises, I just realised we couldn’t go on like this. It was about the time that they were starting to plant Tasmanian blue gums 36

DUNCAN INTERVIEW in the farming areas and so I actually, unbeknown to my husband because we weren’t really communicating that well, I actually came to Perth. I got a meeting with the fellow from a company called Integrated Tree Cropping and I said, “We’ve got a property. It’s on the coast-ish, and I think it would probably be suitable for planting trees. Would you be interested?” And he said, “Yes, possibly.” So then I came home to my husband and I just said, “We can’t farm anymore. We’re just getting further and further into debt. We need to actually lease the place out; you need a break. So we’re going to tell everyone that we’re taking long service leave and we’re going to lease our farm for a year, and I don’t know what you’re going to do but you’ll have to find something to do. I’ll keep working, I’ll feed the kids, but we need to rethink what we’re doing.” So, that’s what we did and I kept working. He got odd jobs, played a lot of golf and just, you know, really tried to get his head back together.

I eventually managed to convince him to sign up with the tree company. The year lease ended and we went in to putting the farm into trees, because during that year we sort of negotiated, which means we put our entire farm into Tasmanian blue gums. That meant we got an annual lease payment of far more than we were ever making on the place but also meant that my husband was unemployed. Interesting—I’ll always remember we’d just got back from the beach, and we were sitting outside the farmhouse in our bathers and all covered in sand and this plane circled around the place and landed on the paddock right next to the house and out came the managing director of Integrated Tree Cropping. He walked across the paddock and sat down with us and had a cup of tea, and he said to my husband, “Would you like to do some contract work for the tree company?” I actually believe he saved my husband’s life.

Ms Anne Yardley: You wouldn’t have been alone in this either as farmers.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, and it’s interesting because a lot of farms were put into trees around that time. It was when the price of wool was low, cropping was in a bad way, and a lot of people were saying, “Oh, you know, Tasmanian blue gums, they’re just weeds, monoculture, locking up good farmland for trees. It’s outrageous. How dare people do this.” Again, I became a bit of a spokesperson for the people who’d planted trees and I said, “Look, this is a commercial decision. I’m in business here and if I get paid a decent amount of money to grow food and fibre, I’ll grow food and fibre. At the moment, I’m not. I’m getting paid more to grow trees and that’s what I’m going to do. And when the price of food and fibre comes back to somewhere near reasonable, the land is still there under the trees and we can grow food and fibre again.” So there was a lot of, I guess, anger against 37

DUNCAN INTERVIEW that country going into trees, but it saved a lot of people. It actually saved a lot of lives and it saved a lot of senior farmers who really couldn’t get out. Their places were not saleable because agriculture was in such a bad way. But they put their property into trees and they got an income which allowed them to retire. So, it was actually a wonderful thing that came to Esperance and it did make a big difference, but it wasn’t that well accepted by the community.

Ms Anne Yardley: A real lifesaver in a lot of ways.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. Very literally a lifesaver. My husband, God bless him, because he came from the pastoral industry. He knew nothing about farming. We got down there we didn’t even know what a clover was or the difference between that and capeweed. He embraced that and did that because he did it for his family, he learnt how to farm, and he did a damn good job at it but circumstances went against him. So, then he took on this job and he learnt the computer mapping program and how to understand the soils and the topography and the isohyet and put them all on the maps and how to value it and then, it ended up he became the regional manager for the Integrated Tree Cropping down there, overseeing the planting of 50 000 hectares of trees, managing contractors, doing the induction, the occupational safety and health and the handling of chemicals. All that sort of stuff he then taught himself to do—the financial side of it, preparing budgets and managing contractors—God, he deserves a medal. He came from a very low place and our marriage was at a very low point but we’d both committed to it for life. We both believe that if you bring children into the world, then you stick with them, you know. But I’m forever full of admiration for him and how he just put farming behind him and decided to learn to be a forester. But the amazing thing is, funny how things do full circle. When he finished school, he wanted to be a forester, but you couldn’t do it in Western Australia, you had to go to Adelaide. His family couldn’t afford it and neither could he, so he went bush instead into the pastoral industry. There he is; he ended up in his chosen career anyway. He loved it; probably his happiest times were once we put the farm into trees.

Ms Anne Yardley: I think next time we will be talking about you and your career a little more.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, okay [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: Thanks for today, Wendy. [End of WendyDuncan_2] 38

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Wendy Duncan_3

Ms Anne Yardley: This is the third interview with Wendy Duncan, who retired at the 2017 state election after a distinguished parliamentary career as a National Party MLC and MLA. The interview is for the parliamentary history project. It’s being conducted at the Legislative Assembly meeting rooms. Today is Wednesday, 12 July 2017 and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Last time we spoke you said that at different times, before you joined the National Party, you had voted Labor, the Greens and the Democrats. You don’t do things without thinking about it, so what I’d like to know is what brought you to those points where you voted for different parties. What mattered to you then?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think we could probably refer back to my time in South Africa where I had this realisation about how precious democracy is and how precious individual votes are, and that we really should value it. Yes, I didn’t ever go into an election without fully weighing up everything that was on the table, the record of the government that was currently in power. And, I guess, world circumstances as well I was taking into account and made my vote accordingly and often at odds to, say, my parents or my husband. I just really did what I believed was the right thing. The interesting thing is, too, actually having a belief that one vote can make a difference. I think that it was that understanding, later on when I was state president of the Nationals, gave me the impetus to fight for change, because change only happens when individuals decide to change.

Ms Anne Yardley: What may then have brought you to vote Labor on one occasion, or the Democrats?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I’m not sure who it was—maybe it was Winston Churchill, was it?—said that when you’re young you’re usually more left than later in life. Certainly, when I was at university I was a very strong supporter of Gough Whitlam and Labor, for a start, because without him and my commonwealth scholarship and being from an isolated area where things weren’t that flush with funds, I probably couldn’t have gone to university. That free education—the decision to end the Vietnam War. I had even at boarding school been sneaking out to march in moratorium marches—that sort of thing. Also, I think, the understanding that women needed to be treated as equal and given equal opportunities— something that really started to come through loud and clear with Labor at that stage. That

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW is the period that I voted Labor. I guess I really lost interest in Labor, as we discussed last time, when I could see that not only was economic rationalism starting to damage regional Australia, but also that, sure, Labor cared about the less well-off, but as long as you were in the city and in a swinging seat. That hypocrisy started to wear a bit thin with me and I lost interest in Labor.

Ms Anne Yardley: The Democrats, who are no longer a party, and the Greens have often been holding the balance of power and are seen, maybe, as an alternative to the two major parties. I am wondering if that’s how you perceived them or whether there were other issues that brought you to vote that way.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Even though my parents were in the Liberal Party, I was never really a great Liberal supporter. I always felt that we needed to have that social aspect of policy. Sure, the Liberal Party does have that, but at times I think they ride roughshod. My time when I voted Democrat was really at the time of Don Chipp, where you could see that he was really part of the Liberal Party—part of that conservative side of politics that was less conservative. Having turned my back on Labor but I couldn’t quite bring myself to go the whole way to Liberal, I settled with the Democrats for a while and particularly liked some of their policies. I really struggle to think now of any in particular that caught my eye, but I think it was about a more international point of view of the world, openness to refugees following the Vietnam War and a more multicultural view of the world. It was something that I always appreciated. That was the Democrats. In the whole GST debate, it’s interesting how many people lost interest in the Democrats, but it was more Natasha Stott Despoja, who just seemed to me to be a bit of a populist who really had lost that depth of thought. I’ve got undying respect, and still have, for Senator Andrew Murray. I think he really is the epitome of what the Democrats were and should have continued to be.

From there it is interesting. I’ve been thinking about the Greens. It was at a time when we moved from the pastoral industry up in the goldfields where you work with the environment. You don’t manage or manipulate the land at all. You run your stock on the existing rangelands. You don’t plant any crops. You don’t clear any vegetation. You manage your livestock according to the seasons. You reduce them if there’s a drought. You increase them if you have a good season. Sure, in the early century a lot of that country got hammered, but I think it was really part of the learning process. The pastoralists needed to understand the variability of the rainfall and the resilience of the rangelands. By the time my husband and I were in the pastoral industry they were very, very conscious of 40

DUNCAN INTERVIEW managing the rangelands in a sustainable way—encouraging rehabilitation and taking an interest in the native vegetation. We moved down to Esperance and I must admit I was— appalled might be too strong a word—really taken aback with the extent of clearing of the land and the lack of trees and the threat to biodiversity and also, I think, towards the end of our farming career, the increasing use of chemicals. That made me start to think. My daughter at primary school—my eldest daughter—did an assignment on a little bit of wetland that we had on our farm. We put a lot of work into looking at what was there and so on. She actually won an award at the end of the year—the environment award. Then my next daughter down was also showing great concern and interest in the environment. She went off to Canberra with the school—also as a primary student, I think—and that’s where they first were starting to talk about greenhouse gases. I took umbrage at the schools teaching this to our children—about global warming and greenhouse gases and so on—without actually providing some solutions and some hope. I remember going into the principal. Me, I never mince my words; if something’s worrying me, people know about it. I said, “No wonder our youth are all committing suicide! Here you are feeding all this stuff to our kids but you’re actually not giving them hope. You’re not giving them some vision for the future.” I suppose that’s when I started becoming interested in the Greens because they were talking about limiting greenhouse gases. They were talking about limiting landfill. As an employee of the Shire of Esperance—Esperance, way back, had a voluntary program to be plastic bag–free. We were really very conscious of the environment. I was also involved with the Recherche Advisory Group, where we were trying to get a marine management plan for the Recherche Archipelago. In fact, we really were wanting a marine national park. I did at that time get a bit of a reputation, that I had to deal with when I was standing as the member for Kalgoorlie, of being a bit of a greenie. I’ve never really been involved in the debate about climate change. To me, the issue of climate change and what’s causing it is irrelevant. To me, what is relevant is that we shouldn’t be putting rubbish into our atmosphere or into landfill or into our oceans. I’ve always been very strong on that with my kids and with the way I live my life and so on. I guess that was my green phase in the 90s, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: This coincided with you working for the Shire of Esperance. Let’s talk about that for a minute because you were strategic policy officer, I think. What was that role and what did you gain from it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I started at the Shire of Esperance in the community services/community development section, where I was given the management or overseeing of developing the seniors plan and the plan for sport and recreation—events 41

DUNCAN INTERVIEW management and so on. I became very embedded in the community and very much engaged in listening to what the community wanted and delivering that message through to my superiors. It’s a very interesting story because we then had a new CEO. He started in the job and he called me into his office. He said, “I just don’t understand why you’re being paid more than the other secretaries in this organisation.” I remember saying to him, “I tell you what, here’s my CV. I’m going home. If you want me to work for you, you can call me” because I was just outraged at that—to have the conversation open like that. One of the things about my graduate diploma of secretarial studies I did in Canberra is that I often found myself in that pigeonhole. It’s been a battle all my life to break out of it. Anyway, he did call and apologise and said, “Actually, would you like to have the job as my right- hand person in the office alongside the CEO?” From there on we did a lot of work together—the entire strategic planning process for the Shire of Esperance. I project managed the establishment of a strategic industrial park there which was all about stakeholder management—managing the contractors, communicating back to council, negotiating land deals and compensation deals and so on, which was, really, very good experience. Of course, it helped me become familiar with government processes, red tape, approvals—all that sort of thing. That was good. Also, I was actively involved in the foreshore master planning. The foreshore of Esperance has been a thorn in the side of that community forever. Having been involved in all that, I guess I was pretty aware of the needs of the community. That did assist me in my movement into politics. I actually took on the role of state president while I was still working at the Shire of Esperance, but I soon realised I couldn’t keep going with that.

Ms Anne Yardley: I would like to pick you up on something you said about giving that ultimatum, essentially, to your manager. I know from talking to you that you needed that job, yet you put it on the line, essentially. Why did you do that? And is this the measure of Wendy Duncan—that you will do this?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think so. I suppose I had a reasonable faith in myself to find something else if he let me walk away. Also, because we were so desperately short of money, all through that period I was moonlighting in other jobs anyway. I had my own little consulting—through our farming company I was preparing little strategic plans and grant applications and so on at home at night in amongst studying externally for my graduate diploma of business. I’d also taken on the role of Esperance Wool Exporters’ executive officer. We were exporting wool to the UK, Germany and China. I was doing all that at home at night. I’d also taken on the job of CEO and company secretary of a cinema complex in Esperance because in the strategic planning that we’d done, the top thing that 42

DUNCAN INTERVIEW everybody put in the survey about what’s missing in Esperance was a cinema. The Shire of Esperance made a few desultory inquiries into whether one of the big chains would come down and they all were very disinterested. A group of local investors and superannuation funds decided, “Well, blow that! We’ll build one ourselves.” They asked me to do the explanatory memorandum and to help with finding investors and setting the whole show up and then I managed it, I think, from 2002 through to when I was elected to parliament. I was doing all that in addition to my work with the Shire of Esperance, which wasn’t full-time really because I had four kids. So I suppose I was willing to take the risk because I felt I had plenty of other strings to my bow.

Ms Anne Yardley: Now, this work has really, as you’ve said, embedded you in the community. Did you ever think about standing for local government? Was that something that interested you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it did, but it didn’t pay. I probably would have if it was a paid position but I just couldn’t afford to put time into things that didn’t pay me apart from president of netball, president of the amateur swimming club, president of the preprimary. Anything that didn’t pay was usually associated with my kids’ activities. We founded a soccer club, my husband and I. Our son—our youngest of the four—we took him off to football and he didn’t like it greatly and he came home and he said, “Well, I want to play soccer.” And we said, “Well, there isn’t a club.” My husband and I looked at each other and thought, “Right. Well, it looks like there’s another little job for us.” The first year of the soccer club we had 30 participants. By the third year there were 300. Now it’s got juniors and seniors; it’s off and racing. That’s the sort of unpaid stuff I was doing. It was to do with the kids and their activities.

Ms Anne Yardley: What then took you to Ross Ainsworth’s office as a research officer? This was in 1994. What was that switch—what was that about?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I’d actually worked at the Shire of Esperance, not in those roles we’ve just discussed, in the late 80s/ early 90s as a finance officer managing the aged- care facility. It was an independent-living facility that the shire managed and operated. I was doing all the financial management for that and managing people’s pensions and their eligibility—admitting them and so on. I was doing that, but I left that to go and have a baby, I think—so I took some time out. When I was ready to go back to work—there was no such thing as maternity leave, especially when you’re working part-time—they weren’t terribly interested in me. I really just took on the job with Ross Ainsworth because I basically had 43

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the qualifications and the pay was good. He was the only member of Parliament locally so if I wanted to get a job in and around Parliament, he was the man, basically. It was a very interesting job because what I said to him in our interview—I said, “Look, I can’t work for you full-time because I’ve got all these babies but I desperately want this job and I think we could job-share it.” He said, “Well, that’s unheard of. It’s never been done before and we’d have to ask Premier and Cabinet.” I said, “I tell you, if you allow me to recruit a partner to do this job—to job-share it—I promise you you’ll get 120 per cent out of the two of us.” He agreed. In fact, he ended up being one of the biggest advocates of job sharing because of exactly that. You do your three days, or whatever it was, and then hand over to your partner. Because you didn’t want to leave them with a huge pile of unfinished business, you made sure it was finished, so our productivity was unbelievable. My job-share partner—she had three kids as well—we ended up working it out that you’d work two days one week and three days the next and then have five days off, which would allow you time to catch up at home and so on. School holidays—one would work one school holidays and the other would work the other so they were all covered. It was really an amazing way to work.

Working in a member of Parliament’s office—I remember when I first started there, I used to go in that door with my heart in my throat because you just never know what is going to walk through the door. It requires not so much specific skills, but the ability to find solutions and to work through the mire of government agencies and processes to sort people’s problems out, so incredibly good experience. The other thing, of course, is I found that being in that job not only do you go up in the esteem of the people in the electorate, who start off calling you a secretary but after a while realise that you’re actually the de facto member of Parliament, but also you get the opportunity to meet people like Hendy Cowan and Eric Charlton and Monty House and the people coming and going. You start to learn to not only meet people in high places, but deal with them and hold your own with them. I think that was a very good experience. The whole time I was with Ross Ainsworth, I didn’t ever join the party; I was always staunchly apolitical as his electorate officer. He would ask me often to join and I would say, “No, I don’t want to be affiliated with the Nationals. I’m a proud swinging voter and that’s what I want to be for the rest of my life.”

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m glad you said that because I’d still like to tease it out a little bit. You said that you desperately wanted the job and I’m wondering to what extent it was because you needed a job and to what extent it was a political awakening. Not that you weren’t awake, but going in the direction of a particular party.

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No. The desperation was the fact that the pay rate for a woman was very good. The pay was more than I would get for anything else in Esperance. The other thing is that it really was in my area of, I guess, interest in that you are advocating for and problem-solving for people. Of course, I had a degree in politics and I loved politics. I followed it closely. I was an avid student of politics. From that point of view, yes, I desperately wanted it. Unfortunately, I think the dollar was above everything. We were battling to feed the kids at that stage. If it hadn’t really been for the family allowance, because Ian was farming and he was paying the 23 per cent interest and I was frantically trying to just put food on the table. That was my main focus—just to find the highest paying job that gave me—I wouldn’t have done a job that I wasn’t satisfied with. I wouldn’t have gone into work that I didn’t enjoy, but prior to working for Ross Ainsworth and before the baby before that, I was actually working in legal firms as a legal executive and drafting wills and settlements and discovery for court and that sort of stuff. I really love that sort of research and writing–type activities, which is what you do in a member of Parliament’s office.

Ms Anne Yardley: What kinds of things were people coming in through the electorate office doors with? What were their issues? What were their concerns, because this is something you are very concerned about—your local community?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was bothering them?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It’s a whole range of things and it depends what the issue of the day is. I remember just after Bryant’s rampage at Port Arthur, the whole issue of gun control was a huge issue in rural areas with farmers who needed their guns to undertake their vermin control blah, blah, blah. That caused a huge amount of angst and you needed to be able to hear people out, get their views through to the member of Parliament, pass back the government’s view. Government, particularly the Nationals—and that was very courageous—were pushing back pretty hard. It didn’t do the Nationals any good. It did Australia a lot of good. I support those changes, but, in fact, that was why the Nationals got massacred by One Nation—because we stood by those gun laws.

Then there’s the usual things with farmers of drought and feral animals and roads. School buses were big issues and little schools that might be closing and so on. But really the bread and butter of a member of Parliament’s office comes down to housing, health— 45

DUNCAN INTERVIEW fights with the hospital and the health system—and then, of course, Centrelink as well, which is federal, but because there was no federal member’s office, we dealt with all that as well. I remember one fellow who was having a big fight with Centrelink. I went with him all the way to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, having this big fight with Centrelink. He came in one day and he’s on the other side of the counter. This is before—they now have quite good security for electorate offices, because you’re on your own in the office. Now you have a big screen and a locked door, but I just had a counter. He walked in, he leant on the office counter and he said to me, “Wendy, if I’m ever smelling of alcohol, run for your life.” I said, “Oh, okay.” Anyway, I was working away with this guy and one day he came in and he actually was smelling of alcohol a bit. I didn’t really—what can you do? We had some documents to photocopy and I went down to the back of the office to photocopy them and I turned around and there he was. It scared the hell out of me. I must’ve started. He said, “Don’t worry, love. I’m not going to hurt you.” I managed to work my way back out to the front.

It was really at times a very challenging job in that you have people who are upset. They can be abusive. They can be obtuse—not telling you the truth. You have to work your way through that. In fact, that probably is why I resigned in the end from that job. I found myself actually, and my partner who was working there—we were really ending up being the member of Parliament. He was becoming more and more disinterested in the job and we just seemed to be writing and signing all his correspondence for him without him even seeing it. I thought, “Well, this is going to blow up in someone’s face sooner or later.” I didn’t want to be party to that. But also I think I just lost my empathy for people. When they walk in the door with some disaster with Homeswest or a debt or a marriage breakdown that involved domestic violence and alcohol, you just get to the point where you think, “Oh, actually there’s nothing I can do for you”, but you can’t say that when people walk in the door. So when I found myself just going, “Oh God, here we go again”, and realising I had no sympathy for them, I thought, “Time to get out of here.”

Ms Anne Yardley: What did you do when you got out of there?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I took a little bit of time out, but then I think it was then that I went pretty well straight through to that second phase with the Shire of Esperance and really settled in there. So, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: All right. What were the processes that took you from being a dedicated and considered swinging voter to someone considering joining a political party? 46

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think, as we mentioned before, I was becoming more and more frustrated with the total lack of understanding or consideration, or even appreciation, of people who lived and worked in regional Australia. It was always clear in my mind that without the mining industry and agriculture, actually Australia would be a pretty poor nation, and yet the major cities—particularly Sydney and Melbourne, but also Perth—were just piling the money, saying thank you very much and building railways and roads and hospitals and all the things that you need in the city, and the infrastructure and services in regional Western Australia were just slowly dying. At the Esperance hospital the last upgrade was in the 1960s. It was a dreadful environment to work in for government workers, and of course then it became very hard to attract and retain them. My own thought was, “Well, if you’ve got a crap workplace, why would you come to a regional area?”

I think probably one of my moments of epiphany was when the old power station—diesel- fired, so being a bit of a greenie in those days, the diesel-fired power station was about to reach its use-by date and so there was lot of debate about what was going to replace it and talk about having a combination of renewable and maybe gas or diesel and so on. But there ended up a very big standoff between Esperance port, which was the biggest power user in the region, and the state government about what the price of power was going to be in Esperance. The then minister for resources and energy, one , came down to Esperance and stood in the Esperance Civic Centre—and there would have been over 200 people there—talking about why we needed to pay full cost recovery for the power as it was delivered not only to the port, but to other users in the region, and he just flippantly said, “Well, if you don’t like the price of power, move to Perth.” I must admit I saw red. That was probably a real moment for me where I was just outraged. How dare you say that when you don’t want us all to move to Perth? What would be the implications of everybody in regional Western Australia moving to Perth? You’ve got enough trouble with supplying power and water, and traffic jams and housing without a comment like that. So I was pretty appalled really, and that made me go away and think, “Who is sticking up for regional Western Australia? Who is sticking up for mining and agriculture? It’s supposed to be the Nationals, but they’re useless. They’re joined at the hip to the Liberal Party, you don’t even know what they think, they’re not individuals, they’re only concerned about their own ministerial positions—Deputy Premier—and actually not really putting their neck on the line for what they were supposed to be standing up for.” So I suppose that’s when I started to think that if no-one else is standing up, then I might have to.

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Ms Anne Yardley: But you didn’t have to join the National Party; you could have been an Independent?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, and that’s an interesting discussion actually, because after that meeting, I decided that I would start working more closely with the Nationals. So I did start going to meetings and things and still didn’t join. It was in 2001, when Brendon Grylls had just been elected, so he’s 28, and he came down to Esperance to meet with the local branch, and because I was still—no, I wasn’t still working for Ross Ainsworth3, but I was sort of in the in-crowd for the Nationals. We were at a friend’s place on a balcony overlooking West Beach, drinking quite a bit of red, and just saying amongst ourselves, “How useless are the Nationals?” Brendon’s a member. They’re supposed to be sticking up for regional Western Australia, and we are dying a slow and painful death. So we did then at that point agree that we were going to start a new party to represent regional Western Australia. In fact, I came up with a name: WA Regions—WAR. But then in the cold light of day, we really thought, “Well, why don’t we just get in and fix the one we’ve got? It’s got a membership base, it’s got a constitution, it’s got a philosophy that’s pretty right really, but it’s just not doing what it’s supposed to be doing.” So it was really from there that we decided we would try and get in and fix it. Brendon was working at it, and his father was starting to take a more active role in the organisation. In fact, he made a failed bid, just because he wasn’t well organised, to take over the presidency. So my friend who I job-shared with, she went on to state executive in 2002, and she kept saying to me, “Wendy, this party is in dire financial circumstances. It’s going to go broke. The only person who can fix it is you.” I’m thinking, “Why me?” Well, it was because I was working with Esperance Wool Exporters and the cinema; a lot of organisations that were running on an oily rag that I managed to keep financial, I think, and because I was studying for my Graduate Diploma of Business maybe. I don’t know. So she talked me into standing for state executive. I joined in probably about 2001, and was then taking an active interest in the branch. I’m not sure when I was branch president; probably fairly soon, because they were pretty thin on the ground.

Ms Anne Yardley: It was; I think it’s about 2003 you were on the state executive.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. So in 2003 I went onto state executive and could see then that the organisation was in its death throes; it was in dire straits. When I go into an organisation new, I really sit tight; I don’t say much and I try and take it in a fair bit, because

3 Ross Ainsworth was Nationals MLA for Roe 1989-2005 48

DUNCAN INTERVIEW you really need to understand the whole situation before you start having an opinion about it. So for the whole of 2003 I really didn’t actively get involved with what was going on at state executive. I attended and I voted and I had an opinion, but I didn’t really try to make any change.

What happened next still puzzles me. I don’t really know how it happened, but I suspect it was my friend Jane that I job-shared with and who talked me into going onto state executive. Maybe she dobbed me in. But I got a phone call from Eric Charlton4, early 2004. He said, “Wendy, we want you to stand for state president. I remember it as clear as day, because I said to him, “Eric, you don’t even know me. We’ve hardly met over the years.” He said, “I’ve heard enough about you to think that you can do this for us”, and I said, “Well, I need to think about this.” So that was really what happened. It was a fairly rapid rise in the party once I’d decided to join.

Ms Anne Yardley: It was a rapid rise. How much more difficult was it then, this rise, because you were a woman? Did that add to it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. It’s really interesting you should say that, because just last week I went off to a thankyou function in Kalgoorlie for me as a member of Parliament, and some of the old party stalwarts that I knew from right back then turned up. One of them said to me towards the end of the night, “There you go, Wendy; I told you so.” I said, “What?” He said, “You always said to me when I was trying to talk you into standing for Parliament back in the early 2000s that no-one would ever vote for a woman. It took us so much effort to get you to even put your name down.” I thought back, and he was right. I think one of the things about the Shire of Esperance was, sure, I got to work alongside the CEO after having told him to read my CV, but I didn’t ever get paid a decent pay rate. In fact, when I left that job, the male who took my place was put on $20 000 more immediately. I’d been hitting my head up against the glass ceiling quite a bit, in spite of being a bit feisty, still battling to break through. I’d decided, “What the hell. I’ve got four kids and a lot of other stuff going on. I don’t need these battles”, but people like Ian Robertson and Jocelyn Bowey and Allan Marshall obviously had decided that there were greater things for me to do, even though I probably didn’t recognise it in myself.

Ms Anne Yardley: You were voted in for the Esperance branch for a start —

4 From Tammin, Eric James Charlton was MLC for the Central Province 1984-1980 and Agricultural Region 1989-1998. He was leader of the National Party in the Legislative Council from 1989 to 1998. 49

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: — to be president. Then you were voted to be the state president. What do you believe people saw in you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It’s interesting, isn’t it? When I was voted in at the Esperance branch, the rationale I gave to myself is that nobody else wanted the job, and it was probably fairly true. With state president, again the party was broke; it was bankrupt and it was in dire financial straits. If anyone had seen that situation, which I had because I’d been on executive for a year, they wouldn’t have wanted to touch it with a 50-foot pole. So, again, I just justified to myself, “Oh, well, no-one else wants to do this but somebody has to. I can’t do any worse than the guy before me, so I’ll give it a go.” I had incredible support. I think there was such relief around the traps that somebody (a) was willing to take it on; (b) had the time, because even though we couldn’t afford it, I resigned from the Shire of Esperance to run the party; (c) I had a bit of education and some business management and strategic planning experience, that I think they really felt this is our last hope, really. So I just thought, “Well, what have I got to lose? The party’s going down the gurgler anyway, so either I go with it or we save it.”

Ms Anne Yardley: I think you had a lot to lose. As you said, you’ve given up your job to do this. So, really, why were you prepared to do something that no-one else would touch with a long pole?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That’s an interesting question. For a start, I think Brendon Grylls5 was there in the parliamentary team with an incredible amount of fire in his belly and desire and anger. There was a lot of anger out there. People were angry. I think, too, that made me realise that people were ready. One of the things I remember from, I don’t know, studying the French Revolution I think is that there’s various phases people go through. They sort of grumble, and then they get into the anger where they tell the government what they think, and nothing happens so then they go into a passive resistance and start refusing to cooperate, and then eventually they rise up and you have a revolution. I think, really, regional Western Australia was at that point, and it was palpable; you could feel it. People were angry; they were sick of it. One Nation had been and gone. I remember in the late 90s we used to go across to the Newdegate field day with a stand for the

5 Brendon Grylls was Nationals MLA for the Pilbara 2001-2008 and Merredin 2008-2017. He was National Party leader 2005-2013 and 2016-2017 50

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Nationals—for Ross Ainsworth. So I was working for him, so mid-90s probably. Once Nation was ascendant. People would walk across the other side of the alleyway to avoid talking to you. The Nationals were a pox on everyone’s houses. Seeing those old farmers trailing along behind with their tongues hanging out and thinking she was God’s gift to particularly mankind, I think, but, you know, Australia too in second. But they came and went, they were elected, they were a rabble, they all fell about themselves, they didn’t deliver. I think that there was just that opportunity, the window of opportunity there for the Nationals to step up. I had my brother up on the pastoral property struggling; there was just evidence. Brendon’s brother was working in Karratha and living in a caravan for two years because there were no houses. There was this huge mining boom coming down on us and no infrastructure and no schools and no houses, and people had to pay $2 000 a week rent, so then the deli couldn’t afford to have any employees. Things were becoming totally dysfunctional in regional Western Australia to the point of collapse. There was what was happening in our Aboriginal communities—alcohol in Fitzroy Crossing and child abuse. There was just a total lack of care and concern for what was happening in regional Western Australia.

I don’t know why I decided to take it on. I guess in some ways I was flattered to be asked, but then at a second level I was probably a bit keen to get out of Esperance as well. With the farm, we’d just come out the other side and we were starting to put our farm into trees, and so there was now going to be an assured income coming in which I could see was going to clear the debt. In fact, we didn’t clear the debt in the first instance; we sent our kids to boarding school for the last two years, because we said to them, “Look, you’re not going to inherit a farm—that’s our superannuation—but we will give you an education.” So even though it killed us, we put the first two girls through St Mary’s in year 10, 11 and 12, and then we ran out of money. Our third girl we kept back for year 10, and then St Mary’s rang us and said, “Where’s that third daughter of yours?” and we said, “We can’t afford it”, and they said, “Oh, well, we’ll give you a hand”, and so we paid that off over time, so she went. The kids were away at boarding school. James was still at home—he’s the youngest by four years. He was born in ’92, so he was sort of 10, 11, 12. I actually thought it was about time his father took a bit of interest in the kids anyway, so I thought it would do them both good if I wasn’t around. I just needed out in many way, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s have a look at the National Party. You’ve said they were broke and they were various other things. Could you give me a bit of a snapshot of the National Party in WA as you found them when you first became a member?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: You see, the National Party is really interesting, and in fact I had the pleasure of helping to edit a book on its 100-year history6. It reached its centenary of its formation in 2013 and of its first members of Parliament in 2014. But the interesting thing about the Nationals, and Country Party as it was prior to that, is that it’s very pragmatic. Sometimes it’s in , sometimes it’s standalone and independent, then it goes back into coalition, and so there’s this history of getting too close to government, having to have a big fight and stand separately, finding it actually works better to work together, then getting smothered and busting open again. Of course, that’s what happened, really, under Hendy Cowan7, and the party actually split over that issue. So it was really just recovering from all that. Hendy Cowan, who’s a very feisty and strong man, and Eric Charlton, that team that they had really had a very strong and almost dominant relationship with the Liberals and in government. That worked well for regional Western Australia, but as One Nation came along and the inevitable ebb and flow of support, those fellows became, according to those that were on the outside looking in, more concerned about their own wellbeing and not rocking the boat than they were about what they were supposed to be doing. Also, One Nation really massacred our membership base. We lost a lot of members to One Nation. So the party was left really weak, and I think it was in the 2001 state election that we didn’t get enough votes to get our money back. So we’d spent money on the election campaign in anticipation of the electoral funding, and we didn’t get it back. So the party was—that just blew it open financially.

I think that the underlying philosophy of the Country Party and the Nationals, if you are a person living in regional Western Australia, is that they do have specific needs; demographically, they will never be fairly represented, and therefore you have to have a strong individual voice. It’s interesting when I was working with Lenore Layman to write this book, who right from the beginning said, “Wendy, I’m a staunch Labor member”, by the time we got to the end of the episode, she said, “Oh my gosh, now I understand; now I understand why people in the country support the Nationals.” I coined the phrase, actually, and a lot of people use it these days, that the Nationals are held together more by geography than by philosophy. It’s all about because you’re in regional Western Australia, that’s why you support the Nationals. This is the cause of a lot of debate in our party room. The spectrum of philosophy runs from the quite socialist through to the

6 Layman L and Duncan W 2014, Blood Nose Politics. A Centenary History of the Western Australian National Party 1913-2013. The Nationals WA. West Perth

7 Hendy Cowan, former Deputy Premier of WA, was elected to the WA Parliament in 1974 and held the seat of Merredin until his retirement in 2001. He was deputy leader of the National Party for 23 years. 52

DUNCAN INTERVIEW socially conservative. We’re all in there, but the view and the objective is to get a better deal for regional Western Australia.

I was reading something the other day—I found an old newspaper clipping, that’s right, from when Trevor Flugge was standing against Wilson Tuckey in the nineties, and there was some comment there about Nationals have always been more left wing than their eastern states’ counterparts. In fact, Wilson Tuckey, when I was first elected as state president, wrote a letter to all his electorate talking about the treacherous Wendy Duncan who was a communist. To this day, I haven’t been able to find that letter; I’m quite sad, because it was funny at the time—the treacherous Wendy Duncan.

Ms Anne Yardley: I want to come back to your geography before philosophy idea, but what I would like to know is, you talked about One Nation coming over and how National supporters, or people who should’ve been National supporters, were following her— Pauline Hanson. Why were the Nationals on the nose at that point with the electorate?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think it was because the electorate was saying, “Just what’s the difference between the Nationals and the Liberals? We can’t see the difference. The Nationals don’t stand up for us. They don’t seem to have any different policies.” In fact, the first state election I went into, where I was very new as state president—I was elected in August 2004 and we had a state election in early 2005—the opposition, so Liberals and Nationals, went into that election as a coalition, so without separate policies, elbowing each other at media events. It was just a debacle. But the interesting thing is when I took over as state president, one of the first things people said to me, “We need to get all those One Nation people back.” In fact, One Nation approached me, as state president, and said, “We need to amalgamate.” I said, “No thank you, very much.” I actually managed to convince our grassroots that we didn’t want those people back and that we were actually going to aim to be more a centre-right party than a strong-right party. I think that served us well in the long run. We were able to demonstrate that we rejected that strong right wing, white supremacist [chuckles] sort of philosophy of One Nation. I was the first person in the Nationals to give a welcome to country as state president, because there was just no recognition of Aboriginal people in our organisation. One of the things I said when I first took over as state president is that we need to represent all of regional Western Australia and we need to pay more attention to Aboriginal people. That is something that the majority of the organisation embraced.

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When I first took over as state president, the first thing I did, on my fax machine at home, is send out a little questionnaire to every member to say, “Tell me what it is you like about the Nationals and what you don’t like”—a typical strategic planning exercise. So I started the job with a pretty clear vision of what our membership base wanted. It was loud and clear that they wanted us to be independent and a bit more feisty. You go forward with a bit of confidence when you know that they’re going to back you.

Ms Anne Yardley: You must have seen a lot of potential, then, in this party. Where did you see the potential to take on this role, and what did you see this party becoming, because it wasn’t at the time?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, it wasn’t. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the potential was the membership base and the constitution. Between us, Brendon Grylls and myself and Eric Charlton and a few others, when I took over as state president it was with a whole new executive. In fact, when they asked me to take the job on, I said, “Look, I’ll do it, but I’ll only do it if we’ve got at least one of the old guard on executive and preferably as my vice president.” I said, “I don’t want to have a clean sweep of cleanskins, because we’ll lose our base.” So the wonderful, irascible, grumpy, old, gorgeous bastard from Lake Grace, Alan Holmes, came on board, a very, very staunch National to the core—old-style National Party member. He became my biggest supporter. He defended me to the hilt when we were way out on a limb. And it was because I made sure that everything I did, I did with his approval and understanding. I worked really closely with him because I knew he had that whole other base. We had all the young, enthusiastic, visionary people saying, “Yay, the Nationals have finally found their way”, but he had all the old-school people, or he was feeding back to them—him and Allan Marshall.

But the other thing I think we need to acknowledge is that Monty House8, when he was minister for agriculture, commenced this leadership program, called Rural Leadership Program. It was a program to identify young leaders in the regions and mentor them and train them and build their capacity. I did that course and Brendon Grylls did that course. Jane McMeikan—Jane Coole she is now—did the course. A lot of the people that were rising up in the Nationals were graduates of Monty House’s rural leadership course. Very interesting, because that was five, seven, 10 years after they’d been identified as having leadership potential, mentored, trained, let go back into the community, and sometime later most of them turned up in positions of leadership. It’s a really salutary lesson, actually.

8 Monty House is a former National Party MLA for Kataning-Roe 1986-1989, Stirling 1989-2005, Leader of the House 1989-1992, National Party of Australia deputy leader 1988-2001 54

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Something that I’ve been aiming for and in fact achieved with Aboriginal communities is to say, “We need to build leadership capacity in Aboriginal communities. Don’t expect to see the result tomorrow; in 10 years’ time, you’ll see those people step up and lead their communities.” Because that’s what happened in regional Western Australia. Most of us that stepped up around then were graduates of that rural leadership program.

Ms Anne Yardley: How difficult is it to bring together people from, as you say, different philosophies, different parts of the political spectrum? How difficult is the challenge to bring them together to form a cohesive party with a set of policies?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think one of the talents that I guess I can say is God-given—I’ve got this little poster that I had on my kid’s bedroom door, which said something like, “Who I am is God’s gift to me. Who I become is my gift to God.” One of the things that I seem to be able to do well is chair a meeting to make sure everybody has a say and has an input and that we get good collaboration and consensus. That was one of the things that I really worked hard at. There were a few people in the party who were just driving everyone else insane. They were just harping on. They’d come and they’d talk about the same thing at every meeting and hold everyone up for hours—“I wish he’d stop coming; he’s a silly old sausage.” So, first and foremost, I identified those three or four people that everyone else was saying were preventing people from coming to meetings, and I gave them a job. I got to know them. I met with them and I asked them, “What’s on your mind? Okay, I’d like you to do this for me.” One old fellow who was just driving everyone insane, I got him a little digital microphone and I said, “Righto, I want you to go off to all the old stalwarts in the National Party and I want you to record their histories. Go and get ready because we’re going to write a book.” Off he went and he had the best time. He was reporting back to me. In fact, we used—I mean, his recordings were nowhere near the standard of yours, but we used a lot of the information he gleaned. He was happy and he was valued and he stopped being a pain at meetings. There were a few of those that I identified and made them to feel that they were being heard at last. Then we started having more people coming along because it was a more fruitful exercise.

Ms Anne Yardley: But the decision-making process, when you’ve got members with different political views, how do you approach that process of formulating policies?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: We have our state conference. One of the things about state conference that used to drive me insane—because I went to most of the state conferences even when I wasn’t a member, because I was an electorate officer—was that all the 55

DUNCAN INTERVIEW resolutions would go through without debate. It was all same old, same old, and you would just think, “Gosh, why would anyone come to this?” So one of the things I did as state president, instead of vetting the resolutions back here, I actually let them go onto the floor of the conference and let them be debated and let people feel like they were being heard. As long as the conference is properly managed with due meeting procedure, people go away satisfied even if they don’t have a win. That is how we actually started to develop policy. Bringing things forward like whether or not we support GM crops or—a big debate— did we support civil unions, same-sex marriage, a huge debate, but we had it, and we came out the other side with a consensus view. In fact, the party way back in 2006 decided that, yes, it did approve of civil unions and would support such legislation if it went into Parliament. Prior to that, nobody had the courage to even debate a resolution like that. Uranium mining—some of those really fraught debates, we had them on the floor of conference. It takes a lot of strength. I used to get to the end of conference absolutely exhausted, but at least then you could go away knowing that the people who were your members felt it was worthwhile and that they actually had a say.

The other thing I did, which I think helped us with our policy development, is that I had a strong focus on Young Nationals, so attracting young people to the party, then acknowledging that they probably couldn’t afford to go to conference because of accommodation costs and so on, or to Canberra or so on. We encouraged the Young Nationals to bring resolutions forward, and then I got every member of Parliament to host a Young National to conference, so they paid all their expenses; and then same thing, every member of Parliament had to host a Young National to go to federal conference, to Canberra. We would then say to them, “Right, you will put our motion at federal conference. We want you to speak to it.” The Young Nats would come back and say, “Wow, my resolution from Mukinbudin made it to federal Parliament.” In fact, I can see now, some of the stuff to do with Austudy and so on became law, became policy. And so the Young Nats went from strength to strength then and started to build because they really could see that it was a worthwhile exercise. So that was something that we did as well, to try and also reduce the average age of the party, because they were all one foot on a banana skin and the other in the grave when I first took over.

Ms Anne Yardley: Would you say then that your approach is a very inclusive one?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely, yes. It’s interesting, people ask me what my leadership style is and I don’t know which textbook to flick to—you read this list. But it is very much consensus. I don’t let anyone sit quietly at a table; everyone gets a say. If they don’t 56

DUNCAN INTERVIEW volunteer to speak, I make them. Also, I give everyone a job. I say to people, “If you get that piece of paper out and sign that you want to be a member of the Nationals and pay your fee, that makes you a very precious and rare Australian.” Very few people join a political party, so every one of those people who are members of our party are precious and rare Australians and we need to make them get their value for money and feel like they’re valued.

Ms Anne Yardley: You said, more than once, about the party being bankrupt, virtually, or insolvent. What did you do to remedy that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: First and foremost, we closed everything down. Up here, we terminated our lease. We terminated our employees. I took the whole thing back home to my house in Esperance on my little computer there. RSM Bird Cameron [accountants] helped out with some of the statutory stuff, submitting the GST returns and so on. But really what I did was I took the whole shebang back home and ran it from my house. Brendon Grylls and Terry Redman and, I think, Tuck Waldron all put a bit of their electorate officer time towards paying me a bit of a stipend. So that gave me a bit of pocket money. Oh, and SkyWest, God bless them, gave us $20 000 worth of airfares per year. So I flew with SkyWest backwards and forwards to Esperance to meetings, although, I drove a lot of the time, too, because I was canvassing. Of course my dear husband turned a blind eye to the fuel bills and the phone bills that were huge.

Then I set about saying, “Okay, we’re broke. How do other political parties make money?” Because obviously they’re all suffering from diminishing membership bases—that can’t be what sustains you. The state conference where I was elected president—I was on state executive by then—they were so pleased with themselves that they’d made only a $1 300 loss on that conference. As state president, I was then part of federal management. So I went across to Canberra for regular meetings with the other state branches and was taken under the wing by the wonderful, wonderful person Helen Dickie, who was the first female president of—no, second, I think. She was president of the federal Nationals when I went across there. They just basically said, “Thank God you’re here”, really, because they were very worried about the Western Australian Nationals. The South Australian Nationals had already gone under—disappeared—and they thought we were next. I just really spent a lot of time talking to them about how they get their corporate support and so on, and realised that actually they use their state conferences as one of their main income earners by selling corporate packages and media packages and so on. I think it was Queensland that gave me the template. I came back here and at the first state conference we made a 57

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$20 000 profit, at the second state conference it was $40 000, and at the third state conference that I was president we made $60 000.

I then said to our membership, “Right, what we need to do is to say we need to raise enough in state conference to try and cover a lot of our administration and then anything you raise over and above that is for your campaigns.” At the same time, we then went out to try and garner some corporate support. I think we only had a few grand left in the bank and we decided—my wonderful mentor, Nils Blumann9, who was executive chairman of Esperance Wool Exporters, I was working with him, and he said, “You know, Wendy, don’t ever forget the effectiveness of smoke and mirrors”, and I said, “Okay, right.” So we put together this very glossy booklet; spent the last of our money. We had a professional media company, we had professional photographers, and we put together this incredible booklet, which was a what if–type booklet—what if the Nationals had the balance of power; what if regional WA? It was very impressive, and that was going to be our sales booklet. Myself and Eric Charlton and Brendon Grylls, and Murray Criddle on occasion too, went off to visit these various corporate people, just saying, “Look, you’ve got interests in regional Western Australia; you know how dysfunctional it is out there. This is not going to get fixed without us starting to make a stand.” Very few of them took us seriously, but I’ll never forget Len Buckeridge, God bless him, who I think always had a bit of respect for someone who was a bit feisty. He used the F-word every second word, so I won’t accurately quote him, but he said, “Well, Wendy, if you can go to that Warren Truss and help me to get this land for the brickworks at the airport, I’ll give you 40 grand.” I said, “Righto, Len; you’re on.” I worked my heart out trying to convince—because it was federal land that he’d put his brickworks on. It was myself and others—it was not just me alone— but I worked really hard. He got his land for the brickworks, and I went back to him and said, “Righto, Len, where’s my $40 000?” He said, “It wasn’t you; it was my buddy Warren—it was somebody else.” I said, “Come on, Len.” Anyway, I kept hammering him and in the end he said, “I don’t want my name in any registers anywhere because the trouble is Labor and Liberals are so vindictive. If they know I’ve been supporting you, I won’t get any more business.” So I ended up traipsing down there to his office, just down from Parliament, to get my $40 000 in $1 500 cheques under goodness knows how many different entities. We had an incredible relationship from then on.

[End of WendyDuncan_3]

9 Nils Blumann has been an Esperance grain grower for more than 60 years. 58

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Wendy Duncan_4

Ms Anne Yardley: This is a further interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Monday, 17 July 2017. The interview is for the parliamentary history project. The interviewer is Anne Yardley.

Last week, we were talking quite a lot about your state presidency. I’d like to get a sense of what was happening in the Parliament from your perspective in that coalition period from 1993 to 2001.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, 2001 is really where I started taking an interest in the Nationals and what had been happening. So I was aware on the periphery that the Nationals had split and then they had come back together under Hendy Cowan, who was a very strong and charismatic leader. In fact, under his leadership, the Nationals did have a resurgence in Parliament and increased numbers of members. I remember Hendy Cowan coming to meetings—because I was working for Ross Ainsworth at the time so I saw him in action—and he was very forceful, and really towards the end that was starting to get up people’s noses because he’s one of these people that didn’t suffer fools. He’s a very tall and imposing man. I can understand that he was probably formidable in cabinet and there were tensions already increasing in cabinet in his relationship with Richard Court and the Liberals, but also actually within the Nationals.

The interesting thing about the extra members that had managed to get themselves into Parliament on his coat-tails—his charismatic leadership and the reunification of the Nationals—were members that weren’t from the wheatbelt heartland of the Nationals. We had people like upper house member for South West Region, Murray Montgomery, who was a wine producer and a fellow who was not quite of the same rough-and-tumble ilk of Eric Charlton and Hendy Cowan and Bob Weiss, sort of the bullyboys of the wheatbelt, really. Even Ross Ainsworth, the member down our way in Esperance, was of a more liberal, softer, more social conscience–type person, who had quite strong religious beliefs, a very strong social conscience and less of a blind commitment to the Agricultural Region and to farming; and Hilda Turnbull10, who was the member for Collie and a doctor and also not of that same hard-nosed wheatbelt ilk. I remember that they started to talk about the wheatbelt mafia, which were the likes of Hendy Cowan, Eric Charlton, Dexter Davies, Monty House to a certain extent, who seemed to be the inner circle of the Nationals and

10 Dr Hilda Turnbull was a general practitioner before entering parliament as the National Party MLA for Collie 1989-2001. 59

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the other boys were just keeping the seat warm—and Hilda—and getting more and more frustrated about it.

Max Trenorden11 was an interesting one as well, of course, because he was member for Avon and based in Northam, and he was an insurance salesman and very interested in the racing and gaming–type industries, so also not really of that wheatbelt ilk, and he also, I think, was feeling that perhaps the wheatbelt boys weren’t broadening their view to match the membership of the party.

Ms Anne Yardley: Well, you talked before about how broad the National Party is; it draws support from so many different places. Is this where the tensions arose or were there other issues that were creating tension within the National Party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, I think that’s exactly it, and that is that, as I’ve said before, the Nationals come together over geography, over representing the regions, rather than philosophy. The wheatbelt Nationals have always been fairly right-wing. The other thing about farmers is that they really do think—I hope they’ll forgive me when I say this—that they’re God’s gift to mankind and when something goes wrong, everyone has to rush in and fix it; whereas you had on the outskirts of that the likes of Hilda Turnbull and Murray Montgomery and Ross Ainsworth, who were also starting to understand the importance of the green movement. I mean, Hilda Turnbull had forests in her electorate and so the whole debate about saving the native forests and so on was one that caused a great deal of angst within the National Party, and I think that that’s where the tensions started to arise. In fact, when I was just back from China, having been over there to study with my graduate school of business studies with and in my role as executive officer of Esperance Wool Exporters, I found myself at a function in Perth with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. The Nationals were working very hard to get support with the Chinese economy and Chinese people. Hendy Cowan was incredibly good as the minister for commerce and did a lot of work expanding Western Australia’s trade overseas, and he established a very strong relationship with the Chinese. So there we were at this function, and I came across Max Trenorden and Dexter Davies12. It was at a time that I was not working for Ross Ainsworth anymore, but I had joined the party and I was probably branch president in Esperance—that’s about it; no higher than that. These two boys confided in me that Hendy’s got to go. I must admit, I was pretty wide-eyed and gobsmacked and

11 Max Trenorden, Nationals MLA for Avon 1986-2008; MLC Agricultural Region 2008- 2013. He stood as an independent 12 Dexter Davies (1951-2018) was Nationals MLC for Agricultural Region, 1998-2001 60

DUNCAN INTERVIEW really didn’t (a) take it seriously or (b) act on the fact that I’d heard this conversation. It was not long afterwards that, in fact, there was this move within the party room to change the leadership, and it came totally out of left field, I think, for Hendy Cowan. He wasn’t really expecting it. I think it was really the work of Max Trenorden and Dexter Davies that that happened.

Ms Anne Yardley: Why? WHY did they feel had he had to go?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think the underlying tensions were this issue of the wheatbelt versus the rest, but I think it was also over a staff issue. Hendy Cowan had a very close and powerful chief of staff, a female, who really was becoming the doorstop to anyone who wanted to speak to him, and the members were becoming more and more frustrated that this particular person had so much power. My understanding is—I don’t think anyone would probably publicly affirm this—that part of the conversation was that, “She’s got to go or you go.”

Ms Anne Yardley: It would seem, though, that Hendy Cowan was very good in that partnership even though there were tensions with Richard Court. Was he appreciated for that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: By whom [laughter]?

Ms Anne Yardley: Within the Nationals.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Look, yes, I think so. We were aware, in the early days of Hendy’s leadership, of his power and influence and, as I mentioned, his work with expanding our markets into China and India. He and Monty House did some excellent work there with agriculture in expanding our markets, excellent work as far as getting roads—Eric Charlton was constructing roads all through the regions where they were desperately needed. The other thing that Hendy Cowan did, which the current government at this point is talking about doing away with, but made a huge difference in regional areas, was establishing what he called telecentres, and that was making computers and the internet available in small towns for people to go in and access them when they did not have that access at home. That actually made a huge difference, these community hubs in rural towns. In fact, it then became almost the de facto state government office in that town because you could then go and access government departments through these telecentres, and still can, which is why I believe they should still exist. 61

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Those sorts of things became very well recognised in Hendy’s first term, but I think in the second term, where the government obviously—it’s just the normal cycle; we’ve just seen it happen—starts to be wary about shoring up defences, and so debates over the regional forest agreement, the focus of Richard Court on trying to shore his own support up in the city, so building infrastructure that the country felt were just window-dressing and not really important to the economy, started to create a few tensions, but I think once Hendy left and Max Trenorden became leader, Richard Court had a much straighter run.

Ms Anne Yardley: Leading up to that 2001 election, and again I know that you were only coming to the fore with the National Party, but of course you’ve done a lot of research writing your book. What was the National Party able to do to give voters a clear choice between the Liberal Party and the National Party in areas where you were contesting the same seat?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That is a very interesting question and it’s one that I probably can’t answer definitively except to say that the Nationals really did make it clear that they were going to stand alone, that they were given their own portfolios, that they could make their own decision and their policy announcements, and they were able to freely articulate their separate policies and their vision for regional Western Australia. What happened under the subsequent leadership—where, quite unusually, I think, the Liberals and Nationals under Max Trenorden’s leadership decided to go into the 2005 election as a coalition— caused all sorts of grief because in effect we were supposed to be prosecuting coalition policies.

In fact, the most classic example of that—and I was there and saw it happen—was when Colin Barnett announced the canal from the Kimberley, and Murray Criddle13, a National, was actually [shadow] minister for water and knew nothing about the announcement and actually had to front the media and answer all the questions on this great new plan to bring water down from the Kimberley when in fact the Nationals had nothing to do with the development of the policy or the decision to announce it. That really made it—the tensions were so palpable. For instance, I think at that stage Brendon might have been shadow Minister for Environment and had a suite of policies that he’d developed in the coalition framework but was never allowed the opportunity to release them in that election campaign framework of 2005. This has been the dilemma of the Nationals and the Country

13 Murray Criddle was Nationals MLC for Agricultural Region 1993-2008. His retirement in 2008 paved the way for Wendy Duncan to enter parliament. 62

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Party throughout its century of history—it cannot govern alone, so it needs to govern with a partner, but in so doing it slowly becomes emasculated and hard to differentiate from the majority party. So then inevitably there’s a blow-up and they go their separate ways, and the people in the country are very happy and they vote the Nationals back with lots of seats, and it happens all over again. You really look at it and think, well—in fact, I said this myself as state president—the Nationals have to be quite pragmatic about where they stand at any particular point in time. I know that when we had the big debate after the 2005 election, which nearly saw our demise—we were so lucky to actually retain five seats and party status, and that was because Grant Woodhams14 came in from left field—we had a very long and thorough debate in the party about what do we do now. Do we stay in coalition; do we amalgamate with the Liberals, which was being talked about in Queensland; do we wind the whole show up and ride off into the sunset; or do we become an independent political party? That debate was had over several months within the party as to where to from here.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m wondering about the voters themselves and where they saw the National Party, and to what extent, looking at that 2001 election, was One Nation responsible for the bad showing of the Nationals?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely in 2001. The Nationals still had six members in the Legislative Assembly prior to the 2001 election. We lost the seat of Hilda Turnbull in 2001, plus a couple in the upper house, and of course One Nation won three seats, and they were all regional seats—Agricultural Region seats, in fact—and came directly out of the pockets of the Nationals. That in fact is what’s happened in other states—where One Nation gains ascendency, it’s usually at the loss of the Nationals. But, yes, absolutely. I’m not sure whether it was in our off-air discussions, but I think I might have mentioned to you that towards the late ’90s when I was still working with Ross Ainsworth and we were in the Newdegate Field Day, the mood of—what’s the word; I can’t think of the word?—dismay with the Nationals’ performance. “Disdain” is the word I’m looking for. The disdain for the Nationals at that time just before the 2001 election and the movement towards One Nation—because, you know, they’re the ones who are going to stand up against the gun laws, drought assistance and all those sorts of things—was palpable.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was that disdain warranted? Were you a shambles of a party at that point?

14 Former Speaker, Grant Woodhams was Nationals MLA for Greenough 2005-2008 and Moore 2008-2014. 63

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, absolutely not. I don’t think so. I think that we were going through what was a very difficult time for regional areas anyway. We were still recovering from the recession we had to have. I’m not sure exactly where we were in the commodity price cycle but I think it was still pretty grim around then. There was the usual sort of seasonal conditions. Farmers can be very vindictive if things go wrong. I think that really just the whole confluence of influences and events had brought this to a head. Of course, Pauline Hanson came in with her views that, really, I guess, gave disgruntled people something to clutch onto, “Yes, that’s what’s wrong with our society today and she’s worked out how to fix it.” It’s interesting because I think our farming generations around that time were ageing. A lot of them were really struggling with new technologies and new methodology and really pushing up against a whole heap of foreign pressures that they were struggling with in their technology and marketing and so on. It’s really interesting, as the next generation of farmers come through, and a lot of them are university educated, they actually relish and embrace the challenges of an open market and new technology and so on, and so they’re not as grumpy [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: Would you say then that the Nationals were being blamed for something that really wasn’t their fault or their issue?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: That there were other circumstances external to the Nationals that were affecting regional —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Isn’t that always the case in politics? Isn’t it always the case? You think about what happened to the current government, the Colin Barnett government. The financial situation that that government got itself into was maybe partly of its own doing, but really to a large extent a product of what was happening in the iron ore market and in the mining industry and in the advancement of China. Those sorts of things are hard for a government, especially a state government—just a little old state government—to really change the world on. I think, too, that remember there was Graham Kierath and the workplace reform that just caused a whole heap of grief. And interesting that there is that sort of undercurrent of socialism in the agricultural sector where some people like to see the workers get a fair go. I think that caused tensions within the Nationals as well. There’s those that say the price of shearing’s too high and price of wages are too high and so on, but there’s others that just go, “Whoa, I think this is going too far.” 64

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Ms Anne Yardley: What did you do as a party after that 2001 election? Was there soul searching and what kinds of strategies did you come up with?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think the party was actually in total disarray and disbelief for several years. Because that was in 2001 that we were so badly decimated by One Nation that we didn’t get the electoral funding that we had actually already spent in the election campaign. That’s how most political parties work. They calculate: what’s the worst-case scenario of the number of votes we’ll receive, on that basis we will get X number of dollars per vote, so we can spend that amount on our campaign. But of course One Nation came out of left field and we didn’t reach anywhere near that target and therefore couldn’t even cover the cost of our campaign in the 2001 election. Those subsequent years of 2001, 2002 and 2003 the party was really just floundering internally as to how to recover from the decimation financially and the loss of membership to One Nation. Because obviously you’re dependent on your membership income, but if you fall below 500, you also can’t stand at the next election as a designated political party. All this was coming down the tracks like a steam train for the party and so there was really a lot of focus put on how do we deal with this rather than policy development and reaching out to represent the people we were supposed to be representing.

Ms Anne Yardley: You talked last time a little bit about the financial situation and some of the moves that you took, but, in general, what did the party do then to get out of this mire?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: They tinkered around the edges and probably didn’t react as drastically as they should have. They put off one or two staff members. They decided not to provide the phone and car. But they still kept paying the rent even though anyone who had experience at budgeting and done some forecasts would’ve know that that was totally not sustainable unless you dramatically increased your membership base or found some corporate support. People like Eric Charlton and Murray Criddle, in particular, did some fantastic work. Jamie Kronborg, who was the state director at the time, did some fantastic work trying to get corporate support. Also, we were targeting the same corporates that were supporting the Liberal Party and basically saying, “We’re part of the team.” In fact, they negotiated with the 500 Club that the Nationals would get 20 per cent of whatever the 500 Club raised. The 500 Club was a conservative fundraising organisation and so then the Nationals members of Parliament were all very strongly encouraged to join the 500

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Club and turn up at their various events and our leaders addressed them and so on, even though they were treated with a great deal of disrespect and disdain.

Those sorts of things were ticking over and starting to, I guess, provide a little bit of financial security. And it’s very interesting because Max Trenorden, as leader of the Nationals, engaged Doug Cunningham. Doug who’s a past media personality. Doug became a very influential person in the Nationals. In fact, he was Max Trenorden’s chief of staff at the time that I took over as president. Doug was starting to talk about the Nationals need to stand alone. In fact, he became Brendon Grylls’ chief of staff and an absolute stalwart in negotiating that royalties for regions, balance of power situation. And he’s still there. Well, up until the election; I’m not quite sure now. But I’m sure he is supporting Mia. Just a wily fox when it comes to who’s who in the zoo and how to strategise and how to negotiate your way through in these complex coalition situations.

Ms Anne Yardley: How was this received with the grassroots and members—the idea of being a standalone party—because, as you’ve said, you can’t govern in your own right? Was this considered a brave move, a foolish move?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: By the time we got to making the decision, I think everyone was ready for it. As I said, we started after the election in 2005. I can’t remember whether I put that strategic planning questionnaire out before or after that election—I’ll have to verify that—but we had some fairly strong feedback about what the members wanted the Nationals to stand for. But then we had that debate as well. I remember Darren Moir, who’s a farmer from Amelup—he’s down near Borden. He was president of the Young Nats. He was only in his thirties. A very deep thinking, well-read, articulate young man who rose up to be vice president of the party. He was vice president at the time of the 2008 election. He actually put a paper to the state executive and then to state council proposing that really amalgamation was the only way forward. That was all in the face, of course, of the one vote, one value issue as well. We probably need to talk a bit about that and how that came about, because the Labor Party won the 2005 election, but the upper house doesn’t change until May and the election was in March, and in that window of opportunity the Liberals actually had the majority in the Legislative Council, but one very disgruntled Alan Cadby, who had not regained his winnable seat in the preselection process, decided to throw his hat in the ring with Labor and support the one vote, one value legislation. So there was a lot of work done by the Nationals trying to convince him. In fact, Brendon and I took Alan Cadby out and drove him all round the regions and just said, “Don’t you understand how hard it is for us to represent such vast distances even though there’s few 66

DUNCAN INTERVIEW people and so on?” We worked really hard to try and convince him not to do what he did do, but once that legislation was passed, we thought: okay, now we have to make the best of a bad situation. And so that was when we then started the soul searching—where to from here for the Nationals?

It was not until March 2006 that we actually put the vote to our state council about whether or not we be an independent political party. One of the things I think I said to you in our last interview is, as state president, I’m a firm believer that nothing ever happens by accident. Prior to that, we’d put a lot of work into—me, in particular—phoning around, talking to all the members. And when the meeting was on actually ringing them and saying, “You need to be here; this is a meeting of historic importance for the Nationals.” We had it in Wagin in association with Wagin Woolorama. The motion was put that the Nationals not be in coalition—that we would be a standalone independent political party. I remember Brendon coined this phrase—he’s a great orator, Brendon, and really used to capture people’s imagination. He said, “We will not be beguiled by the trappings of high office.” Basically saying, “Look, we won’t even demand deputy premiership; we’ve had it for the last century if we’re in government, but actually we don’t want that because we are going to be standalone. We don’t want to stand in the way of the Liberal Party’s leadership advancement.” There was that and the fact that we wanted to be able to make our own decisions and have independent policies. The only person who spoke against that resolution in the end was Max Trenorden. I think he had, of course, already, by then, been usurped as leader by Brendon and it was not in the timing that he had envisaged. He never really forgave Brendon, or me, for that.

Ms Anne Yardley: This was a very risky move, though, because you’ve got one vote, one value, which we might just tease out a little bit in a second, and you’re deciding to go it alone. One vote, one value was expected to decimate the National Party.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: One of the things that I said when I addressed the group in March 2006 is that when you’re faced with certain death, it makes you all the more imaginative about options for survival. I think that is exactly where we were; it gives you the courage. That is what I said to the members: “You have to have courage here because the alternatives don’t look good.” I think what we did do was incredibly courageous. I remember Danielle Blain, who was president of the Liberal Party, was absolutely aghast. She called me—I was pulled over on some hill somewhere where I could get mobile phone coverage—and she said, “What are we going to do with these two boys?”, meaning Matt Birney and Brendon Grylls who were sparring on the floor of the house. I said, “Well, 67

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Danielle, I think they can sort that out.” But what happened in the end was that the 500 Club hauled us in, Brendon and I, and Roger Lewis was there. John Patterson, a life member and former president of the Nationals, was in the meeting. He was at the executive committee meeting of the 500 Club. They basically said to us, “If you do this, we’ll cut off all your funding.” I remember I said to them, “Do your worst, because if we are needed, then the funding will come. If we’re not needed, we’ll accept that and ride off into the sunset.” And that’s what I said to our membership, “There’s no point existing just for the sake of it, we need to test whether the Nationals, whether this country–regional representation, is still needed. If we find ourselves without support from the coalition fundraising machine and we don’t manage to find alternative sources of funding, then we’re obviously not needed.”

Ms Anne Yardley: What was the reaction of the rank and file, the members, to the standalone —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: They were to a large extent delighted, really; there were very few that weren’t. “About bloody time”, pardon my language, was what a lot of them said. The thing is that they didn’t register the rider from that meeting, which was that we were going to be an independent, standalone political party willing to deal with both sides of government. Even though in subsequent campaigning and policy formulation and traipsing around the countryside, Brendon and I, in particular, were really very clear about the fact that if you’re an independent political party, you’re willing to deal with either side of government. I used to say to people, “What is preferable—a Labor Party in power unfettered or a Labor Party with its hand held behind its back by the Nationals? Why is it that the Nationals only have influence every second government? Shouldn’t we actually use that power whoever’s in government?” People would see that, but a lot couldn’t make that leap of faith. I remember at one stage Terry Redman saying that when he was handing out how-to-vote cards for the 2007 election that he used to put his thumb over that bit on the election material about, you know, we’ll deal with the other side of government. And Terry Redman would still, and he would openly admit it, have difficulty being in government or supporting a Labor government. But that’s really what we intended with that decision and that’s why we didn’t want the One Nation people back; we would be there in that slightly right of centre and willing to try and influence whoever the major party was in government.

I suppose, getting back to your question about how we would never govern in our own right, we also had the debate in Western Australia about whether to stand in the city. It 68

DUNCAN INTERVIEW comes up every election. Usually, after the inevitable debate, you start to say, “Here we go again.” If you stand in the city, where is your raison d’être? Why are we standing in the city? I think that’s where Joh Bjelke-Petersen went wrong. He very successfully stood in Brisbane and very successfully had the Nationals as a party running as the major party in government, but in fact lost that contact with their grassroots and their reason for being. So, we had that debate here in Western Australia and said, “No, Western Australia, particularly because of our demographics—the fact of 80 per cent or more in the city— most definitely still needs a solely regional political party.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m wondering what your role as state president was through this period. Was it an educational role? Were you out talking to people at town hall meetings explaining and selling this message? What were you doing?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I did hundreds of thousands of kilometres in my car attending meetings. Every little branch meeting that happened around the place, I attended. But the other thing that was very strongly my vision was that the only way that we were going to survive was to be more than a farmers’ party, so I also spent a lot of time out and about in the goldfields. I think I might have mentioned to you that I drove from Esperance to Broome, up through the centre, putting the story out. Brendon and I travelled a lot together. Also, we stole some leaves out of Barnaby Joyce’s book; how he won that extra Senate seat that nobody expected him to win. He came over—he was very supportive of us—and said, “What you do is you go from town to town. If nobody’s going to listen to you, drive on. Don’t waste your time, keep moving.” We did that.

I think the other thing too is that I spent a lot of time actually talking to members and guiding the executive and giving them the courage of their convictions. I remember, and I may have already mentioned this to you, when we were almost out of money and we decided to print some stickers for our cars. Did I tell you about that? We decided to print stickers to go on our cars that really matched the mantra that had come out of our strategic planning process, which was people, community, progress. We were about people. We were about building communities. But we are not the Greens—anti-progress. We had this sticker: “People. Community. Progress.” And no money, of course. We were sitting around the table saying, “How many will we print?” And they’re going, “10 000.” I said, “Look, we can’t afford 10 000. We’ll do 2 000 to start with.” “Well, we can save money if we do a big print run.” Anyway, being very conscious of our financial situation, I said no—2 000. Once they were all printed we got back to a subsequent executive meeting and I said, “How many of you have got a sticker on your car?” One of them said, “I can’t. I’m a local 69

DUNCAN INTERVIEW government councillor.” Another one said, “No. I’m a member of the chamber of commerce. We have to be apolitical. I’ve got a small business. I really can’t do that.” I said, “Why did you want to print 10 000 stickers when the state executive of the Nationals will not put them on their car?” I just let that hang there and then a meeting or so later I said, “How many people have got a sticker on the car?” They all did. It was all a question of encouraging people to wear their heart on their sleeve. In fact, when we were travelling around—Brendon Grylls and I—we used to say to local government councillors and to chamber of commerce members, “The leadership pool in regional communities is very small. You local government councillors are fiercely apolitical. You chamber of commerce executive members are fiercely apolitical. You’ve just taken the leadership out of this community. You’ve said to us behind closed doors that no matter who is in power, Liberal or Labor, things are going be just as bad for you here. Isn’t it time that you started to take a stand and lead your community?” In fact, we saw quite a few local government councillors and mayors and presidents start to join the Nationals or at least advocate for us. In fact, some of them stood for us, like Lynne Craigie, the president of the Shire of East Pilbara. Ronnie Fleay was president of the shire down around Exmouth or Carnarvon somewhere. The whole time, we were really trying to challenge people’s thinking and just say, “Have you had enough? Yes? Are going to change it?” The message we were really trying to get out was that, as I’ve said to you before, you cannot achieve change unless individuals are prepared to change.

Ms Anne Yardley: You talked last time about encouraging some new young membership. Through that period of time, when you were making these very brave moves, how was your membership drive going.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It went really well. Not only did we gain quite a few new members, particularly young members, but that whole time I was going through our old membership files late into the night down in Esperance and I wrote to everybody who had lapsed in their membership a personal letter and just said, “This is what we’re trying to do. We can’t do it without you. Can you reconsider? Will you rejoin?” We got quite a few people starting to come back into the party. We got quite a few back who had given up on us but hadn’t gone quite to One Nation and started to move back.

The other thing is that I think we ended up with a lot of supporters who didn’t become members but really started to hear the message. Because we couldn’t afford to compete with Liberal and Labor in election campaigning, we decided we were going to do the old Japanese water torture and just campaign long and hard over a very long period of time. 70

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In fact, Labor copied our method. We put together this TV ad—cheap, but with money we really didn’t have. We’d engaged an ad agency to help us and we were saying, “How do we explain the balance of power to people? It’s quite a complex thing.” Anyway, they came up with this quirky little ad and people still talk about it today. There were these four blokes going off after the footy all piled into the car. One of them was quite diminutive—a little bloke—and he ended up in the middle at the back. There were actually five blokes—that’s right—two in the front, three in the back. They are saying, “Right. Where are we off to? The pub or the club?” The driver says, “I think the pub.” The other bloke says, “No, the club.” “No, I reckon the club.” “No, the pub.” Anyway, the little bloke in the middle—tiny little bloke—they turned around and said, “It’s your call, Shorts.” The ad just ended there. People were saying, “What’s this stupid ad? What do you mean—your call, Shorts?” But it ran for nearly two years. By the time we got to the end of the two years, people were going, “I get that! The little bloke gets the final say!” That helped people to understand that the little bloke had the balance of power. People still come back to us today and say, “That ad was brilliant!” It’s a bit like “Not happy, Jan!” People just go, “What?” They take a while to get what it meant, so it meant people were talking to each other about it. It meant they weren’t getting sick of it and it took them quite a while to understand what we were getting at.

Ms Anne Yardley: You were playing a long game, weren’t you, to be doing that for a couple of years?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Very much. Very much. Yes, you see, we always saw it as a long game anyway, because when we decided that there was no point railing against one vote, one value, what I said to the membership was, “The only way you’re going to mitigate one vote, one value is to get more people living in the regions. That’s a very long game. The only way to get more people living in the regions is to get the regions more liveable. That’s where the whole balance of power royalties for regions strategy came from. We really needed to spend money to upgrade our hospitals, our schools, our police stations, our roads and our towns and their sporting facilities to make them good places for people to live. They really were abysmal. Nobody would want to live in the regions unless you had to—you were married there or had a business there. That was the long game. The long game is to try to turn around the population drift to the city and then maybe get a better voice.

Ms Anne Yardley: Your 2005 strategic plan for the Nationals—what was in there? What was important? 71

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was about understanding that the Nationals were about building communities, about people—people, community, progress—about the individual being important. That’s the real conservative side of things—the individual being important. However, not to the detriment of community—people, community. Community indicates that the Nationals do believe that there are periods where the little bloke needs a hand—or the disadvantaged or the distanced. That is the agrarian socialist side of us. Progress, as I mentioned before, was really just to make people understand that we weren’t like the Greens—that we did still approve of development, within reason, and mining and clearing, also within reason. Everybody acknowledges that. We really were saying, “Look, we are all environmentalists now or just about”, because we understand that we all went too far. But that was partly getting to know how the land responds—that this isn’t England. We shouldn’t have cleared it like we did back there. That sort of philosophy was captured but there was also this issue of “we want you to stand independently and fight for the regional areas”. In fact, that’s where the name of the book comes from. Brendon Grylls captured it by saying, “Our supporters don’t expect us to win every battle, but they do expect us to get a blood nose trying.” That’s why the book is called Blood Nose Politics. If you look, all the way through, the Nationals have taken on some real David and Goliath battles on occasion—and lost them—but they still have fought tooth and nail.

I think that that was really the philosophy. Also, starting to understand that grassroots is important. At the time where Hendy and his boys were doing so well, working alongside Richard Court and dealing with big issues and big vision and stuff that maybe the grassroots didn’t quite get to hear about or understand but they were starting to say, “Hey, nobody’s listening to us.” One of the things that came out of it was a real commitment back to due process. As state president, I really endeavoured to make sure that all our little branches, district councils, the state council and the state executive all had an opportunity to have a voice. They weren’t presented with an agenda that was a fait accompli. Even state conferences—everybody would say, “Why would I bother going? It’s all prearranged, no debate, everybody votes in favour and you all go home.” In my chairmanship of state conferences and in the management of the agenda—I think we talked about it before— just to make sure that contentious issues were debated and that we weren’t ashamed to have them out in the media. Everyone’s saying, “Oh, gosh, we can’t have that in the media. We might upset somebody.” That’s democracy. We need to air these debates. If everyone feels satisfied that they’ve been heard, then you’ve got a far better chance of having a united organisation. 72

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Ms Anne Yardley: What strategies were you able to develop, if at all, to try to counter the one vote, one value effect?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That is a whole new story in itself because after the one vote, one value legislation went through then, of course, there had to be a massive redistribution of the seats. The immediate effect was that all the existing members of Parliament—Liberal, Labor, Nationals—all started falling about themselves over who got what seat and it got quite ugly. I don’t know if you remember, but particularly down in the south west with Dan Sullivan, Steve Thomas and Paul Omodei—remember? They were all looking like losing their seat. The most dramatic effect for the Nationals was the fact that Max Trenorden’s seat and Brendon Grylls’ seat, Avon and Merredin, were amalgamated. There we had the old bull and the young bull, both refusing to give up the one seat that was left between the two of them. In fact, that is how I ended up as a member for the Agricultural Region. We talked about why I decided to stand for Parliament. One of the reasons was that I said to my state executive and to state council, “I do not want any unseemly public bickering over this redistribution.” The people are not interested in politicians being worried about whether or not they retain their seat. It just makes us all look self-centred and foolish. I was very strong on making sure that we didn’t bicker in public over what happened. It was a long negotiation over months but basically the outcome was that I said to Max Trenorden that Murray Criddle would retire; he was planning to anyway. He was going to retire at the election, so there would’ve been a preselection for who was in. I said, “Look, Murray Criddle will retire before the state election. I’m number two on the ticket. I’ll move in. But I’ll give you my assurance that I won’t stand for the Agricultural Region when we’re preselecting for the next election. You can have the number one seat in the Ag Region.” That satisfied Max. I said to Brendon, “Now, you have Central Wheatbelt.” I took over Murray’s seat for whatever it was—eight months—and then stepped aside. The number one seat in the Ag Region is probably the safest National seat, so I could still be there doing nothing—swinging in a hammock—but I wanted, as state president, to lead by example. I basically said to everybody, “Look, if we want to expand beyond the farming areas, which I think we have to do for our survival, I will stand in Mining and Pastoral—a seat we’ve never won.” I worked my heart out to win that. I also ran the preference negotiations, which is another whole story we must talk about.

But getting back to one vote, one value, the other major strategy we undertook to mitigate that was that we put a formidable submission into the electoral commission on the boundaries. We worked very hard on that. We proposed that the Esperance area go out 73

DUNCAN INTERVIEW into the Mining and Pastoral Region. In fact, the seat of Eyre, which was Esperance and Kalgoorlie, we argued very strongly that they have confluence of interest and all that sort of thing. But, of course, we were also trying to get some Nationals members into Mining and Pastoral so I could get elected. The other thing is that we worked very hard on how we saw the seats arranged, particularly the upper house seats—South West, Agricultural, Mining and Pastoral—that would assist us in gaining good results in the next election. Not only did we put that formidable submission in—I found it the other day and it’s substantial. A lot of work was done in computer modelling and all that sort of thing. Also, as state president, I rang every affected local government and chatted to their president and their CEO and said, “Look, one vote, one value’s really going to go against you in the regions. This is our submission. It’s now on the website, and so on. Have a read of it? If you think it sounds like the way to go, will you please write one to support it?” Basically just saying, “Get off your tail. This is not something you can ignore. You don’t have to support our submission, but for God’s sake, say something.” A lot of them did support our submission. Of course, the major political parties were so focused on trying to survive the debacle that was happening in the metropolitan area with the redistribution that, really, our submission for the regions was the only one that had any substance and the Electoral Commission pretty well adopted it as a whole. It really played very well as far as us winning extra seats.

Ms Anne Yardley: I seem to recall in our first interview you were talking about one vote, one value as being fair.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely.

Ms Anne Yardley: But it went against your political survival; is that correct?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think I mentioned, too—I should have cross-checked and maybe we will before the next meeting, but I think it is in the Nationals’ constitution that we endeavour to achieve some sort of vote-weighting for regional areas. But as a student of politics with a degree in politics and as someone who has made a commitment to support democracy, I couldn’t in any clear conscience not support one vote, one value. It is democracy. It just doesn’t work where your demographics are so unbalanced. It’s all very well for people in the Labor Party or elsewhere to say, “One vote represents 30 people in the regions and 30 000 in the city.” The figures are wrong, but you get the gist. Sure, we all get that, but I had a 2 000-kilometre round trip on gravel roads to fully represent my electorate out in the central desert. If I chose to fly, one return flight out to the communities in the central desert for me to go and meet with Aboriginal people once or twice a year at 74

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the best—$25 000. It becomes very hard for people in these remote areas to get value from their vote. This is the argument. Goodness knows what the solution is, but this is the argument. They’re now wanting to target the upper house and the vote-weighting that is there because the regions are supposedly having equal and—each of the six regions has six members of Parliament. It totally doesn’t follow one vote, one value, but at least it gives the regions a voice and it gives that opportunity to slow legislation up and to say, “Hey, is this really good for the whole state?” It is a real dilemma. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think you cannot support one vote, one value.

Ms Anne Yardley: The submission that was received favourably—how did you feel when that redistribution took place? Did you feel encouraged by that—that it wasn’t going to decimate you as a party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, we did. By that time we had a vision of where we were going. We were already seeing the eyes light up of people who were starting to get what we were campaigning about. Our little TV ad was already out there. We really felt that we had the best possible strategy we could have to survive. I think everyone was very excited and energised and just saying, “Bring it on” and very, very willing to wear the consequences. We knew that we were ready. We knew that we had a long-term vision of how we were going to operate.

One of the other things I said as state president is that I found political advertising very boring and very straitlaced. I said, “What we need to do is start using cartoons and use graphics more.” That’s what we did. We had these little cartoons or graphics of money going out to the regions. They’re quite cheap, these graphics that you can do—pictures of the state and money flying backwards and forwards and, you know, with the federal election, a truck backing over and tipping a load of money into the eastern states. They are actually as a result of my desire to see more simplistic advertising.

I know that you get told very early in your journalism career that you aim for the intelligence or ability of an 11-year-old—literacy, perhaps; intelligence is not the right word—the literacy of an 11-year-old. I think that’s what we decided, even in our policies. In the 2005 election, we had policy documents that were an inch thick in fat files for people—goodness knows who—to read, whereas in the 2007 election, they were one-page discussion papers. They weren’t even hard policy, just, “This is what we think should happen. Get in contact with us and tell us what you think.”

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That two-way exchange with the electorate. It was colourful. We went to every country show and market day that could possibly happen. We used to always turn up to the Wagin Woolorama and a few key ones, but we went to the Kununurra Ag Show and the Derby Boab Festival and the North West Expo and FeNaClNG (Festival) in Karratha—absolutely everywhere, handing out these little flyers. In fact, I remember when we turned up at Newdegate, where we’d been forever, and we were handing out free balloons and T- shirts—we had free T-shirts. The first T-shirts we handed out were, I think, balance of power ones and after that royalties for regions. The Liberals complained to the management that we were giving away free things. The very next Newdegate Field Day they had balloons and T-shirts too. We did really turn campaigning on its head.

The other thing, of course, is that we went totally under the radar of the major political parties because all our advertising was on GWN; none of it was on mainstream TV. It was all on the little local radio stations and, of course, it was at these field days and market days. I remember hearing, only a few weeks before the election, somebody reported back to us that they’d done some polling and Norman Moore said, “My god, I don’t think we’re going to win any seats in Mining and Pastoral.” That was the first time the penny dropped with them that we’d done a huge job.

Ms Anne Yardley: There’s a lot to talk about in that 2005 election—in particular, your decision to stand—but I think we should leave that for today.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I still haven’t got there.

[End of WendyDuncan_4]

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Wendy Duncan_5

Ms Anne Yardley: This is another interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Sunday, 30 July 2017 and we’re at Wendy’s home in Nannup. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Last time we spoke, Wendy, you talked about the reasons for your standing in Agriculture in 2005, but I’d like to take a step back first to 2001 and ask you why you didn’t put your name down then?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it is an interesting question. It’s really only come to me as I’ve reflected on our discussions. That is, 2001 is about the time that I joined the Nationals, but having spent that time working for Ross Ainsworth in his office, I suppose there were members of the National parliamentary party who had got to know me a bit, and in particular Murray Criddle. It was Murray who, all along, kept saying, “Wendy, we need you. You should stand for Parliament.” I was always of the belief, particularly back then, that women really didn’t have much chance of getting into Parliament and that if I did stand, it would be for all the right reasons. I suppose, coming up to the 2001 election, Murray did approach me to just put my name further on down the list in the Agricultural Region ticket, with the same philosophy as we discussed earlier, which was to actually have a good regional representation on the ticket because that actually helps with the vote flow. One of the things that the Nationals are really not very good at is vote transfer from the lower house to the upper house, because our members of Parliament standing in the lower house are usually standing based on their name recognition rather than their party. So what often happens is that the vote transfer to the upper house is quite low—sometimes 60, 70 per cent—whereas the major political parties, obviously with our poor vote transfer, can actually achieve over 100 per cent transfer. The strategy with your upper house ticket is, even though one or maybe two are going to be successful to be elected, you actually put a team of six, perhaps, up that are then dotted throughout the region, hoping that in each of the regions they’ll say, “Oh, I know that person so I’ll vote for the Nationals on both sides.”

But in 2001 I was asked to put my name on the ticket and was assured that I’d be well down and won’t win. I know of people who have been told that and actually have won subsequently and it’s quite a shock to the system. I really was quite adamant about the fact that I would only put my hand up to stand for Parliament when I was ready and that I 77

DUNCAN INTERVIEW didn’t really want to, I guess, mislead people about whether or not I was genuine in having my name on the ballot paper, and so I actually refused and said, “No, I don’t want to do that just now” and they’re saying, “Well, if you’re interested in Parliament at some future date, this is all important for name recognition, even if you don’t win.” I thought, “I don’t know if I really am interested at some future date. I really enjoy the backroom stuff and the campaigning and the strategy and the administration”, but didn’t ever see myself as a member of Parliament. That is why, in spite of having Murray put that proposition to me, I said no.

Ms Anne Yardley: Why were the right reasons there in 2005? We’ve talked a bit about the strategic value with Murray Criddle, but for you personally, why was it right?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: By 2005—I guess it was 2004 really, because the election in 2005 was quite early in the year, February—I was a member of the executive and then state president, so I then was quite committed to the party and also to the strategy of having that regional representation on the ticket. It was very interesting, though, because Ross Ainsworth had made it quite clear he was retiring at the 2005 election, and so therefore the seat of Roe was up for grabs as well. There were quite a few people who were saying to me, “Wendy, you should stand for Roe; you’ll muck it in.” Again, I just didn’t have that self-confidence, I think, to stand for the seat of Roe, and there were a couple of other things at play. One is I was state president and I was very conscious of the fact that we had a very important election coming up where we may well lose our party status, and so we really had to have all that focus on the whole campaign. A lower house seat takes a lot of individual focus. But the other, more interesting, thing is that I think my very best friend—who still is—Jane Coole, who had dobbed me in to go on state executive and also lived in Esperance, had expressed an interest in standing in that seat. I’m a pretty humble person, really, so if somebody else puts their hand up, I just thought, “Well, she’d actually be much better at it than me.” I said, “Righto, you do that, and I’ll stand in Agricultural Region to back you”, so it was a team effort. That’s why I put my hand up for the Agricultural Region. As it turned out, Jane was working for Curtin University at the time in Esperance and even though she was preselected quite early in 2004, she didn’t resign from her position and start campaigning until quite late in the year and, as it turned out, too late, I think.

But it’s really interesting when you go back and think about the actual preselection for that Agricultural Region seat. I was actually at a function; it was my niece’s twenty-first birthday, so that would have been in June 2004. We were all together at this party for her. By that 78

DUNCAN INTERVIEW time, I had been preselected for Agricultural Region; I might have to go back on that. The interesting thing is that at that party was Mick Cotter, the former member for Kalgoorlie— federal member—and his daughter was actually married to my brother. I was talking to Mick over the barbecue and he said, “So, Wendy, you’re standing for Parliament. What are your chances?” I said, “Oh, look, I’m just really doing it to get the regional spread on the ticket. We’ll just see what the people say.” He looked me in the eye and gave me quite a stern lecture. He said, “Wendy, you’re either in it to win or not at all.” He’d been a councillor with the Shire of Coolgardie and recounted to me how he went into an election— and he was shire president at the time—with that similar attitude and ended up winning by one vote. He said, “That’s the best lesson I ever learnt. If you’re standing for election, then do all you can to win, out of not only respect for yourself but for the people that are going to be voting for you. They need to know that you’re genuine about what you’re doing.”

It is very interesting how I ended up as number two on the ticket because that came as a bit of a surprise to me as well. I remember we were heading to the state council meeting, which must have been earlier in that year of 2004. I picked up one of our life members, Jocelyn Bowey from Kulin, and she was probably pushing 80 by then, if not over. We drove together to Perth for this preselection, and she chatted to me about how important it is to put your best foot forward and to be genuine and to listen to the people and what they want. We went up to the preselection and I remember it was in CWA House in West Perth, and I gave the speech of my life and really put into it things that I hadn’t intended to that I’d picked up from Jocelyn in our trip to Perth and, of course, was preselected second after Murray Criddle, which just blew me away, because there was a team of blokes with their hands up who many people were assuming would automatically get a good position on the ticket. There was quite a bit of angst that I was successful in getting number two, but it really brought home to me the importance of if you decide to do something, do it well, and also of actually doing the work.

One of my mottos as state president and subsequently as, I guess, mentors of other members of Parliament and candidates is to say, “You do leave no stone unturned in your campaigning.” Even prior to preselection, you get issued with a list of people who are going to be voting on the day. Ring every one of them. Listen to what they have to say to you, don’t bore them silly with what you think the world should be, and then feed it back to them in your preselection speech. That sort of advice is just so important for people in politics, I think, and particularly in campaigning is that it’s actually not about you; it’s about your electorate and it’s about representing people’s views. If you choose to be the representative of those people, that’s what you are. You’re not the representative of 79

DUNCAN INTERVIEW yourself. In fact, that was one of the other reasons why I didn’t stand for the seat of Roe. I didn’t think that I could adequately represent farmers for years on end because, really, I was a goldfields girl. I was interested in the mining industry and interested in regional development and interested in the pastoral industry. Even though we had a go at farming, and maybe because of economic circumstances and commodity prices, we didn’t do it terribly well, but maybe also because we were from the pastoral industry and it was so foreign to us. I just really didn’t have a mental meeting of minds with farmers, so I really felt that I would rather be in the upper house, which, in my naive belief before I got into Parliament, was more policy and strategy focused rather than sorting out people’s individual problems.

Ms Anne Yardley: You found yourself second on the ticket. How did you approach the responsibility of electioneering and of having that position?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Not well enough. It’s interesting, because reading back through some of the documents, there’s a lot of talk about the Nationals’ poor vote transfer into the upper house. Even as state president, I was saying, “We need to get a good campaign going for our upper house teams”, but we didn’t ever really hit that sweet spot and I know down here in the south west, Steve Dilley, who was just so keen to fight a very strong upper house campaign, was held back by the leadership team, which was also Max Trenorden, Jamie Kronborg, Murray Criddle and others saying, “No, you can’t detract from our lower house candidates”, particularly as we were being smothered by the Liberals at the time, and “We can’t confuse the voters.” Even with our Agricultural Region campaign, Murray Criddle was head of the ticket but he was also shadow Minister for Water and really focused on supporting our lower house candidates. The chickens came home to roost because, really, we won one seat in Agricultural Region at that election and none anywhere else, so Murray Criddle was on his own in the upper house of the Legislative Council when the election came through and we really learnt a very important lesson that, as state president, we took very strongly to heart over the importance of the upper house, particularly if you’re going for the balance of power. Also, the other really big lesson from that failure, where we really skidded close to thin ice in that 2005 election, is the importance of preference negotiations.

Ms Anne Yardley: So what about the Roe campaign? Why your loss there? What happened?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: What happened was that Dr Graham Jacobs is a consummate campaigner, with his wife—she went everywhere with him. He’s a doctor; he took time out of his practice and he just travelled to every town in the electorate, knocked on every door, made media statements about every little issue and, even if it didn’t get into the media, he made sure that the locals knew about it and had his signage and his trailer and everything seen around the electorate for 12 months at least. It was quite obvious to us that our campaign was not anywhere near as good. For a start, we didn’t have the funds that a doctor had and, secondly, our candidate, based in Esperance—as was Dr Graham Jacobs—was not free to travel. She’d go on weekends when a lot of people are out and about and not home anyway, so too little, too late, really. I remember, as state president, driving around the electorate, just judging the mood, and it would’ve been—the election was February—late 2004, I suppose. It was quite obvious to me from the vibe that we were in trouble, so we decided to do some polling in that electorate and discovered that, yes, we were in serious trouble in Roe. It was at that point that we thought, okay, we really have to save the family silver, basically. Those three seats—Wagin, Central Wheatbelt and Roe—are the ones that we consider our bread-and-butter seats, so we really took our focus off particularly Greenough, where Grant Woodhams was valiantly campaigning pretty well on his own, in the end, and focused everything back into Roe.

I remember the funniest time. We actually hired a minibus and we were campaigning through the Roe electorate. We came into the town of Ongerup and we had every man and his dog on this bus—myself and Brendon Grylls and Max Trenorden and his wife, who’s a gorgeous lady who’d probably barely ventured out of the western suburbs, and several others, Jane. We were doorknocking in Ongerup and Ongerup’s a great little town, but it would be very scary to people who really didn’t know it terribly well. It’s very much a shearers’ dormitory town, servicing the wool industry. Anyway, we just spread out to doorknock the whole town. Max’s wife knocked on this door and this fellow answered and said, “Oh, just a minute, love”, and he disappeared back into the house. He came back with just a jockstrap on and she screamed and ran back into the bus [laughs]. She said, “I’m not getting out again [laughs].” It was 42 degrees, stinking hot, and we’re all trying to doorknock and she’s having hysterics in the bus because some man had accosted her with barely any clothing on, but it’s one of the joys of the job, apart from being attacked by dogs. You just never know who you’re quite going to meet. We really just threw all out just doorknocking.

I remember the day before the election in 2005. I got in my Prado with my dog and a whole heap of flyers which hadn’t managed to get distributed in time. I drove 1 300 kilometres 81

DUNCAN INTERVIEW around, just dropping into every postal agency saying, “Can you please put one of these into everybody’s mailbox?” But it was too late; we were gone. It was heartbreaking for Jane because everybody thought Roe was a very winnable, safe seat. For a female to be preselected for that seat was a major coup, but then for a female to lose it was devastating. It really made you stop and think. Jane was a very sophisticated, professional, cosmopolitan person, which Esperance is. There’s a lot of people in Esperance who don’t know where milk comes from, but the rest of the electorate was very, very much a farming electorate and we probably had the wrong candidate in some ways.

But of course, we were all sitting around, very depressed and miserable at this and, blow me down, Grant Woodhams wins. It’s not that we didn’t expect it; it’s just nobody had paid any attention to him and his campaign. He’s such a wonderful fellow and he should well have been angry with us, but that’s actually how he wanted it. Interestingly, the other day I saw one of his documents here, which was “Woody’s Top Five Priorities”. It’s all about, “I will visit every school in the electorate” and “I will make sure that the apprenticeship system is easy and available to people in remote areas” and “I’ll make sure Great Ocean Drive gets put through”—so some really key local issues. But the thing about Grant Woodhams was that he did visit every school. In fact, even when he was a member of Parliament and even when he was Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, he would still run up the most kilometres of any member of Parliament in that house. We were all scared stiff that he would wrap himself around a tree one day, but he didn’t. But it was absolutely no surprise that when he finished as a member of Parliament, he was exhausted— absolutely exhausted—and it’s because he was a grassroots politician who just made sure that everybody in every town knew him and knew that he cared. We learnt a lot from Woody and his win.

Ms Anne Yardley: That is exactly what I was going to ask you: what did you learn from him? You’ve talked about dropping flyers off, and it was too little too late, and then you’ve got Grant Woodhams. What did you learn from that about how to be a candidate?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: A lot. As I think I mentioned before, we had these great big folders of policy documents that everyone had slaved over and researched. We met with all the key representative bodies to get their input and we had these policies which we were presenting alongside the Liberal Party. There were TV campaigns with four men and one woman—just so staid and so boring, stuck there on the TV saying, “Vote Agricultural team” or whatever. It was really old-school campaigning that hadn’t taken into account TV and its importance, believe it or not. Facebook wasn’t really around then. After the One Nation 82

DUNCAN INTERVIEW episode, people were awakened to the fact that they did have power in politics and the political parties were a bit slow to pick up on that and the understanding that a flyer in the mail or an ad in the paper or a static television advertisement was not going to cut it with people who really wanted to see you and meet you and hear from you personally. I think I mentioned before, the other thing that I really began to realise was that if we were going to communicate with the electorate through media like television and newspapers and so on, it really has to be a much more simplified message. I actually said as state president that we needed to start thinking about using graphics and cartoons—things that would resonate with people and leave a simple message about what we stand for.

We learnt a lot from that campaign. We were very lucky not to lose our party status. In the negotiations that took place after that—I’m not sure when the negotiations took place—it was agreed at one stage that you could maintain party status as long as you had five members in both houses, rather than five members just in the lower house. That gave us a bit of comfort but we really were just staring down the barrel.

Ms Anne Yardley: You were, but you did maintain your five members in 2005.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: You are looking at the balance of power, so let’s talk about preferences.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The preference negotiations that happened in 2005 were tied to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party, just the usual—exchanging first preferences with each other—and then basically following what the Liberals did. We’d have a few variations on the theme, but with the major political parties it was at that higher level. Everyone decided that they would not preference One Nation, and that was agreed across the board and was effective. We saw the difference in the most recent election, where that philosophy was changed. While every political party agreed not to preference One Nation, we managed to keep that at bay.

I think the lesson that I learnt was that you really have to chase every vote down its burrow. I largely negotiated the preferences for the 2008 election and I spoke to and/or met everybody on the paper, upper and lower house, all the independents, and made some deal with them. Even if they knew they had no chance of winning, there was always somebody else on the ticket that they hated and if you promised you’d put them further 83

DUNCAN INTERVIEW than them, they’d be happy. Obviously it was like a game of chess, but really just trying to promise something to somebody, even with the Labor Party, to say to them, “Well, if you don’t preference us, we’ll put the Greens before you”, and they go, “Oh, shock horror, no.” Even though it probably wasn’t going to make a difference, in fact, I think we did put the Greens in a higher position in some of the 2008 election. The issue is you actually break out of your fear.

What happens in every election, like clockwork, is that the Nationals decide to put, way down the ticket, some party before another, and out comes Wilson Tuckey or Norman Moore or Jim Chown, saying, “Those Nationals, they’re giving their preferences to the Greens”, or whatever, when in fact everybody knows we are giving them to the Liberals first and then further down the ticket. I remember saying to Norman Moore once before the 2008 elections, I said, “Norman, you realise that you guys are just crying wolf all the time. Sooner or later we will actually preference somebody before you and you’ll scream blue murder and nobody will listen.” I’m actually disappointed that the Nationals haven’t had the courage to do that yet. It is about time that we preferenced Labor before the Liberals in some seats, and particularly, as, of course, in this most recent election the Liberals preferenced One Nation before the Nationals and we still behaved ourselves dutifully and put Liberals first in every seat. It’s just ridiculous. You know, the political system now, and particularly with the Nationals saying that they’re an independent, standalone political party, where are their guts? Where is their courage of their convictions? They really need to actually put their money where their mouth is. Labor always preferenced the Nationals before the Liberals, and, in fact, a lot of our seats were won because of that, but Labor quite rightly are fed up with the fact that there’s never much in return for them, except maybe putting them before the Greens. So they’ve started preferencing Liberals before the Nationals and we’re losing seats as a result of it. Kalgoorlie is a classic example in this most recent election and, in fact, the seat of Eyre in the 2012 election was another classic example where Colin de Grussa narrowly missed out on defeating Dr Graham Jacobs by only a couple of hundred votes, but Labor preferences were flowing to the Liberals.

Ms Anne Yardley: So you’re saying that despite becoming a standalone party between those two elections, 2005 and 2008, it didn’t really change your preference deals?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It did when I negotiated the 2008 election, but not dramatically to the point where we preferenced Labor before Liberal, but in some upper house seats. In fact, we stood candidates in the metropolitan region knowing—this is upper house 84

DUNCAN INTERVIEW candidates—knowing that we would not win the seats, but we preferenced the Greens in the metropolitan area in return for them preferencing us in key lower house regional seats. The other thing that I did as a preference negotiator for the 2008 election was tell the Liberal Party, “Yes, we’ll preference you”, but actually only preference their first two, so their winnable seats, and then switched off to somewhere else that we’d promised, I think it was Christian Democrats or somewhere, and then back again, so really broke the ticket up. They were outraged, but they did exactly the same; they all copied in 2013. But it really just meant that it gave you more room to negotiate. I remember I was working very closely with my executive and executive director on our strategies as far as preferences were concerned, but, amazingly, the executive actually gave me the freedom to finalise those negotiations. We had state executive in a boardroom there and then I would go off to the phone, and I remember ringing the Liberals. It was a conference call and in that room were Jeremy Buxton, , Norman Moore, a couple of others who I can’t remember and just me on the other end of the phone, and Mathias Cormann said, “So, is it just you, Wendy?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “I’ve never had to negotiate preferences with just one woman before [laughs].” And I said, “Well, I’ve got the confidence of my executive and what I’m putting to you has their approval.” But, yes, they really were intimidating and I just thought, “We can do this”, and we did.

Ms Anne Yardley: The public sometimes takes a bit of a dim view of the deals that are done with preferences. How do you respond to that if someone in your electorate complains that they don’t understand what’s going on and why are you doing it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think the thing is that the system requires that you have names on a list, particularly for the upper house, and I think what people have failed to understand but are getting better at, is that they don’t have to follow the how-to-vote card. In fact, we in our more recent campaigns have strongly encouraged people not to follow the how-to-vote card and say, “You know, this is your vote. You put your preferences the way you want to. If you don’t like the preference deal that the Liberals have done with One Nation, don’t take their how-to-vote card. You can still vote Liberal, but put your preferences somewhere else.” It’s interesting that in this most recent election, the 2017 state election, I was at the North Kalgoorlie polling booth, aware that this was going to a be very tight three-way contest between Liberal, Labor and the Nationals in Kalgoorlie, and I stood on that polling booth all day and people were saying, “Wendy, take a rest.” I’d just broken my leg, I was not 100 per cent fit, and I made sure that I was the last person that people saw before they went into that polling booth. If they had a Labor how-to-vote card, I’d say, “If you’re going to vote Labor, just be aware that that how-to-vote card 85

DUNCAN INTERVIEW preferences the Liberals, so put Tony Crook second if you’re going to vote Labor.” Every person, if you got a bit of an inkling of what they were going to do—and for the first time ever the Nationals won that booth. It’s always been a Liberal booth. So, it shows you that it is possible to get people to stop and think about their vote. It also shows you how important it is on the day, much as we all hate handing out how-to-vote cards and would love to see the back of it.

Ms Anne Yardley: It is important on the day, isn’t it? Let’s look at you again. In 2007 you stood for the Senate.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did that come about and why? What was your strategic thinking there?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The strategic thinking was that I had in 2006 or 2007 driven out to Woolibar station and cornered Tony Crook15 in his sheep yards. He was at that stage federal president of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and was railing against the state government’s treatment of RFDS. At one stage Jim McGinty said, “They’re just an interest group; don’t take them seriously”, and yet the RFDS was just not able to meet the needs of the community. Eighty per cent of its work was inter-hospital transfers for the Department of Health, and Jim McGinty was taking no notice of them. Tony was getting more and more angry. I went out to him and I said, “Tony, it’s time you stepped up. You need to really stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie at the next state election”, because my job as state president was to identify candidates for our seats that we thought we needed to win to win the balance of power. Tony, after quite a bit of consideration—the Liberal Party always thought he was theirs, and he is quite an impressive fellow—eventually said yes, that he would stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie. As part of that process, I guess, we thought, “Right, we’ve got to get his name recognition up”, so we will stand for the Senate, he and I. He would be number one on the ticket and I would be number two. It was all about just— where is it?

Ms Anne Yardley: There’s the how-to-vote.

15 Tony Crook was the Nationals member for the federal seat of O’Connor 2010-2013

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, so I’ve got the how-to-vote card there with myself and Tony on it. We both knew that neither of us had a chance. The Nationals would never win; the only chance we had to win a seat in the Senate is when there is a half-Senate election, because we don’t get votes in the city. So we both knew that we weren’t going to win in this seat, but it was about getting Tony’s name recognition up. By this time I was state president of the Nationals and a vocal one. I’m very good at putting out my own media statements and getting on radio, so my name recognition was actually starting to be quite good, and alongside Brendon Grylls—everybody knew him and I was always there, so I got a bit of that as well. So, it was really a strategy to get Tony’s name recognition up in readiness for him to stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie. We absolutely supported the Nationals and if we’d got in federally, we would have done our job, but it was really more about name recognition.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was it successful?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, it was; it was actually too successful, because what happened is that part of that strategy also was that Tony Crook stood for the seat of O’Connor against Wilson Tuckey and Wilson had been invincible for 30 years, and we firmly believed that he would continue to be so. But because we are at the same time trying to get our name recognition up about the Nationals and the balance of power and time to stand up for ourselves, we put a very strong campaign out for the election in the seat of O’Connor, which was 2007. This must’ve been earlier, that Tony stood for the Senate.

Ms Anne Yardley: We could check that, but I was pretty sure that was 200716 for the two of you.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, but anyway Tony stood for the seat of O’Connor—it must’ve been 2010; yes, that’d be right. Tony stood for the seat of O’Connor in 2010. We, again, had that strategy as part of getting his name recognition up in readiness for another go at the seat of Kalgoorlie, but much to everybody’s surprise, of course, he won the seat of O’Connor and was there for three years until the federal election. And really for Tony, he did a brilliant job and he’s still remembered for sitting on his own in the House of Representatives with Bob Katter and all of Labor and Liberal and everyone else on the

16 In 2007, Tony Crook stood for the WA Nationals for a Senate seat but was unsuccessful. He also stood for the seat of Kalgoorlie at the 2008 state election, losing to independent John Bowler.

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW other side voting for a floor in the GST of 75c. But Tony always wanted to be a state member of Parliament and really he did his best and did a brilliant job as a federal member but was not that happy there, and the travelling in the distance and so on were too much for him and he didn’t contest again the following election. So, that was unfortunate, because, really, if he hadn’t won O’Connor, he probably would have stood in Kalgoorlie in 2013 and won probably, and I would have stayed in the seat of Mining and Pastoral, which I absolutely adored and had the best time of my life, and everyone would have lived happily ever after [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: We’ll have a lot to talk about with Mining and Pastoral, but before we do, in 2005 you developed the Nationals’ strategic plan.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was that all about? What did you identify there?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was part of a consultation that I decided we needed to do when I took over as state president, to just find out why we were losing members, why we were keeping members—why they were sticking with us, and what they were expecting us to do for them now and in the future. Typical strategic planning process: where our strengths and weaknesses were. And of course, I did it by fax from home, because by that time I’d closed the office down, and so sending all these faxes out. I managed to master Telstra’s FaxStream process where you could actually put several names on the list and send several at once—I was so high-tech back then—and got a really good response back from party members to this questionnaire I put out and then worked with my state executive, who were very strong on this consultation side of things. I had Leigh Hardingham on there and Colin Holt—people who had been involved in the rural leadership program and were very good at that sort of consultation and stakeholder engagement and analysis.

What came back was very clear to us that people supported the Nationals because we were fiercely focused on the regions, and they wanted us to be more independent and more feisty. But there was also an interesting message in that while, yes, we were on the conservative side of politics, there also had to be that care and concern for the little bloke. So I guess there’s that what’s sometimes disparagingly called agrarian socialism. I’m actually a firm believer in that, that there are times when you just cannot ride roughshod over the weaker people in the community. So that came out quite strongly. The other thing which was very important was the need to actually engage and encourage youth and their 88

DUNCAN INTERVIEW involvement in the party. So that really gave us a lot of courage, I guess, to progress on the path we were on. I think I mentioned previously that we did have quite in-depth discussions about where to for the party, and whether it was amalgamation or whether it was to dissolve or whether it was to stand alone. This result and this strategic planning process really gave us the courage to proceed and to actually take our party members to places that they never thought they’d go. Amazingly, with Brendon’s incredible charisma and oratory and my ability to tidy up after him when he’d failed to observe due process or made a commitment that was going to spend too much money and I’d be the one who’d say, “Actually, no, we can’t afford that”, the two of us were an incredibly good team and really had the ability to win people over.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is this where the drive came from to be a standalone party? Where were you hearing this from? Was it from your members or was it the partnership you had with Brendon?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it was from our members, but Brendon was very clear in his mind that the party had to take a new and dramatic direction. In fact, I found a paper that he’d wrote in 2003—he was only in his late 20s and so you’ve got to admire his courage. He was quite blatant in saying, “We need new leadership, and I intend to take it over”; this is in 2003. Then a few paragraphs later he put down the names and date of birth or year of birth of all the existing members of Parliament, saying that they’re all too bloody old basically. I thought, “That would have gone down well with the masses.” So his original, quite brash attempt to take over the party fell horribly flat, and it was because really he didn’t understand that sometimes you need a little bit of finesse and subtlety in undertaking these things. But it was very clear and obvious to everyone that Brendon saw himself as leader from very early in the piece, and it was people like particularly Terry Waldron, who was a sportsman from way back and had played state and maybe even national grade cricket and football and so very much understands teams and getting teams to operate effectively. He basically counselled Brendon to take his time and to learn the ropes and to gather his support base, which is really what happened. The whole while I think Max Trenorden was feeling more and more under pressure, and Max when he’s under pressure reacts quite aggressively so he was losing support really because of some of his pronouncements and his lack of listening to the message that was really coming from the party. Max was really still very much a supporter of working closely with the Liberal Party and the 500 Club and coalition and so on, when everyone else had basically moved on.

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It was actually in 2005—I don’t know whether this is really responding to your question; I forget what it was now, but I might as well follow this train of thought. It was actually in 2005 that we went for one of these fairly—twice a year the Nationals go on a retreat. Joe Spagnolo calls it a “love-in”; I think most political parties do it to build the team and look at strategy for the future. We went to Murray Criddle’s beach house at Horrocks. I was there in my role as state president and there were quite a few staffers, and all the boys—the members of Parliament. So we had our morning meeting where all the staffers and myself as state president were present and discussed strategy and some of the challenges that were facing us as we looked forward to the big redistribution and the forthcoming election. There were a few tensions in the room that were a bit palpable, but then those of us that were not members of Parliament left and went off to the Northampton pub, I think, for lunch. In our absence there was obviously some sort of showdown, and when we all got back together, Max had gone and Brendon was the leader. It was really something that I don’t think—well, maybe the members of Parliament were in on it; I certainly wasn’t as state president. Actually, no, I’ve got that wrong, because it was at that love-in that there was some sort of showdown and Max did leave early, but he remained the leader. It wasn’t actually at that event, but there was some sort of showdown because—that’s right. I then left fairly soon after that to go to the Eyre Bird Observatory. I’m a member of the Malleefowl Preservation Group, and they were doing a bird survey at Eyre, where there’s no phone, no internet—well, there’s one phone, but no mobile phone. I’m there out at the Eyre Bird Observatory, which is on the Great Australian Bight, south of Cocklebiddy, and laying very low about who I was and the managers of the bird observatory said, “Is there a Wendy Duncan here?” I said, “Oh, yes.” He said, “There’s a phone call. Apparently, Max Trenorden’s resigned as Leader of the Nationals and made the announcement at a 500 Club luncheon.” And I’m going, “Oh, God [chuckles].” Everyone’s going, “Oh, is that you?” So I got on the phone and I rang Murray Criddle, who has always been my, sort of, mentor, and I said, “Murray, what’s going on?” He said, “Yes, Max, without telling anybody in the party, me or his colleagues, announced at a 500 Club lunch that he was resigning as leader of the party.” I said, “Oh, God, what’ll I do, Murray?” He said, “Stay where you are [chuckles].” I said, “Okay, thank you”, and I had the best time and then came back to all the fallout of the leadership change. But that was really the beginning of the very exciting ride.

Ms Anne Yardley: How much fallout was there? To what extent did the troops rally round Brendon?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Very much so, yes. Terry Waldron took the position of deputy leader with Brendon, which is a similar strategy to the one I took as state president in that I insisted that I had somebody from the more conservative side of the party as my vice- president. The other party members were very supportive—Terry Redman in particular. Grant Woodhams: Grant just kept doing his own thing. Grant was never involved in any of this stuff; he just rolled his eyes and went and visited another school. He did his job, and the rest of the party shenanigans just went over his head. Max refused to attend the party room from there on. It’s very interesting really when you look back and think how we bent over backwards to accommodate Max, to the point, as we discussed, with me promising to step aside in our most safe seat to ensure that he had a safe seat for the next election, when really during that period, and even subsequently in the next Parliament, he was never a very happy camper.

Ms Anne Yardley: Where we were trying to get to was the standalone status of the Nationals —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: — and taking that to the next election, and what support there was for that within the party. Was it a popular move?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, so how that really came about—I don’t know if you remember, but in 2005 there was a whole heap of shenanigans going on over the redistribution. The Nationals, as I said before, actually managed it, I think, exceptionally well, but the other political parties, and particularly the Liberal Party, were in total disarray over all of this, with Paul Omodei and Dan Sullivan and Matt Birney and all this jockeying for position and for leadership. In the end, Matt Birney ended up as leader of the Liberals. You may remember that he changed his declaration. He went into the office of the Clerk of the house and actually slipped into it a change of his share ownership, without really letting anybody know, and of course was sprung doing that and caused a considerable amount of debate in Parliament. There was a call that Matt be hauled before the privileges committee over this issue. What happened was Brendon, who was then the Leader of the Nationals, actually stood up in Parliament and said that he agreed that this was something that couldn’t be allowed, that members of Parliament must be open at all times about what they do, and that he actually supported that Matt’s action go to the privileges committee. Well, all hell broke loose, and in fact Matt Birney stood up in Parliament and said, “While ever I’m leader of this party, we’ll never be in coalition with the Nationals.” So the acrimony 91

DUNCAN INTERVIEW between the two parties was palpable. I think I did tell you about Danielle Blain ringing me and saying, “What are we going to do about these two boys?” But the interesting thing is that the feedback we were getting from the grassroots was saying, “You go, Brendon. We’re with you.” So the more feisty Brendon got, the more positive feedback we were getting from the grassroots. Unfortunately, this was Brendon’s final downfall.

Brendon had a habit of actually making some announcement to the press and then coming back to the party about and saying, “I’ve just said this; I hope it’s okay.” Really, when it comes to being an independent, standalone party, it was almost another case of that because he had said to the media, “Well, if Matt Birney doesn’t want a coalition, that’s fine by us. We’re not really interested in that.” Then he came back to state executive and said, “I’ve just said this to the media.” We go, “Oh, okay; well, we just had a big strategic planning session only a couple of months ago that said that we didn’t want to amalgamate and we didn’t want to dissolve, but we did want to continue working as a coalition. We’d better frantically review this situation.” So in the end we decided we needed to put it to the party, and so we drafted a resolution which basically said that the Nationals would be an independent, standalone political party, willing to deal with either side of government. That was towards the end of 2005. So then we called a state council meeting for March 2006 at the Wagin Woolorama, and as state president over the preceding months I just— goodness knows what my phone bill was like—called everybody who had eligibility as a state councillor, and said, “(a) you need to be there, and (b) this is what we’re debating and these are the arguments for and against.” So by the time we actually came to that March 2006 state council meeting in Wagin, which was fully attended—and this is one of the frustrating things that I look back on my political career and everybody says, “How fabulous; everybody came”; they don’t understand the work that went into that to get them all there.

The debate was excellent. There’s nothing nicer in a political party than seeing people who have put thought into what they’re saying, they put it succinctly and obviously have prepared themselves for the meeting. The debate was brilliant, and really the only person who spoke out and perhaps a little too emotionally on the issue and against it was Max Trenorden, who was still really determined that we should stick with the Liberal Party. One of his biggest threats was, “You’ll lose your funding from the 500 Club and the ability to jointly go to corporates”, and so on. In spite of that and the fact that we were still not that financially strong, the meeting passed that resolution to say, “Yes, we’re going to be standalone and independent, and if it means that we lose our funding from the 500 Club”, which we did, “So be it. Because really why do we exist? We exist to represent the people 92

DUNCAN INTERVIEW who think we should exist. If there aren’t enough people out there with money to back us who think we should exist, well then we shouldn’t exist.” That was the risk that we were prepared to take. I think—I might have mentioned this, too—that, as I say, when you’re faced with certain death, you become all the more imaginative about ways to survive. I think the party really realised that this was a major turning point.

So, to answer your question, it was widely supported; really very strongly supported. Even the old stalwarts and some of our life members were all saying, “Yes! At last you’ve found some backbone.”

Ms Anne Yardley: How did it change the policies that you developed?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it gave us a whole heap of freedom, of course, and everybody just relished that. So we started then to think about policies that we had in conjunction with the Liberals, and not very comfortably, and say, “Okay, let’s review this.” Things like GM crops and uranium mining, and even one of the really interesting things— and I’m pretty sure I had a strong influence on this—is starting to look at policies around Aboriginal advancement and recognition of their importance in the state and the economy, and of course the desire to look beyond the Agricultural Region and broaden our footprint. So then we started thinking about policies for the mining industry and for Ord stage 2, and for Karratha. So we’re starting to think about things as a statewide political party, and not so much the agricultural arm of the Liberal Party. So very exciting times. I know that I really got excited about policies for the mining industry, and in fact I’m very proud to this day that I looked at what they were doing, in a South Australia with an incentive scheme for mineral exploration. So they had what was called PACE—an exploration scheme over there; we called it the exploration incentive scheme, which then became part of our negotiations when we formed government and policy and really has made a huge difference to the mining industry.

So there was that great excitement. As we looked up and broadened our view and knew that we needed to get that message out about being independent—sure, our grassroots and membership knew about it, but now we wanted the whole state to know about it—was when we started to travel and when we really got this message coming back to us all the time about how we produce all the wealth but we never see any of it back here. We got that message in the Pilbara in particular. That was another one of Brendon’s bombshells, really. It was that he walked into a party room saying, “I’ve just said to the media that we need to give 25 per cent of royalties to the regions.” [End of Wendy Duncan_5] 93

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Ms Anne Yardley: Today’s Sunday, 30 July 2017 and we’re continuing our discussion in Wendy’s house in Nannup. In fact, what we do want to talk about is the balance of power strategy that you developed following the 2005 election, which led you into the next election.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think it really came out of the one vote, one value decision of the government and the redistribution, which meant that we were going to lose a lot of our regional seats, which were being amalgamated. In fact, what happened was that we ended up with what we called the 48–11 strategy where Brendon was saying that there’s 48 seats between Mindarie and Margaret River, and 11 in the whole of the rest of regional Western Australia. How do you expect to get a voice in Parliament? In fact, he came with this coloured-in map with a scratchy old green marker pen that wasn’t even colouring in fully. He had a map of Western Australia and coloured in the area that was the 11 seats and the rest of the area, which was the 48. We went around the state with this scrappy old piece of paper showing it to various local governments and chambers of commerce and so on, even up into the Kimberley in—it must have been February 2007, I think, where people were saying, “What are you doing in the Kimberley in February? Don’t you know it’s the wet season? Politicians never come to the Kimberley in February. They’re always here in July and August for Broome Cup and the sunshine.” We said, “No, no. We’ve got a message for you.” It was that message about the fact that the only way that the Nationals and, therefore, regional people would be able to have an effective voice in Parliament would be if they had the balance of power. We used this map which showed the vast area of Western Australia where those remaining 11 regional seats were and the 48 from Mindarie to Margaret River, 48–11, the alliteration of Mindarie to Margaret River. It probably wasn’t entirely accurate inasmuch as one would think Margaret River is really a regional seat anyway, but it sounded good.

Brendon was very much the orator and very much picked up on these sort of catchy phrases. So we took that story around the state. He was a member of Parliament, obviously, but I remember once we were travelling with him, myself and Leigh Hardingham in the Kimberley, who was vice president of the party at the time, really at our own cost— even with Brendon being a member of Parliament it was out of his electorate; he wasn’t eligible for any sort of taxpayer funding and so on—and just putting this story out. I know too that, and I think we’ve discussed this previously, I drove from Esperance to Broome

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW doing all the outback local governments, putting that same story about the fact that really the only way that you were going to get a voice in Parliament, having the influence in Parliament, was to have the balance of power.

The rider of that message, which a lot of people maybe didn’t really register we were serious about, was the fact that the only way to have an effective balance of power was to be willing to deal with either side of government. So really, I guess, the full extent of our decision to become an independent political party was the fact that, yes, we had decided as an executive and as a state council that if you were going to be genuinely an independent political party, then you had to be genuinely willing to deal with all sides of politics to achieve your outcomes. I remember saying to people who would question about how could you possibly support Labor, you know, conservative people, “Well what would you prefer? A Labor government unfettered or a Labor government tempered by the Nationals who have the balance of power? Why is it that the Nationals only have influence in every second government? Wouldn’t you like them to have influence in every government?” Personally and philosophically, I was very comfortable with that position, so was Brendon, so was Grant Woodhams. Max was really, I guess, almost missing in action at the time. Who else? Terry Waldron and Terry Redman, I think, were happy with the independent stance but a little bit nervous about dealing with Labor. We really had a majority of our party that was really very committed to that.

It’s interesting how when you are addressing a room like a local government council or a chamber of commerce executive or something, I could see as I was putting the story, you look around the room and you could see the people in the room that the story resonated with and you could see the people in the room who were just going, “She’s dreaming. This is just pie-in-the-sky stuff.” As state president, my job was to try and identify candidates so as we went around on this trip talking about the balance of power strategy and the fact that if regional people wanted a fair go they actually needed to change the way they vote and who they supported, I would then go back to people that I saw the lights go on in their eyes and say, “Will you stand?”, particularly in the Mining and Pastoral areas. So people like Dave Grills, who was a councillor at the Leonora shire, said, “I’ve always been a Labor supporter and I never thought I would support the Nationals because, you’re really just another name for the Liberal Party, but I get this, and count me in.” So Dave was one of those original true believers. Alan Cochrane, who was the president at the time of the Shire of East Pilbara was another one who just got it straightaway. Brendon had been speaking to him and he said, “Yes, count on me. I’ll stand.” So as we went around the state, we garnered candidates and support as well. 95

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The other thing we did with our map, which we eventually got printed into a map that actually showed the state of the electorates, 48 seats on the coast and 11 in the rest of Western Australia, was we actually got them printed up into big posters and went to every ag show, every market day, anything where there were a lot of people—the FeNaClNG Festival at Karratha, the Spinifex festival at Port Hedland, the North West Expo in Broome. There was a big event in Newman, the Nameless Festival at Tom Price, and something in Carnarvon, I forget what it was. We started to have a bit of a marketing strategy and marketing products, I suppose, to take to these events. It was all based on this idea of presenting things in pictures—so the map of Western Australia. We also grabbed every media opportunity we could. I remember Brendon and I were in Carnarvon and we were actually walking down the street just talking to all the small businesses and this car went past and then it screamed to a halt and did a U-turn and came back and he said, “Are you Brendon Grylls?” And he said, “Yes.” And he said, “Oh God, mate! We love what you’re saying.” And I said to Brendon, “I think that we’re actually starting to reach a tipping point where people knew about us before we got to town.” We’d got past the stage where we were meeting a lot of sceptics.

It’s quite interesting that once I was the member for Kalgoorlie—I did meet one of the past presidents of the Leonora shire who was president the day that I went and presented and got Dave Grills on board. He said, “You know, Wendy” he said, “when you came and talked to us about your balance of power strategy, we all rolled around the floor laughing after you left the room.” He said, “We just don’t believe that you pulled that off.” So that’s really interesting to have somebody say that. Actually, Kitty Prodonovich who—I saw her only this year—was MC of a Women in Leadership event here in Kalgoorlie this year, but she was president of the chamber of commerce of the time that we were doing our trip around. She said to me after this event only a couple of months ago, “Wendy, when you came and addressed us about this strategy of winning the balance of power and delivering for regional Western Australia, we said to ourselves after you left the room, ‘What a pity she’s not standing with a party that’s going to be able to deliver on what she’s got the vision for.’” There were a lot of people who were very sceptical about what we had to say, but we were absolutely convinced that the only way to get the message out was foot slogging it—we had no money anyway—and speaking to ordinary people, not branch members, not—we did the shire councils and the chambers of commerce because we were trying to find leaders who were willing to come on board, but, really, if we wanted supporters and voters, we had to go out to where people were gathering. We became past masters at attracting people to our stands. As I mentioned to you before, giving away T-shirts and balloons and 96

DUNCAN INTERVIEW hats and things that actually—we’d give a balloon to the little kids and then while the child was getting it tied onto their wrist, Brendon would be telling the story. We got quite slick at actually putting that story across.

But as I mentioned briefly before, we became more and more aware that the message we were hearing back from regional Western Australia was: we’re producing all the wealth out here but we’re not seeing any of it back. Our hospitals are dilapidated, in vast Western Australia there’s not enough land being released, not enough housing, rents are two or three thousand dollars a week, houses are a million dollars and they’re only little three- bedroom, one-bathroom houses. People trying to service the mining industry and work in the Pilbara were living in caravans and containers. We started to really strongly get the message that the biggest bone of contention for regional people was lack of government expenditure or understanding of what was going on in regional Western Australia. I think, and I might be repeating myself here, but one of the watershed moments was when Brendon Grylls came to Kalgoorlie. I took him there and he’d never been to Kalgoorlie before. We stood in the main street, the beautiful wide street of Kalgoorlie, fabulous historic buildings all a century or more old, and he said, “Wow! You can see there was a boom here a century ago. Why doesn’t Karratha look like this?” That was where the whole idea of this strategy was starting to gel.

In fact, another really key milestone is that I’m a Kalgoorlie girl and as part of my campaign to be member for Mining and Pastoral, I spent a lot of time around the goldfields and so on in the lead-up to the 2008 election. I was invited to a meeting with two very well-known and very influential Kalgoorlie people: Graham Thomson, who runs Diggers and Dealers, and Doug Daws, who’s been in local government and just a mover and shaker in ways only Kalgoorlie knows. The two of them presented me this paper, which basically was a proposal for a proportion of royalties to be returned to the local governments of the region. That paper had actually been put to both Liberal and Labor and these fellows said, “They laughed us out of the room.” They actually put it to the major political parties and it had been rejected as ridiculous: “Why would we quarantine royalties to go back to local governments?” I took a copy of that paper down and gave it to Brendon and I said, “Look, what these guys are talking about is actually quarantining some mining royalties for regional areas.” He took the paper away and subsequently, he was in the caravan with his brother and his brother’s partner. They’d been living in a caravan in Karratha for nearly two years working in the mining industry and really couldn’t get a house up there and wanted to stay there. Apparently, it was in that caravan in Karratha that they were talking

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW about, “How do we redress this imbalance” and they actually came up with a policy of royalties for regions and the 25 per cent returning to regional areas.

The name “royalties for regions”—again, as I mentioned, Brendon loved short, sharp phrases. He loved alliteration, he loved catching people’s attention. There’s a very popular program in regional areas that’s been running for quite some time called Roads to Recovery, and everybody knows about Roads to Recovery. They know it’s a government program and it’s highly regarded and staunchly protected, particularly by local governments. Brendon said, “What about royalties for regions?” He came back from his trip up there and announced to the state executive that this was going to be the policy. As has happened many times before and since, we all said, “Yes, that sounds like a plan”, and started to then fall in behind and work out how it was going to be implemented.

One of the things Brendon did, which made a huge difference, is that the leader—what they call LOSP—of the second party in Parliament actually got funding for staffing and to lease a separate office so they could do research and they could intelligently and with preparedness get involved in debating legislation and so on. So what Brendon did was say to the government, “I want the entire LOSP funding—leader of second party—to be used for staff. I don’t want to lease an offsite office.” And then proceeded to cram the entire leader of the second party’s staff into the two National Party rooms that were at Parliament House. It was really very frowned upon that he did that, not only from an occupational health and safety point of view but because of the precedent it set and so on. In each of those tiny little offices—you know what Parliament House is like—there would have been four or five people. But it saved a lot of money and then that money was used to produce the TV ad and the materials that we were working on to take to our fairs. But of course it was those staff that then put the flesh on the bones of the royalties for regions policy and others that we with came up with.

Ms Anne Yardley: So what is the flesh on the bones? Let’s expand it and explain the royalties for regions.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, I think the royalties for regions name was there pretty well —

Ms Anne Yardley: That was the Nationals’ name for it.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

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Ms Anne Yardley: I thought the original concept was something slightly different, but that’s not important.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The proposal that the fellows in Kalgoorlie presented us with had a different name. I have got that document somewhere, not with me now, so I can have a look for that. But, no, he was pretty sorted on royalties for regions from the beginning but we really hadn’t determined 25 per cent or how it was going to work or what the objectives of the policy would be. But we also, of course, had decided that we weren’t going to have the thick file of policy research and discussion and that, in fact, what we were going to do is just put out a one-pager. It was that one-pager that his leader’s office staff put together, but with quite substantial background research to put into it. When we first calculated what this would mean, the 25 per cent, we came up with $375 million. We were just gobsmacked at this amount of money. How fantastic was that for regional areas when under the current Labor government, they had $100 million for the regions over four years? It was to us an amazing amount of money. We needed to then think about how we would properly spend it.

Ms Anne Yardley: Where did the 25 per cent come from? How was that decided on?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well I think it was based on the proportions of the population. Twenty-five per cent of the population live in the regions, so we deserve 25 per cent of the royalties back again. I think what was overlooked in the whole calculation is the effect of the GST and actually how much net royalties the state actually got. I think that to this day it is something that needs to be further considered. Because the 25 per cent royalties that was committed in the legislation under royalties for regions in some ways was actually the entire discretionary spending of government in many ways. So it really needed a little bit more thought.

Ms Anne Yardley: The original plan had been knocked back by both Liberal and Labor, as you said. Colin Barnett was underwhelmed with the idea—he didn’t think much of it. What did you see in the idea and how did you go about selling it to the government?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: We put it to both Labor and Liberal and they both rejected it. We were actually quite delighted at that outcome because we really wanted to win the balance of power and then negotiate this. If either of the parties had agreed, there was our whole election strategy up the creek! We put our argument truthfully and honestly and forcefully, 99

DUNCAN INTERVIEW but we didn’t ever expect it to be accepted by either Liberal or Labor, and neither did we want it to be because it then meant that we had a strategy to go out to the people and say, “Well, neither of the major political parties are going to do this and we’re the only ones who will, but we can only do it if it’s a condition of forming government in a minority government situation. We can only do it if we win the balance of power and whoever wants to form government needs to form it with us. And then we’ll say, ‘Yes, we’ll form government with you, we’ll guarantee supply, we’ll be good, strong partners in government, but we want this policy as part of the deal.’”

In fact, I remember with Brendon—in those early days he was very forceful and almost quite brash in putting his policy, and quite aggressive. I remember we were sitting outside the Menzies town hall and Brendon was doing a radio interview and he was being really forceful and I had a sticky note and I wrote on it. I just said, “Calm down. You need to sound like a statesman.” I stuck it on the dashboard in front of him and Brendon toned his voice down and then after the interview I said to him, “Look, people are listening. You’ve got their attention. You don’t need to shout anymore. We now need to demonstrate that we will be reasonable, responsible and rational partners in government, because we don’t want to scare people. We want the balance of power, but you don’t want the balance of power without responsibility.” It was after that point—once we knew people were listening, we then started to just become more statesmanlike, more calm, more sensible, more responsible because (a) we didn’t want to frighten voters, but (b) we didn’t want to frighten Liberal or Labor either. We wanted them to say, “Oh, these Nats, they’re okay. We’ve governed with them before, so we’ll go into negotiations with them.” It was quite a turning point in the campaign because to actually get media coverage and to get people listening to us, we actually did have to say some quite angry and outrageous stuff: getting stuck into Jim McGinty over the Royal Flying Doctor Service, getting angry about people living in containers in Karratha and things that the media picked up on because it was populist, emotional rhetoric. But then once you know that you’ve got the ear of the public and the media, then you put your story out. Often, we would find someone who was in a Homeswest house somewhere that had asbestos or broken walls or whatever and we’d make a big hoo-ha about Mrs Jones who’s agreed to be willing and able to be in the event. Then we’d invite the media and Mrs Jones would be all upset about her building and we’d say, “Well this is because not enough money’s been spent in the regions”, and then come in with the policy. You’d have the headline, which would get people’s attention, but then come back in with the responsible solution. It was really quite an effective strategy.

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The other thing we did, which I think played a far more important role than people realised, and that is to involve political analysts. I think I mentioned to you that we invited Professor Dean Jaensch over from South Australia who was a specialist in minor parties in Australia and their effectiveness. He’d pay particular attention to Karlene Maywald who was a Nationals member of Parliament in South Australia, who actually took a ministry in a Labor government and very effectively represented her electorate, which was on the Murray River. She said, “Yes, I’ll take them. I’ll support your minority government as long as you give me Minister for Water.” So she was able to look after that. So Dean Jaensch, we actually bought him over to Western Australia to address a function which really was where we announced this independent, standalone strategy and the balance of power strategy. To have someone of that standing actually come over and say, “Yes, I like what these guys are doing and look, it’s working in South Australia”, was very effective.

Ms Anne Yardley: What specific suggestions or strategies did he give you? Did he give you something new that you hadn’t tried before or weren’t already doing?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think the thing is that it was more about saying, “Look, the world’s not going to end if there’s a minority government.” There are examples around the world, in Germany, Italy and other places where minority government works effectively. Look in South Australia, Karlene is doing a great job and the government’s survived. And, then he really talked about how smaller parties, third parties, are really very important to keep your democracy healthy, to keep your major political parties on their toes. The other thing I think that came through that I certainly picked up is that in some ways having, not a dissenting voice so much as a scrutinising voice that may well slow legislation up as it goes through the Parliament is actually a good thing, not a bad thing. We saw it with John Howard when he had a majority in both houses federally that actually they rushed through stuff that, in effect, is not good policy and is not what the people want. Professor Jaensch really said, “Look, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. These guys are aiming for this strategy. It’s not new; it’s okay.”

But the other thing that we did was to meet with people like David Black, Harry Phillips, Peter van Onselen and Peter Kennedy and present them with a strategy, with our material, to say, “Look, this is what we’re talking about out in the regions and this is the strategy, this is some of the material we are putting out, this is the research that’s gone in behind it.” It was very effective, actually, because then they started talking about, “Well, the Nationals have got a new strategy”, whereas, I think I mentioned to you before, really what

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW we were doing was going totally under the radar of city media, and particularly the major political parties, because we were just targeting local radio stations, local TV stations and local events. The fact that nobody in the city knew what we were talking about actually played into our hands, but we needed people like David Black and Peter van Onselen and so on. When the crunch came at election time, if we happened to have the balance of power, we needed them to understand what we were thinking and that we were dinkum.

Ms Anne Yardley: So how intertwined were these ideas—the balance of power strategy: how important was royalties for regions in achieving getting you over the line for the balance of power?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think, really, looking back, the balance of power strategy was the one that resonated, probably almost more strongly than royalties for regions in the initial stages. Royalties for regions was really one of the policies that we rolled out closer to the election, but, honestly, I think that what the shire president of Leonora said was probably pretty accurate, and that is, “They’re dreaming; it’ll never happen. It’ll never happen. We’ve never seen that amount of money come into regional Western Australia, why would we now?” But they did get the idea of the balance of power, and a lot of people didn’t put two and two together to say, “If they get the balance of power, then royalties for regions will happen.” That’s what we were saying, but I think really what tipped the support over the line was probably more the balance of power strategy.

Ms Anne Yardley: I was thinking that the royalties for regions sold to the electorate, particularly regional rural people, would give you the necessary votes so that you had the balance of power.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, you’re absolutely right, and when it came closer to the election, we did start to push royalties for regions much more strongly than the balance of power strategy, but we couldn’t do that until we knew that the balance of power strategy was bedded down, was understood and actually already had people on board. It was incredibly important, there’s no doubt about that and it really did, I guess, put the icing on the cake of the support that we received—incredible support—but really what actually made people change their vote was our determination to be independent, standalone and go for the balance of power, and the fact that we articulated that very clearly and simply.

Ms Anne Yardley: What did you need to achieve then to get the balance of power? What were the figures, what were the numbers? 102

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The Labor Party called the election early, which just played so well into our hands; it was just brilliant. So, what we needed actually was Liberal and Labor to be neck and neck and then us to come through; we needed to save as many of our existing seats as possible, but we were also very keen to improve our upper house performance and, of course, having learnt our lesson in 2005, that was really where we started to very strongly focus. We were aiming for at least one member in the South West Region and at least three in the Ag Region and we wanted at least one in Mining and Pastoral. That is really what we achieved, and it was because we actually had a whole separate campaign focusing on, “Don’t forget to vote for us in the Legislative Council; that is where the balance of power usually resides.” We were really not expecting to win the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly, but we did in both houses. That was how amazing that result was. But we really were targeting the Legislative Council, because that was where it was more easily attainable and that was where we really put that effort in, particularly with our preference negotiations, really focusing on the Legislative Council tickets to make sure— we almost gave Glenn Druery a run for his money; we really harvested most of the preferences in the Legislative Council, in the seats. In fact, we heard fairly close to the election that the penny had finally dropped with the Liberals in Mining and Pastoral, that they actually couldn’t—we negotiated early too. I think that’s very important with preference negotiations. By the time the major parties thought, “Oh, shivers, preferences”, we had most of them sewn up, just because we were meeting with all these little groups— Family First, Christian Democrats, One Nation, Citizens Electoral Council. You know, even the fruit loops, we talked to them and said, “What do you want? We can maybe represent some part of what’s important to you or we’ll put you ahead of somebody you hate.” We just really worked our way through to find a way to get people, all those little people and Independents—every Independent I spoke to.

Ms Anne Yardley: To what extent was that people supporting the Nationals and to what extent was it the woes that were happening in Labor and Liberal that played into these things?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. Labor was in the throes of all the CCC problems with John Bowler and ministers, and then of course their upper house dramas with Shelley Archer and Anthony Fels passing information to Brian Burke. So, Labor was in trouble with the CCC and the Liberals, of course, were in trouble with their leadership. They were just going from Paul Omodei to Matt Birney and then to Troy Buswell, and then, of course, he misbehaved with, you know, the chair. There was just this sort of feeling of a pox on all 103

DUNCAN INTERVIEW your houses, basically, and you get someone young and fresh faced, Brendon in his late 20s, early 30s, coming through and cutting to the chase and listening and repeating back what people are saying to him, getting angry, showing some fire in his belly. You know the thing that was most important is that we were talking about the people; Liberal and Labor were talking about each other within and across parties, and the people were just saying, “Well, where do we fit into this?”

Ms Anne Yardley: How did you go about choosing, selecting, the other candidates, particularly for the upper house I’m thinking, so that you could achieve this balance of power?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think that a lot of people came to us, having seen what we had to say, and particularly in the agricultural areas and particularly the graduates of progress rural program, the rural leadership program, were standing ready. The challenge for us, and particularly for me, having decided to stand for Mining and Pastoral, which we’d never won before and had no branch structure or anything, was to try to get together a good list in Mining and Pastoral that had that same strategy of a good regional representation. That was very interesting and it was really, I guess, up to me, just people that I’d met around the place who, as I said to you before, indicated just with the light in their eyes that they got what we were trying to do.

One of the things I discovered, it was in the federal election of 2004, I think, where we had a couple of Senate candidates that were backing Leigh Hardingham, who was standing against Wilson Tuckey, and really it was all just about the same thing—representing the region, the spread, but those two Senate candidates were very upset about the fact that really not much attention was paid to them, there was no genuine attempt really to develop a campaign for them. They didn’t properly understand what their role was. We did; nobody told them. And so we were very careful this time around to say, “Okay, we’re putting this ticket together. It’s all about trying to win the balance of power in the upper house, but in Mining and Pastoral in particular, your chances of getting elected are remote at the most, and so (a) don’t expect to win and, also, (b) don’t expect any funds from the party or any real assistance. There will be material and so on available and there will be generic advertising on TV and so on, but this is not about you winning a seat in Parliament, and unless you’re happy with that and fully understand that, don’t put your hand up.” I think that made a big difference, because I’d seen people put their hand up to stand and then being very upset that they weren’t properly supported and, “You didn’t take me seriously. I thought I was going to be a member of Parliament.” That’s just not fair on them and I 104

DUNCAN INTERVIEW think a lot of political parties make that mistake that the before and after care of candidates can be abysmal, and it’s something that I just decided was not going to happen under my watch. We did get together quite an eclectic bunch of people to stand for Mining and Pastoral, but there was one from Karratha and one from the Kimberley and one from down in the Esperance area—because Esperance was in Mining and Pastoral at that stage; that’s me. We really made a very strong effort to get these people on board in full knowledge that it was to support the greater good. Even in my own situation, deciding to stand for Mining and Pastoral, I didn’t expect to win.

I stood in Mining and Pastoral for three reasons. One was that Esperance had been moved into that electorate and my heart was in that part of the world anyway. Secondly, of course, was to sort out the blue between Max Trenorden and Brendon Grylls. But thirdly, and really more importantly, was to lead by example as state president to say, “If we want to advance this party and our policies, you actually have to take risks, you actually have to stand in unwinnable seats and be prepared not to win.” So that is the philosophy I went into Mining and Pastoral with Mick Cotter’s words ringing in my brain: “Don’t stand if you’re not dinkum”, but then also knowing that I was highly unlikely to win, but I was going to do my damnedest to do so. We made a very big effort in Mining and Pastoral to keep those people on board who put their hand up to go on the ticket, to keep them included, to mention their names and so on, but they were also always very aware that it was unlikely they would get up. I remember with the South West Region—because we were trying to make sure that Terry Redman won and we had a fairly good chance—I think we were hopeful in Collie or Vasse, one of those seats, and so we needed good folks in the South West. Colin Holt17 had been wandering around that part of the area as an employee of the department of agriculture. By that stage I think he was vice president or at least on the executive of the Nationals. I remember Brendon and I met with him at the boat shed on the South Perth foreshore and we said, “Colin, we need someone to head up this South West Region ticket. We want someone who’s well known, who’s articulate, who knows our policy well, who believes in what we’re trying to do, happy to deal with either side of government, but, you know, you won’t win. People are unwilling to put their hand up in a seat to they’re not going to win. We need someone who is committed and doing it for the greater good. Will you do it?” Well, Colin said yes and of course he won. It was the most amazing thing, because he had a good career and everything all happening out there, but subsequently he made an excellent member of Parliament and minister so he doesn’t regret it, I don’t think.

17 Colin Holt is Nationals MLC for the South West Region; he won office in 2009. 105

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Ms Anne Yardley: Before that point, going into that election, what were your expectations? What were your reasonable expectations of winning? Which seats did you think you’d get?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Do you know by the time we actually got to the election, we were pretty excited? When you’ve been around politics a fair while, you can pick the vibe, and we knew we were on a winner. And we were also starting to hear feedback from the major political parties, “Oh goodness, what’s happened here?” So yes, we were pretty optimistic and we felt that we could win; well, we knew that we would win our key seats, being 2008. We were really hopeful we would win—no there was redistribution, that’s right. We knew we’d win Wagin, which was Tuck Waldron’s seat. We were very hopeful to win the new seat of Eyre, which Graham Jacobs had gone across to, and we’d preselected Suzie Williams, who was a Boulder resident, and Eyre had stretched up to take in Boulder as well as Esperance, and we really felt that we had a good chance of Eyre. We thought we were on a winner with Kalgoorlie with Tony Crook. He was a very strong candidate. What happened there in Kalgoorlie, of course, is that John Bowler was kicked out on the Labor Party and decided to stand as an Independent, and the thing about Kalgoorlie is that they just love someone who’s going to kick over the traces. We saw that with Graeme Campbell in the seat of Kalgoorlie—was Labor, now an Independent, they love him twice as much. That’s Kalgoorlie. So, we really didn’t go as well there as we thought. We thought we had a chance in Pilbara. We had Alan Cochrane standing for us there in the lower house. What happened eventually, really, in the lower house is that we kept our existing seats and we really didn’t win any extras. We won Central Wheatbelt, which was Brendon Grylls; we won Wagin; we won Terry Redman’s seat, which was Blackwood–Stirling18; “Woody” won his new seat, which was now Moore; and there was one other, wasn’t there? Were there four or five in the lower house?

Ms Anne Yardley: Four—Central Wheatbelt, Blackwood–Stirling, Wagin and the new seat of Moore.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, that’s it.

18 With the introduction of one-vote one-value electoral boundaries for the 2008 election, major boundary changes were made. Warren-Blackwood and the electorate of Stirling were abolished, a new electorate known as Blackwood-Stirling created. The seat was easily won by the National Party Terry Redman in 2008. http://www.abc.net.au/elections/wa/2013/guide/warr.htm

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Ms Anne Yardley: Then in the upper house, is that what you expected there? You got five in the upper house.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That was an outstanding and very exciting result—we ended up with three in the Agricultural Region, which was brilliant, really, considering that we had come up from one sole member in the upper house to that number—myself in Mining and Pastoral, three in the Ag Region and Colin Holt surprised us out at South West. But you see, that was the focus of that strategy—a lot of our material was saying, “Don’t forget the upper house.” It really was such a stark contrast to the result in 2005 that it shows that you really have to remind people that there are two houses and both of them are important. So, thank goodness there was that agreement that said five members in either house, because we ended up retaining party status, but also, of course, winning the balance of power in both houses. The interesting thing is, and we’ll probably get onto this in a future interview, it was this question of the balance of power in the upper house that really was the debate when it came to who we went with, Labor and Liberal.

Ms Anne Yardley: A lot to talk about for next time.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Thank you, Wendy.

[End of WendyDuncan_6]

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WendyDuncan_7

Ms Anne Yardley: This is another interview with Wendy Duncan. Today is 29 September 2017. We’re at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms.

It’s been a few weeks since we spoke, Wendy, but last time you were bringing us up to the 2008 election, but we really need to take a bit of a step back because, by that stage, you were already in Parliament.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I was. I came into Parliament in January of 2008, following the retirement of Murray Criddle, and I came in as a member for Agricultural Region. Esperance was in the Agricultural Region at that time and I was number two on the ticket at the insistence of Murray Criddle. He’d been really trying for many years to get me to sign the bit of paper to stand for Parliament. It’s quite interesting really, and I think we might have discussed this. One of the reasons that we decided to make this move when we did was in response to the one vote, one value and the electoral redistribution. There was a lot of discord and jockeying for position happening on all sides of politics as the number of seats, particularly in regional areas, were reduced to reflect the one vote, one value legislation. One of the key issues for the Nationals was that the seat of Merredin was going to be amalgamated with the seat of Avon. Of course Avon was Max Trenorden, the former leader who was not very happy about how Brendon Grylls came to the leadership, and of course Merredin was Brendon Grylls. So it’s the old leader and the new leader. The relationship was not good between them. In fact, after Max resigned publicly and unexpectedly as leader, he didn’t attend any further party room meetings. So we were still trying very hard to keep a united front. In fact, I was reading a speech that I made at one stage where I said, “We know that the people aren’t interested in our jockeying for position and our infighting as to who gets what seat; the people are interested in what we can do for them.” So we were very—I was, as state president—determined not to let this fight go too public, because in the meantime the Liberals had a big fight on between Dan Sullivan and Paul Omodei, and the Labor Party also had some jockeying for position up in Morley. Remember—I think it was D’Orazio—there was a real issue up there about seats that were being quite dramatically altered.

So Murray Criddle actually came forward and said, “Look, I’ll resign or retire and Wendy automatically goes into the number one seat of Ag Region.” We only had one member in the Agricultural Region, which was most unusual for the Nats and shows you how bad we did in the 2005 election. But the understanding would be that I wouldn’t stay there; I would 108

DUNCAN INTERVIEW just keep the seat warm for Max. Then when the election, which was really scheduled for 2009, was eventually called, I would step aside and allow him the number one position. So I met with Max in a little coffee shop in Subiaco and basically put that proposal to him. Max is always very obtuse in his response, so I wasn’t really sure whether we’d had success there, but he subsequently spoke to Murray and said, yes, that he would do that. So then Brendon and Tuck Waldron met with Max in Stumpy’s roadhouse. It’s a bit like the old Kirribilli agreement; they call it the “Stumpy’s agreement”. It was Stumpy’s roadhouse in Brookton, where Max agreed that that’s what would happen. So Murray waited until Parliament rose in December and announced his retirement, and the following January, once everybody had come back from holidays, the Electoral Commission ran the figures again and, as predicted, I was elected.

So that was really quite an incredible experience, because it was not something that I had been expecting really or preparing for. I was really so embedded in being state president that I hadn’t thought about adding yet another layer of my responsibilities. We had no office for the Nationals in Esperance and the Department of the Premier and Cabinet are interminably slow in sorting such things out. So, really, a very dysfunctional first six months of being a member of Parliament. Of course at the same time, the election was called early, so that was 6 September 2008 when everyone thought it was going to be either later in the year or early the next one, but still I got a bit done in the Agricultural Region. Really, one of the things that I, I guess, pride myself about in my role as a member of Parliament is that I like to cover the country and meet everyone. Of course, the Agricultural Region is huge. It’s got 70-odd shire councils and goodness knows how many schools—really a very challenging electorate to get to know. And being the only member of the Nationals representing Ag Region—obviously we had our lower house members, but I was trying to fill and cover for them. Interestingly, Murray had an office in Geraldton and so did Grant Woodhams. Murray was quite insistent that should I take his position; I should also take over his office in Geraldton. One thing that I was quite, I guess, disappointed and verging on cross about is that we had those two offices side by side in Geraldton and nothing in Esperance. I tried as state president to influence the Parliamentary National Party after the 2005 election to get one of those offices down in the southern end of the electorate, and it didn’t happen. So that was really the first thing I said was, “We don’t want that extra office in Geraldton. Sorry about all the promises that Murray might have made to somebody, but they’re not my promises and we’re opening down in Esperance.” I think that that gave us a great deal of strength and broadened our footprint. My whole mantra as state president was that the Nationals needed to broaden their footprint.

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Ms Anne Yardley: In the Agricultural Region, how does one person manage that? I know you’ve got your lower house colleagues, but still it’s a big job.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It is. And I guess one of the challenges for a new member of Parliament is learning to say no. So you just run yourself ragged trying to turn up to everything. We were chartering aircraft, and one of the things that we did decide—and I saw it in one of my speeches to the faithful—is that we were going to attend as many field days and state events as possible. We divided ourselves up into teams and we had T- shirts and caps. We really did work very hard to cover the country because we wanted Grant Woodhams to retain his seat. That was another big fight, because his seat was amalgamated with Gary Snook’s, who was at the time the shadow minister for agriculture. Everyone thought Grant didn’t have a hope in hell, but yet again he pulled it off. To actually defeat a Liberal shadow minister in the 2008 election was an amazing feat, but it’s because of that really hard work we did covering the country.

Ms Anne Yardley: Going back to you, what do you recall of your first experience of actually being here at Parliament House, or across the road in Parliament House?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, it’s just a blur of confusion really. I think probably even more so for me, because coming in as a mid-term elected person means that you don’t get all the formal induction that new members of Parliament get at the commencement of each new Parliament. It’s quite a thorough induction process. They did their best; sat me down and showed me a few of the forms that you needed to do and we did a bit of a walkthrough of Parliament and they said, “There you go. You’re it.” I do remember at times just being totally confused about not only what was going on, but what was important. That was really one of the biggest challenges, because as a new member you turn up to absolutely every briefing, you make a file up for every bill that’s coming into the house and try and read it clause for clause. In the end the penny drops that that’s just humanly impossible and you have to actually just follow the bills that are of interest to you or your party and where you might be able to have some influence. And then trying to understand what a division is. Even little things like in the Legislative Council there’s the President and then the Deputy President and then there’s Acting Presidents. It took me quite some time to realise how to identify who was who out of that group because nobody told me. I think one of my biggest weaknesses is that I don’t ask enough questions because I don’t want to look dumb, so I puzzle about it for some time before the penny drops as to why that is so; that is, that the President is the government’s person running the Legislative Council, the Deputy President is the opposition’s highest ranked person, but then the Acting Presidents are 110

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the ones that help with the roster and they come equally from both political parties. So that was interesting.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did you have anyone mentoring you; someone from your party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No. Because they were all boys, I was the only female, and they were all in the lower house so they didn’t really know or care how the upper house worked really. In fact, we probably didn’t use the upper house as effectively as we could’ve. For instance, I could ask a question every day in the upper house, whereas down in the lower house you had to wait your turn and it could be weeks. It was all determined according to your party. But I didn’t realise the value and importance of taking that opportunity, and neither did the boys. The other thing is I think that they were just so established in their routine. Murray Criddle knew the ropes, so they just didn’t really even think that I might need mentoring. The person who mentored me was Helen Morton from the Liberal Party. She took me under her wing. She said, “How’re you going, Wendy?” and I just said, “Well, I don’t know what’s happening from one day to the next.” So she showed me some of the standard forms and said, “This is the one that you look out for in your email on Friday night. It tells you what we’re talking about next week.” I go, “Oh great! That’s good to know.” She checked on me and how I was going and I really appreciated that, and I tried to do that myself. For instance, Libby Mettam came into Parliament halfway through a term when Troy Buswell retired, so she would have missed out on all that. So I tried to help her a bit, knowing how valuable it was for me.

Ms Anne Yardley: You didn’t choose the upper house so much as the upper house chose you in the sense that that’s how it worked out. But I wonder how you reflect on the role of the upper house as you saw it then—the value of it.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I was quite taken aback with how formal and staid it was and how lacking in spontaneity, I guess. Everything just seemed to be so predictable as to what was going to happen next. But I was in opposition and it was very interesting to see what was going on with the Labor Party needing the support of the Greens to get legislation through. Giz Watson—I’ve got undying respect for her. She is the most amazing parliamentarian. She would stand up in Parliament and draw attention to a clause that she had a bit of a problem with. You could tell that even though she did it with the utmost of respect and there were no histrionics, you knew that everything was going to stop until that issue was fixed. She was just—oh, her knowledge and her ability was something that just blew me away. I don’t know whether she ever slept. I don’t know how she managed 111

DUNCAN INTERVIEW to just be such an incredibly effective member of Parliament. But she did a great job, and I really enjoyed just watching how she operated.

Of course, being the only member of the Nationals and the numbers so finely balanced in that house, I actually probably could have used my one number more effectively if I had really understood more about the mechanics of what was going on, but it takes a while for that to sink in. We’ll talk about it in a little while, but the whole daylight saving debate—in the end they asked me to bring a bill into the upper house and the only reason was to wedge the other parties. I’m there like a rabbit in a spotlight, blinking as I tabled this bill with no idea what was going to happen next. But it was a very steep learning curve.

I remember getting home. I was staying in the Riverview apartments in Mount Street, which were close—handy but spartan. I was very conscious of how much government money I was spending away from home and staying in hotels. I’d get home there at 10 o’clock at night just tired and strung out and confused and watch Lateline and then fall asleep in a bed that I was uncomfortable in with food that I didn’t like. To this day the theme song of Lateline just sets up all these horrible reactions in my body. I just can’t stand it [chuckles]! It’s a time where I was just so out of my depth.

Ms Anne Yardley: And you were on your own in the big city.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I was!

Ms Anne Yardley: You don’t have your normal support base around you. And that would be the same for any politician coming in from a regional area. It’s an added layer of difficulty for people.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It is, absolutely. There’s quite a bit of debate about regional members of Parliament buying a house or renting when they come to Perth, but, you know—like I’m lactose intolerant and trying to actually get some breakfast with the milk I like, trying to actually get food I like, preparing a speech or something and needing to print it at midnight; those sorts of things are really, really tough when you’re staying in a motel. In the end I just thought, “I can’t do this.” In fact, the other interesting thing is—this is a bit later on, though. But if you’re a regional member of Parliament and I was a parliamentary secretary, I was entitled to, well, in the entitlements—I hate that phrase “I was entitled to”—it said you could have a car in Perth and a car in your regional base. I always refused to do that. I thought that was too extravagant and a waste of taxpayers’ 112

DUNCAN INTERVIEW money, so I used to hire a car when I came to Perth. But then you go to put the indicator on and the windscreen wipers come on and you can’t find the radio and you can’t find the handbrake, so in the end I brought my own car to Perth. I remember Max Trenorden and John Bowler all saying, “Wendy, why do you do that? You know you can get a second car or hire one.” I said, “It just doesn’t sit well with my conscience. At least I know my old car well.”

But the other interesting thing about being a new member of Parliament—I’ve got to tell you this—is that it’s so crowded there. There’s not enough offices for the members. I think I told you last time about the fact that Brendon, in order to try and save money so that we could campaign, declined the use of an office in Sterling House and moved all his staff into Parliament. So I shared an office with Terry Redman and Tuck Waldron. Tuck is an old farm real estate agent who’s got that hail-fellow-well-met sort of manner, but also just talked on the phone at the top of his voice. So we were all there, the three of us, and I just couldn’t work from there. I’m just not used to making a phone call in earshot of other people. So that was very difficult as well. I think a lot of members of Parliament still struggle with that because there isn’t enough accommodation in Parliament for every member to have their own space, and sharing an office can be quite challenging at times if you’ve got something going on that you need to deal with that might be confidential or so on. It was good, too. I had their support, to pick their brains on things, but generally it was very difficult.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was Murray Criddle in the background anywhere? Could you pick his brains?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, that’s interesting because right up until he retired, yes; once he retired, that was it—nowhere to be seen. Really, probably the person that looked after me in the team the best was Grant Woodhams, and he had a similar way of campaigning to me anyway. Yes, so Grant was great. He and his electorate officers looked after me really well and looked after my electorate officer as she was learning the ropes. I’d travelled around with him a bit and he was introducing me to people in the northern agricultural area because we were very keen to try and win the seat of Geraldton, and of course save his seat because he was up against Gary Snook. So I really concentrated on that.

Ms Anne Yardley: Before we move away from Murray, I wonder whether you feel that you could reflect on what his legacy will be or is? 113

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Murray is a very fine gentleman and such a contrast to Eric Charlton, who he succeeded. Of course Eric Charlton was Minister for Transport and just was like a bull in a china shop in getting things done. But Murray came in and was also Minister for Transport under Richard Court’s government and actually achieved quite a lot but with a whole different sort of style; very consensus-driven, very thoughtful person. He was the one who organised the dualling of the Narrows Bridge and the Graham Farmer Freeway and the big new port access corridor into Geraldton and the deepening of the port of Esperance, so some really substantial achievements. He just did them in his own little way. He’s in a government with some really out-there people like Hendy Cowan, and so he just got the job done.

Ms Anne Yardley: He quietly got on and got the job done?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was always very interesting. I learnt a lot from him when he was at a field day or a cocktail party or something, because he said to me, “Wendy, don’t be afraid of going into a room when you don’t know anybody”, which is the biggest fear of a member of Parliament. He said, “Scan the room and find somebody who’s on their own with no-one to talk to and start with them, and then you’ll find that other people come to talk to you and things will go from there.” That was a brilliant piece of advice and really helped me a lot. There were times when I used to sit in my car outside a function and say, “Oh, come on, Wendy, you can do it; you can do it”, because it is—it’s terrifying. I think particularly so for a female. I think it is more difficult because bowling up to what in those situations is often mostly men and breaking into conversations and introducing who you are is very difficult, and you really have to overcome a whole heap of barriers before you’re even on a level playing field with a bloke who does the same, I think.

The other thing is that Murray had a little notebook in his top pocket, and then someone would come and harangue him about an issue and so on and he’d listen and then he’d say, “And so what do you think the solution is?” So he always put the ball back into the other person’s court. I thought that was really good, because there are oftentimes when you just get your ear chewed in what is probably an insoluble situation and you’re expected to come up with some miracle cure. So he was very good at actually throwing the responsibility back onto whoever he was talking to. Then he’d get out his little notebook and write down something relevant to that and go back and ask a question in Parliament from the minister, and then he’d send the answer to his electorate officer, who would mail

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Ms Anne Yardley: We’ve talked a fair bit about the 2008 election, but I’m wondering about the workload for you personally. You’re a new parliamentarian and you’re out there campaigning as well and fighting for the seat of Mining and Pastoral.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did you manage that workload? You were still state president at that point?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I was still state president and I was still based in Esperance, and of course if I travelled outside of my electorate, the Agricultural Region, then it was at my personal expense—quite rightly, you don’t get any electoral funding to travel or campaign outside your own electorate. I would be away from home for five or six weeks on end. We had no money, so we drove a lot of the time. I think really in my role as member for Agricultural Region I probably didn’t do as much of that as perhaps I would have if we weren’t campaigning.

And even things like committee work: I was on the Standing Committee on Environment and Public Affairs and we were doing this fascinating inquiry into waste management coming out of the EMRC [East Metropolitan Regional Council] issue and the odours and so on, and so we decided we would look into what was happening in other states in waste management. I actually went on a parliamentary trip to look at the eastern states and Townsville and so on. But I always felt really behind the eight ball as far as—you’d get a fat envelope a couple of inches thick with your reading material for your committee, and I didn’t ever really do it justice. I think one of the things you learn slowly but surely is that you just have to let some things go through to the keeper. But I loved that environment and public affairs committee, and I guess one of the things I regret from my parliamentary career is that after the 2008 election I was immediately parliamentary secretary, and then after that Deputy Speaker. In those roles you actually don’t get to go on those committees. So that one little time I had environment and public affairs was really the only time that I really had the opportunity to get my teeth into issues. It was more in my role as parliamentary secretary and Leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council, as Member for Mining and Pastoral, I was involved in privileges and reviewing standing orders and things that were to do with the management of the house, rather than particular policy 115

DUNCAN INTERVIEW issues, and the same of course as Deputy Speaker. It was never my favourite stuff. I really just love getting into issues and learning about policy and so on, but that was not to be.

Ms Anne Yardley: But one of the big wins for you, of course, was winning Mining and Pastoral. You were the first National to have done so. How did you feel when the numbers came in and it was you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, I was blown away because it is such a massive area to try and get the name recognition that you need. And I think, too, that—and we discussed this earlier—the Nationals have got a really bad record of vote transfer. In the 2005 election I think only 68 per cent of the people who voted for us in the lower house actually voted for us in the upper house. But the vote transfer for Mining and Pastoral—so that’s people who actually voted National in Mining and Pastoral—was over 101 per cent. So there’s people who voted for another party—so Liberal or Labor or something—in the lower house in Mining and Pastoral, and then voted for me in the upper house. So I was just so honoured, really, and chuffed. But I think I campaign like Grant Woodhams. The way I campaign is on a very personal level. I really get to know people and listen. So that side of it, I think any person or people that I met, I managed to—they remembered me. The other thing is I’m blessed really with quite a good media aptitude. I love getting on radio and putting out a media statement and getting stuck into somebody over something, but doing it respectfully, intelligently, and I think people appreciate that.

The other thing is I think that, sure, the royalties for regions particularly resonated in the Pilbara more than anywhere, and the goldfields to a certain extent, and of course we’ve got to take into account that the new Mining and Pastoral Region under the redistribution included Esperance, where I had a very strong and loyal following. But also I think the whole daylight saving debate; they hated daylight saving. We had three years’ trial of daylight saving and they hated it with a passion in the north, and the Nats really were the only ones out there arguing against it, and getting all this—what’s the word?—rubbish from the Perth media and disdain and almost ridicule about standing up against daylight saving when we knew we were on a winner with the people in the north. They hate it. It’s just too hot to have the sun up till bloody nine o’clock at night. So I think that really helped us as well.

Ms Anne Yardley: The other thing is Mia Davies made the point, and I think you have too, that going into that election as a truly independent party made a difference to the votes for you. 116

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely, and I think we had a few issues that really helped us discern ourselves and to demonstrate that we were an independent party, and the daylight saving is one. The fact that we were really fighting strongly that the health system in the regions had just become totally neglected and dysfunctional, and in fact we took great delight in quoting Christine O’Farrell, who was the director general of country health. When she resigned and Jim McGinty was Minister for Health, she actually came out and said that the health system and services in regional Western Australia are “blatantly bloody unsafe”. They were her words. Nobody was listening; neither of the major parties were listening. We did, and we started holding rallies about Tom Price Hospital and so on. So I think really picking up on that, and of course the other big issue which is the sacred cow of regional areas is the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They were having terrible trouble getting funding from the state government to replace their ageing fleet, their planes, even though something like 80 per cent of their work was transferring patients between government hospitals. So we began to up the ante on the Royal Flying Doctor Service issue, which was a big issue for regional people. Jim McGinty came out and said, “Oh, we all know the Royal Flying Doctor Service is just an interest group.” Well, all hell broke loose. Again, it was the Nationals that picked up on that and the Libs were nowhere to be seen. Because I guess you’ve got to see their side of the story, and that is they knew how expensive it was going to be to fix health in the regions and to fix the Royal Flying Doctor Service so they weren’t about to make any promises either because they wanted to build a stadium and other things in Perth should they win government. So it really gave us free rein. We made quite a conscious decision that we would fight on what we called second- tier issues. The two major parties would be fighting on broad-based issues like education and health, but we would come down a level and say Tom Price Hospital, RFDS, government housing in Dumbleyung. So we decided not to fight the major parties up at that level but to come down and just start really focusing on the key issues in key areas, and I think that worked too.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m interested in the negotiations that went on with Colin Barnett and the Liberal Party following that election, because it took you eight days —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it did.

Ms Anne Yardley: — to decide to form a government—well, not really, but to support the Liberal Party—and during that time many of your members were inclined to support Labor.

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What went on during those eight days before you came out and decided to support the Liberals?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The interesting thing is that I found myself in an awkward situation really once that election occurred, because I was state president of the Nationals and so I was invited by Colin Barnett to be part of the negotiations to form government. But in fact I wasn’t Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Parliament. Brendon was leader, Tuck Waldron was deputy leader, Terry Redman was really probably the next senior person in the actual parliamentary party. So I attended the first couple of negotiations with Alan Carpenter and with Colin Barnett, but then I actually made the decision—and nobody told me to do this—to just step back and let the members of Parliament do the negotiations, because really that, I believed, was their role. It’s not really a role for the party organisation to get involved in. Once they had decided what was on the table, then the party organisation should assess it and say, “Righto; we suggest you go this way or that.” But, again, the party organisation really can’t direct the members of Parliament to go either way. But they find out to their peril if they go too far or different to where the party wants them to go. I dealt with the incredible media crush. I’d been on the road and the election happened and I flew to Perth, and then the penny dropped that we were in this situation and I had no clothes, really. So the first thing I did was go to David Jones in Claremont and buy myself a couple of Trent Nathan suits [laughter] so that I could run the gauntlet of the steps of Parliament House looking half decent —

Ms Anne Yardley: And power-broking.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely; that was quite funny.

So we got the negotiations started. It was very interesting because Alan Carpenter came to the table quite quickly and said, “Right; what do you want?” We said, “Well, really”, to quote Brendon—I might have already done this—“We are not interested in the trappings of high office.” He’d sort of said that all along. In other words, “We don’t want Deputy Premier”, which the Nationals have always had. “We don’t want Deputy Premier. You’re going to be the major party governing. But we do want royalties for regions.” There were a couple of other issues that we had an opinion on and needed to know where we were going on, which was genetically modified crops, and uranium mining, which we’re still in two minds about, but 25 per cent of royalties go to the regions over and above current 118

DUNCAN INTERVIEW government expenditure. What we meant by “current government expenditure” is what was already defined in the last budget for the four-year out years. So Alan Carpenter and his team went away and did quite a lot of work and came back with a proposal. So the election was the Saturday, and it wasn’t until towards the end of the week that Colin Barnett and the Liberals even decided they wanted to talk to us, so they were just not really taking it seriously.

Ms Anne Yardley: Were they taking you for granted?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I think so. They just thought, “Oh no,” as Colin Barnett said, “Oh, they’ll come to us anyway.” Meanwhile, we were getting this incredible flood of emails and phone calls and letters and faxes from our heartland stridently on both sides of the argument, but particularly out of the Mining and Pastoral Region and I guess the less traditional Nationals’ regions where we’d attracted an incredible amount of votes, just saying, “Go for it. This is what we voted you for. We love what you’re doing.” Really we could see that this was going to be a very divisive issue for the party. And anyway, still no Colin Barnett or proposal from him. So in the end we decided to send Terry and Tuck around to Colin Barnett’s house and say, “Listen, you need to get off your tail and take this seriously, because these guys are going to go with Labor.” That was when Colin Barnett then decided, well, we’d better get ourselves together and start taking this seriously, and then they actually put a proposal on the table as well. It was quite interesting because of the sitting members: Terry Redman particularly was very, very nervous about going with Labor; Tuck Waldron, I think, also, just probably more conservative Liberal-oriented, but really the rest of us—myself, Grant Woodhams and Brendon Grylls and Max Trenorden— Max, I don’t know. We didn’t know where he stood, really. He was one place one week and another place the next. Max, to give him credit, he could see the merit but he was also worried about the fallout.

At that stage, once Colin Barnett had come to the table and we’d had the initial meeting with him, I bowed out and left it to the boys. Once we saw that we had reasonable proposals to put on the table, we called a state council meeting. But in the meantime, I mean, Brendon was getting death threats and things. So we had to meet at the Hyatt, and then we had to get security in. We had really strong security, and we called all our state councillors in to the Hyatt and I stayed there, so did Brendon. My gorgeous husband decided to stay in Esperance, which probably in hindsight was not the right thing but he was very busy with particular things that were going on in the farm. But, oh gosh. Not only did we call in all the state councillors, but we called in all the people that we thought were 119

DUNCAN INTERVIEW in there with a chance to actually win their seat as well. That included Suzie Williams, who stood in Eyre and did really well; Tom Day, who stood in Carnarvon and whatever it was called then—what was the seat19? It’s North West Central now, but I forget what it was called prior to that—how about that? And of course Alan Cochrane, who stood for East Pilbara. All did really well in the lower house, and of course Dave Grills, who was number two in Mining and Pastoral and just got so close to being elected in that election. So they were all there and given a vote as well. I guess some people might say we stacked it in some ways because they were all, I guess—in Paul Keating’s terms—“the new believers”. It was not easy by any means and there was a lot of toing and froing.

In fact, the other person that was present was Karlene Maywald, came across from South Australia, because Karlene of course negotiated to be a minister in a Labor government. She was the only member of the Nationals in the Parliament and she helped Labor form government in South Australia. She brought across her draft agreement; the agreement she had with the South . It was basically that you’re in an alliance and that you’ll guarantee supply and confidence, but should something come up in cabinet that you don’t like, then you’re not bound with cabinet confidentiality as long as you make that known and excuse yourself so you’re not there for the debate. That’s really the model that we presented to our state council as the model that we would adopt if—when—we went into alliance with either Liberal or Labor.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was it then, or was there one thing that swung it for you for the Liberals or was it just a question of numbers?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Look, I think it depends who you ask that question. I think that Brendon was very keen to go with Labor and really wanted to, I guess, prove a point in many ways. I think he came to realise—oh, the other really interesting thing is that in that week of negotiations, Brendon and John Bowler had been talking to each other. John Bowler, who was elected as the Independent for Kalgoorlie—Tony Crook was the other one who was at that meeting, because it was close between John Bowler and Tony. But John Bowler really indicated to Brendon, “I’m not going to be a standalone Independent like Senator Harradine in Tasmania; I’ll throw my hat in the ring with you lot as long as I can get funding for Kalgoorlie Hospital if you get royalties for regions over the line.” So Brendon knew he had John Bowler, he knew he had me and Grant Woodhams, but he

19 Electorates covering this part of the state have undergone numerous name changes. In time for the 2005 election, the new seat of North West Coastal was created. With the addition of more inland areas, the seat became North West Central in 2013. http://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/wa-election-2017/guide/nwce/ 120

DUNCAN INTERVIEW wasn’t sure about the other three, so Tuck and Terry and Max. I think Brendon really decided that—he was starting to have doubts about whether the party was going to split. But from my own point of view, what really, I guess, made the difference to me is that I was more than happy to go with Labor and I told Brendon as much. In fact, the first day of deliberations, we’d got to the end of the day deciding, yes, we’re going to go with Labor; we just really felt that that was where we’d got the best deal.

But then overnight, I remember ringing my husband, because I was in such a dilemma— it was about midnight—and asked him to get out Nelson Mandela’s eight principles of leadership. One of Nelson Mandela’s principles of leadership is—he said nothing’s ever black and white; nothing’s ever black and white. He said so many decisions you need to make as a leader are a fifty–fifty decision. He said, “But as a leader you have to decide which way to go and go forward with confidence and don’t look back, because then your troops will follow you. If you show any lack of confidence or maybe lack of commitment to the decision you’ve made, that’s when things start to break down.” Then very early the next morning, at about six o’clock or something, I heard Harry Phillips on the radio talking to, I don’t know, Eoin Cameron probably, and just saying, “Oh, the thing of course that we really need that will happen of course if the Nationals go with Labor is that they’ll then have to deal with the Greens, who’ll have the balance of power in the upper house.” I thought, “Yes, that’s right; really what we need to get this whole thing off the ground when it’s so new and it’s going to cause such dismay to the city politicians is a free run through.” So I did all the numbers again and I thought, “Well, if we go with Liberal, we’ll have the balance of power in both houses; if we go with Labor, we’ll only have it in the lower house and we’ll have to deal with the Greens—share it with the Greens in the upper house.” So I rang Brendon; it was about half past six in the morning and he’s a few rooms down from me and he’s with [wife] Susan there. Susan answered the phone and I said, “Is Brendon there? I need to talk to him.” She said, “Oh no, he’s just on the phone to Grant Woodhams. They’re going with Labor.” I said, “Well, I need to talk to him first.” So she said, “All right, I’ll send him down.” I’m in my jamas; so is he. He brought Tom, his little son, on his hip. I thought that at least if he’s coming into my room in his jamas with his son, it’s all pretty aboveboard. I said to him, “Brendon, we can’t go to Labor”, and he goes, “Why not?” And I said, “Because we can’t give the balance of power to the Greens.” There was this long silence, and I said, “And the other thing we can’t do is be on different sides. You and I have to be together on this. What are we going to do?” So he said, “All right, I’ll think about it”, and then later, when we were all down and resumed our meeting, which I was chairing, he got up and put all the numbers up on the whiteboard and he said, “We’ve got to go with the Liberals if we want the balance of power in both houses.” 121

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It was really interesting, because when we passed the vote to go with the Liberals there were a lot of members in tears. They were really disappointed that we didn’t make that historic leap to the other side. It’s not that we were going to stay there. I mean, it was really a real indication that we were truly independent; that we had the guts to do that. But, in fact, I firmly believe we made the right decision, but it was gut-wrenching because really you think about the mental process that the Nationals would have had to go through to bring themselves to the position to say, “Yes, I think I can vote to go with Labor”, and then discover that actually it wasn’t going to work; even Brendon was in tears. It was heart- rending. And then of course the media were all hanging round. So we went out together, through the kitchen—all the pots and pans—to this media room so that there was no being accosted in the corridors, came out through the servery door, into the waiting throng, where Brendon announced that we were going with the Liberal Party.

Ms Anne Yardley: Had you managed to bring everyone with you? Did they understand about sharing with the Greens?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. They did, because we talked for two days about it. We’d really worked at all sides of it. And we were very blessed inasmuch as Leigh Hardingham and Colin Holt were both highly experienced community consultants. They had their little company called ARID Group where they’d done a lot of work in regional areas just dealing with issues that were causing some challenges in the community. So they knew how to get people to work through the issues and put them on the whiteboard and mull over themselves. There would have been no feeling at all that every opportunity to say something and to canvass the possibilities and the opportunities and the choices hadn’t been taken. We really did a thorough job. Karlene Maywald stood up and said, “You can do this. Be courageous. You do it”, but in the end she even said, “No, I can see why you’ve gone the way you have.”

Ms Anne Yardley: Did Colin Barnett truly appreciate what you had all gone through to reach this decision and to support his government, do you believe?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Look, I don’t think so, and I think it took some time for them, even once we’d signed up, to take it seriously. We basically said to him, “We just want royalties for regions and a couple of other issues”, so it was up to him. He offered us the three ministries and Speaker because we didn’t ask for Deputy Premier. But when it came to actually bedding down what royalties for regions meant, and even in spite of having put 122

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the proposal on the table that we looked at and made our decision on at state council, I think there was some attempt then by the Liberal Party to rewrite history and back down and say, “We didn’t really mean over and above, and the 25 per cent but”, so it was trying to water down what it meant.

I think that is where Doug Cunningham came into play. Doug Cunningham had been around for a long time. He was chief of staff—I think he first started working for Eric Charlton, and subsequently I think Murray Criddle. He was chief of staff for Max Trenorden when he was Leader of the Nationals, and so been around a long time, seen a lot of politics, knew a lot of the public servants in high places. He then attached himself to Brendon as Brendon’s chief of staff, and the two of them really became the negotiating team once government was formed. By all accounts—and I wasn’t present—there were some quite serious standoffs over it. Brendon recounted, actually just last month in a function down in Esperance—it was at the state conference in Esperance, that’s right, where they gave Brendon and I little medals to say we’re former members. Brendon made a speech. He was talking about the time that they really managed to lock away what they actually meant about royalties for regions and the fact that Colin Barnett and Troy Buswell, who was the Treasurer right from the start, I think, finally acknowledged that, yes, it was 25 per cent of the royalties and it was over and above, and it was X amount of money and it was these tranches of funding for various projects, and really it was not negotiable otherwise the Nationals would walk away. I think the penny dropped that actually we were willing to walk away, having just formed government. When the penny dropped with Colin Barnett and his team and they said, “Okay, you win”, Brendon recounts he and Doug Cunningham walking up St Georges Terrace, high-fiving each other all the way. He indicated that it was some very serious, terse, detailed negotiations where they had to stand their ground quite seriously. In fact, the whole period of that government, so the whole eight years, there were some very serious standoffs along the way to keep the program alive and well.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m wondering whether you did have to spend those eight years reinforcing both to the government and to your own members—the rank and file and the public in general—that this wasn’t a coalition government; that this was in fact different in that it was an alliance, there was a power-sharing arrangement. Did you have to keep reinforcing that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. I don’t know whether we ever really succeeded in that, because the media and people in normal conversation talk about the coalition and the 123

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Nationals, and you’d put them right and say, “No, we’re alliance; no, we’re an independent party”, but nobody ever really took that seriously. Nothing annoys us more than to see when you get a Newspoll out and they talk about coalition, and the Nationals don’t get a line to say what our vote is. The Greens do and One Nation do, but the Nationals don’t. That really used to get up our nose.

The other thing, of course, was the whole branding of royalties for regions and getting the government to put that brand on things and to allow us to claim credit for them. So the whole eight years was about us claiming credit for projects, and the Liberals trying not to. In fact, there was a lot of headbutting with the likes of Dixie Marshall over the use of the royalties for regions logo and colour scheme. For instance, they’re so clever, Brendon and Doug, and I was involved as well, in putting together the royalties for regions logo because it’s basically the state of Western Australia with a green state with a gold zigzag through it, but it actually is an “N” for Nationals. It’s green and gold, in our colours, and the Liberals hated it with a passion. So there was an argument even over that logo and where it should go and how big it would be—the font. You look at the new Royal Flying Doctor Service planes that were paid for by royalties for regions, and Brendon said, “They’ve got to have the RforR logo on”, the other half said, “No, it’s not”, and we said, “Yes, it is”, and, “No, it’s not”, and eventually—they’re on there, but you need a telescope to see it. It’s small. So there were all these stupid arguments over the branding and the rollout of royalties for region. I think our partners in government had their heels in the dirt the whole way. It was hard work.

Ms Anne Yardley: Before we move on to you and your role—Mia Davies: this is her first election and she wins her seat.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: And of course now she’s your leader. What can you say about her in those early days?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Mia is a very special person. Mia’s father, of course, Dexter, stood for the Agricultural Region at the time when we got hit so hard with One Nation, and that’s where only Murray Criddle got elected and Dexter didn’t. Interestingly, Dexter came into the Legislative Council briefly, similar to me, on the retirement of Eric Charlton, and then went to an election and lost his seat. I think that really stuck in Mia’s mind. She felt that he was hard done by; he really deserved to be a member of Parliament longer than the six or 124

DUNCAN INTERVIEW eight months that he got. Of course Dexter had been state president of the Nationals for 10 years and also on federal management, so embedded in the National Party. Mia had been handing out how-to-vote cards since she was in nappies really. Mia is a highly intelligent girl—she’s a not a girl anymore, but person. She used to get so angry when people would treat her like the slim-built blonde that first appearances might lead you to do. She’d go red in the face; you could tell she was angry. She’s very good at attention to detail, so a very thorough, fastidious person, and she was going to study vet science, so obviously a very high result when she finished school. But then she eventually decided to go into marketing, and I think that was her niche really.

She spent some time, as you do, doing the backpacker’s trip and working overseas and came back and was working for Max Trenorden in his office as Leader of the Opposition when I became state president. She was working a lot on the policy documents and so on, and demonstrated then her very thorough work and ability for research and for presenting things for people to find easy to read and understand. Then of course she and I became very closely associated because I think Max basically allocated Mia to be my helper as state president when we had no secretariat. In the end we opened an office down here at the Amberley Business Centre, which is one of those offices where you just get the room and they answer the phone for you and you hire the boardroom when you need it and so on, so really headquarters on the cheap. Mia took over the job there as state director. Funny thing: Mia is, as I said, very task-oriented, very list-oriented, very detail-focused; on the other hand, I’m the sort of person who loves to think of big ideas, looks well into the future, quite happy to change my mind if somebody convinced me of a more convincing way of doing something, and Mia found me very difficult to work for. I’d say to her on the phone, “How about we do X or Y”, and then the next day I’d find she’d done it and I’d say, “Why did you do that?” She’d say, “Well you asked me to”, and I’d say, “No, no, I was asking you what you thought about that idea.”

In the end, Colin Holt, who was very much involved in community consultation and leadership and personality building and all that, he sent us off—the two of us—to one of these Myers–Briggs personality two-day sessions. We were both saying, “Gee, I don’t want to; it’s a waste of time, all this airy-fairy stuff”, and anyway, blow me down, it was an absolute revelation. It was unbelievable. Suddenly, I saw Mia and all her group were all the ones who were really keen to have the details sorted and get things done, and I ended up—there was 32 of us in this group. There were only two that had my personality type. We had to do this diagram of how we would achieve some goal, and we were all over the place, “Let’s do that; oh no, better idea”, and it was like some hippie drawing; the others 125

DUNCAN INTERVIEW all had pictures of lists and so on. So it really did actually just revolutionise the way we worked with each other, because all of a sudden we both understood how the other one thought. It not only helped my relationship with Mia, it also helped me understand about my poor husband and how he has to deal with me, because I’m all over the place. Sometimes he would take 24 hours to respond to me and I’d get so frustrated and cross, but then I realised that’s his personality type; he likes to take time.

So Mia really was an absolute stalwart in there, but where she really hit her straps was when using her marketing skills. The campaign that we put together for the 2008 election— she was campaign director. She was just totally responsible for all the media and marketing and the collateral and the TV ads and the billboards and advertisements in the paper, and not only booking it and making sure it all happened but fabulous spreadsheets, which I’m sure she was in heaven with, but also really brilliant marketing; brilliant presentation of the story. She did a brilliant job and our success in 2008 certainly was due a lot to her work.

Ms Anne Yardley: Mia was the youngest woman, I think, in the upper house at that stage. How difficult then was it for her, being a petite blonde, for people to take her seriously?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. I think in a way she put her name on the list for Agricultural Region. She got number three position. It was really not a position where you’d expect to be elected, and in fact I think, like most of us girls, she would probably never have put her hand up—well, maybe later on she would have—but she was asked to stand and she thought, “Oh, okay”. I remember when she started in the Legislative Council, and of course I was leader. I would say to my team, “Right, I want you to speak about that.” Mia would then go off and research and write and come back with a written speech. She was really not very good at standing up and speaking and quite nervous about it. I remember a couple of times quite deliberately, as leader in the Legislative Council, I threw her in at the deep end. I just said, “Mia, you need to speak on this.” “I haven’t got any notes.” I said, “It’s in your head; you’re a smart person.” Anyway, so she did; she overcame that. Actually, by the time she was a minister in the Legislative Assembly she was brilliant and a very good performer on her feet. I heard her interviewed the other day and she said, “You know I worked out a strategy.” She said, “They think I’m blonde and that I’m dumb, and they all try and shout me down.” She said, “What I do is I just stop talking.” She said, “All of a sudden they realise that if they want to pick on me a bit more, they’ve got to let me say some more.” So instead of trying to project her voice above the cacophony, she would just hold her cool, hold her poise and just wait. Do you know, she was up against Dave Kelly, 126

DUNCAN INTERVIEW who was the shadow Minister for Water and a formidable person and not averse to being quite nasty and personal, but he didn’t land a blow on her. I thought she did a great job.

Do you know, it just shows you though how you can grow in the job. I remember when I first started in the Legislative Council I would have everything written out word for word and be terrified, heart pounding and stand up. Of course you’re not supposed to read from your notes; they give you a bit of leeway in your first year and then they start to go for you. But I actually had to be really quite determined about not taking word-for-word notes into the chamber—a few newspaper clippings and a few tabs on a piece of paper and so on— and really force myself to speak to the topic and trust your head and your knowledge. And it comes; it does come. I know by the time I’d finished in the Legislative Assembly and Hansard would come and say, “Can you give me your notes?”, because they ask you for your notes to cross-reference your speech, and I’d say, “I haven’t got any really.” Mia was the same. But I know when she first started as a minister, question time—she’s very hard on herself. She would really take it incredibly seriously and work incredibly hard. But, yes, she’s going to go a long way.

Ms Anne Yardley: Back to you. I’m interested in your maiden speech.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: How much had you prepared for that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I prepared a lot when it came to the time. I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it until I actually got elected, I think. Then it was actually I think Murray said to me, “Wendy, this is the most important speech of your political career.” He said, “Don’t take it lightly. People will be referring to that speech for the rest of your life.” It was the best advice that he could have given me, because I then really put a lot of effort into it and made sure that it was not just anecdotal stuff about my life and my best friends and my relatives—there’s a few in there, and the people you want to thank; obviously you do that— but also I really made sure that it gave some indication of my philosophy and how I came to that point of view, and the fact that there is some depth in my knowledge and my research, and quoting people that I respected. It is interesting because, subsequently, particularly in my role as parliamentary secretary, you’d go into meetings with people from Chevron or BHP or Rio, or a consul, as Deputy Speaker—someone from an overseas consulate—and you’d discover that they had not only read your profile but they had read your maiden speech. They would actually refer to it in their conversations. It made me 127

DUNCAN INTERVIEW feel—I read it again just before this interview, and do you know I look back on it with some pride. I still really feel that it’s exactly what I wanted to say. I’m so glad I can.

Ms Anne Yardley: What did you want to say? What was important to you to say in that speech, knowing the significance of it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think the important thing was to say that our nation cannot be whole if we continue to neglect our regions the way we are. I said that from a few angles— talking about economic rationalism, talking about things that John Sanderson and Fred Chaney had said, talking about my own experiences and then pointing to some of the examples of dysfunction that were apparent in regional Western Australia—because it’s important, I think, to understand that you’re not only talking to your own people and to the converted, but you’ve actually got city members of Parliament there who need to think about how we are governing our state.

I remember when I delivered my second maiden speech, which was in the Legislative Assembly, and talked about similar stuff to my first maiden speech—that is, my upbringing in the outback and some of the things I did as a kid and how I came to the conclusions that I did. At the end Eleni Evangel20 came up to me and said “Oh, wow, Wendy, I had no idea that it was like that out there.” I said, “I beg your pardon?” She said, “Do you know I’ve just realised that I don’t think I’ve been out of Perth; I’ve been overseas but I’ve never been into regional Western Australia.” I thought, “How important is it for us who are representing regional WA to get our message through because they’re the majority.” People like Eleni Evangel are the majority in the house. If you don’t have them understand what our challenges are, then we’ll never get government to treat the regions how I think for the benefit of our nation they need to be treated.

Ms Anne Yardley: Actually delivering that speech, how did you feel? Were you nervous, anxious? Were you very prepared? Did you have it all written down?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I did have it written down. When you’re doing your maiden speech they give you a lectern and you’re allowed to read it, which I did because it was so important you don’t want to miss anything out. Nervous? Look, I was a bit, but not

20 Eleni Evangel, Liberal, was the Member for Perth 2013 to 2017

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW paralysingly—that’s not a good word, is it?—because I’d made speeches to very large gatherings as state president of the state Nationals, so that side of it was okay. I suppose the thing that I was most nervous about was the fact that I had my mum and dad, who I think the absolute world of, and my family in the gallery, and it was what they thought of my speech was probably more important than anything else. I really wanted them to be proud of me [voice breaks]. I think that it was a culmination of all their hopes and expectations for me, my family and to a lesser extent my friends, that I really just wanted to do them justice.

Ms Anne Yardley: Just to finish up for today, you were still state president for a while as a parliamentarian, but that was a bit of an issue. How did you manage handing that over to someone else?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: While I was in opposition, as state president it really wasn’t too much of a problem, and because the Nationals were more interested in campaigning than being present in Parliament, I just really probably focused more on that president’s role and the Nationals’ campaigning than I did on my role as a member in the house. But once we were elected to government and I was parliamentary secretary, it became apparent very quickly that even though there were no real rules out there to say that couldn’t happen, conflicts of interest became evident very quickly, because as state president you’re the chief fundraiser for the party, you’re dealing with corporates all the time and you really have to be very careful about undue influence if you’ve also got a role, particularly of course being parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Regional Development, which was the only portfolio in government that had any money. We were just dealing with every issue under the sun. It would be health, education, sport, main roads. The other portfolios were not really getting the same attention. I remember Doug Cunningham saying—I wish I could remember these figures. He commented on the fact that in his time working for Eric Charlton the number of requests for appointments were half what Brendon Grylls was getting—it was something like 7 000. It was massive; trying to deal with all these people who wanted to see us and wanted to put their proposal to us for spending our money. So really what I did, even though I didn’t actually physically resign until the following April— there was a state conference in Kalgoorlie in April 2009—I actually stepped back from the role. Colin Holt went in as acting state president as soon as I was appointed parliamentary secretary, and then at the April conference he then was elected as state president. At that time I had been president for four and a half years.

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Ms Anne Yardley: What is actually the role of a parliamentary secretary, just to explain that for people —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That is a good question. That’s a good question, because it’s something that really needs to be fixed here in Western Australia because it really isn’t that well defined. In fact, I remember talking to Helen Morton when she was parliamentary secretary to Graham Jacobs, Minister for Mental Health. She came to me and said, “So, Wendy, what are you doing as parliamentary secretary?” I said, “Well, I don’t know really.” She said, “Neither do I. Have you got an office?” I said, “No.” She said, “Have you got a staff member helping you?” I said, “No, not really.” So I went to Brendon and said, “What do you expect me to do in this role? Can you give me some section of your portfolio that I can be in charge of and sign off on?” But, no, that wasn’t really allowed. In the end it’s a funny role and you can do your own thing to a certain extent.

But what happened with myself is that Brendon gave me some reviews to lead that were important. So as chair of the Southern Rangelands Pastoral Advisory Group, as chair of the Gascoyne Food Bowl consultative committee, and then a bit later on as chair of the Regional Development Commissions review. All really interesting and fascinating things for me to do. It was right up my alley; I loved it. That was excellent. But as Brendon became more and more busy and you could see that he was getting exhausted, he actually delegated less, which was quite interesting because he just got too busy to even communicate. Slowly but surely I really saw my role then as—I thought, “Well.” After I’d done those couple of reviews—and the other was the rangelands reform, trying to get the land act amended. That was just a nightmare, trying to get pastoralists on side to get land tenure. That ran the whole time I was parliamentary secretary, but the rest of the time, once those other jobs had finished, I found it more and more difficult to stay in touch with his office. I lived in Esperance and Brendon organised that every Monday afternoon we’ll have a meeting with the staff and the parliamentary secretary. So I’d fly up from Esperance and then he’d cancel the meeting. In the end I just thought, “Well, if he really needs me there he can specifically request my attendance.” And I started to really focus more on— we really saw my election as member for Mining and Pastoral as that bridge to the next step, which was to win lower house seats in the Mining and Pastoral Region. Brendon really gave me that job. He said, “Okay, you’ve done that, Wendy. Here’s your next job.” It was one more thing I had to do to achieve whatever it was that I wanted to achieve.

I really then started to focus on the areas where we wanted to win in the next election, so Kalgoorlie, the Pilbara and the Kimberley. Vince of course defected. I was working with 130

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the Carnarvon food bowl and so on; I was working in that area as well. Then Vince Catania defected to the Nationals, so I thought, “Right, that’s good. I’ll leave that area to him.” I was really covering goldfields–Esperance, Pilbara and Kimberley, just really establishing our membership base, trying to identify candidates and really rolling out the royalties for regions program, so I’d be making announcements for Brendon when he couldn’t get there. Of course he had his pet projects, which were Pilbara Cities and Ord stage 2, Kununurra. A lot of the other things, particularly in relation to Broome and Derby and remote Aboriginal communities and the goldfields and of course Esperance, was where I worked, but it was more as a member of Parliament than parliamentary secretary.

Ms Anne Yardley: You’re making it sound as though you were able to make this role what you wanted it to be.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I did. I did. Because I really wasn’t getting clear guidance as to what I was supposed to do, I thought, “Well, I’m not going to waste this opportunity.” As I’ve said many times, I believe that the only way the Nationals were going to survive was to broaden their base out into the northern areas; the Mining and Pastoral areas. I was personally very convinced and committed to that, and so that’s really what I worked on. But it was the best time of my parliamentary career. I just loved it. What I loved about serving the Mining and Pastoral Region is that you’re going out to places where people live because they love it there. People are there because they want to be there, and they’re really making their life in spite of the challenges and so they don’t whinge; they’re so grateful if they get something that they didn’t expect. They’re full of adventurous and visionary ideas because they’re that sort of people. So I really love that, because that’s my sort of people. I just love people who are willing to take a risk and go out on a limb and fight a battle that other people might think is unwinnable.

Ms Anne Yardley: This was giving you a vehicle to become better known in those areas?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely. I was really focusing over the whole area, because the idea of me standing for Kalgoorlie was just not in my head at all, not until right at the eleventh hour. I had probably spent most of my time in the Kimberley just really establishing a beachhead there for the Nationals and identifying a candidate for us.

Ms Anne Yardley: Lots to talk about next time, I think. Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. [End of Wendy Duncan 7] 131

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WendyDuncan_8

Ms Anne Yardley: This is an interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Friday, 13 October 2017 and we’re at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

We’ve been talking about that 2008 election win. You ended up with another member you weren’t expecting in the form of Labor’s Vince Catania, who came over to you. What difference did he make to you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was interesting, because Vince of course was given the task of being one of the attack dogs of the Nationals and of royalties for regions. In fact, he lived to regret some of the things he’d said in Parliament about Brendon Grylls and the Nationals when we were in government. But I think he came to see that the only way that his electorate was going to get the services that it needed from government was to come across to the Nationals. I think, too, that Vince had felt that perhaps his chances of a career or a pathway within the Labor Party weren’t as good as he’d hoped. I’m not sure; only he could speak for that. But the really interesting thing about Vince is that my understanding is that he wasn’t courted or canvassed; it was his idea. He met with Brendon and suggested that he wanted to be part of our team. That was, of course, a huge coup for the Nationals, not only to attract someone from Labor—of course, that’s got that whole implication of “this is the Nationals willing to deal with either side of politics”, so that really reconfirmed the fact that we were acceptable to the Labor Party—but I guess the other thing, too, is that it secured us a lower house seat in the Mining and Pastoral Region, which really was our long-term strategy. My standing in Mining and Pastoral was really that beachhead into gaining lower house seats, so to have an extra person on the ground doing that work was fantastic for the party, but even better for me, because prior to that I was trying to cover the whole lot, which was three-quarters of the state, so that allowed me to leave him with the Pilbara and the north west and I focused on Goldfields-Esperance and the Kimberley. But it certainly caused a huge amount of ruckus in the Parliament. Of course, to defect to another political party is something that is really never forgiven. I saw it federally when I was state president of the Nationals and one of our Nationals members federally defected to the Liberal Party [in 2006]. His name’s just escaped me. Julian [McGauran]—there were two brothers.

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Anyway, we will come back to his name. It just caused a whole heap of bitterness and anger and soul searching. You could see in the house that Vince was really never going to live down that move. Every time he got up to speak, there’d be calls of “rat” and so on from the Labor side of the house. In many ways I know that the fact that if he had achieved higher office in the Liberal–National government, it wouldn’t have been long before something distasteful or—there would have been a lot of effort put in to bringing him down. I don’t know whether Vince’s decision was personally a good one for him for his career, but it certainly was good for his electorate.

Ms Anne Yardley: What about the two of you? How did you establish your working relationship, and what kind of a working relationship did you have?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, in the beginning, we didn’t catch up with each other much. I’d already been put onto the food bowl consultative committee as chair, a job that he had under Labor and he got removed and I replaced him. He wasn’t that happy about that. Then, of course, I was also very much media focused and putting media statements out into the whole Mining and Pastoral Region and treading on his toes in his patch. It took a while for the penny to drop with me that I was actually doing that, because I thought I was just doing my job and disseminating information to my electorate. Then we started to come to some sort of agreement. In the end, actually, Vince and I ended up working very closely together and good mates. In fact, I found him a great support at some times in my political career. The thing about Vince, of course, is that his father21 was a Labor member of Parliament as well, so he was very, very skilled at campaigning and making contact within the electorate and preparing for elections. It was something that I just soaked in through the skin. I loved the way he campaigned in his electorate, the way he put little newsletters out—town-specific messages out—and visited particular organisations, and was very focused on the one per cent. He said, “It’s all very well to get the broad range, but then you need to go after the pensioners or the bowling club members, so start to identify those smaller groups and get them onside; they’re your one-per-centers.” Yes, I learnt a lot from Vince.

Ms Anne Yardley: Looking at your inaugural speech, there are so many things that you wanted to do. I know you’re coming from a bit of a position of an idealist at that point in your career, but I just wonder how they went for you. For example, you talked about the

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW need to clean up the lead contamination around Esperance and a solution to the foreshore erosion problem. What happened with those sorts of things?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I have often said in speeches during my term as a member of Parliament that I came into Parliament at a very fortunate time for my political career because, unusually, I am a member of Parliament who is able to keep my promises. Many members of Parliament do come in with that idealism and that vision and that list of things to do and can’t achieve it, because they really do have to convince their party room and convince the hierarchy and then find the money. Of course, I had a very close relationship with Brendon Grylls. We had royalties for regions—a bucket of money. He, I think, highly respected anything that I brought to him that I thought needed funding. I know when I finished as the member for Kalgoorlie that I actually put out a newsletter that had my to- do list on it and, really, I think 90 per cent of it was ticked. I’m just so lucky, particularly when you think about Esperance, because Graham Jacobs was the member there and had been battling on issues like the foreshore, like the Esperance Residential College and Esperance Hospital, built in the 60s and nobody wanted to fund it. They’re the things that I really mentioned only once or twice to Brendon. Sure, the work was all done, the business plans and so on, but they were funded. So Esperance, even though I was really the member there I suppose for four years, we got $23 million spent on the foreshore, $10 million on a new Esperance Primary School, $13 million on the Esperance Residential College—a magnificent upgrade—and I think $18 million on Esperance Hospital. That was my to-do list. That was what I promised the people of Esperance I would deliver, and I did.

Of course, you talk about the lead issue. That was probably my baptism of fire. Graham Jacobs had been battling on that, without a lot of success, trying to get the government to understand what needed to be done to get the confidence of the people of Esperance back and to undertake a clean-up. He was really trying hard but not getting anywhere. I had been a member of Parliament—I was in opposition as member for Agricultural Region—for a very short period of time and decided to go to Perth and meet with Alannah MacTiernan. She’s a very strong, well-read, well-researched lady—doesn’t suffer fools. Thank goodness that one of my strong traits is that I don’t go into anything without doing my homework. We walked into the room and she actually just got stuck into me right from the start. You know, she was very aggressive. I really thought, “Oh, my goodness! Either I’m going to burst into tears here, or I’ve got to buckle up and get into it.” So I actually came back at her just as strongly and laid out some of the things that I knew and also laid out exactly what I thought the best strategy was to resolve the problem.

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The other issue I went to talk to her about was about access to CBH sites for long grain trucks and the issue that turning off the highway and crossing over the railway line, which was running alongside the highway, actually meant that with these extra-long grain trucks, if there was a train on the railway line, the truck would still be sticking out in the middle of the road. Alannah was really throwing this back at CBH, saying, “It’s your problem, not ours.” She said that to me, “No. It’s CBH’s problem.” I said, “Look, it’s not. It’s on your side. It’s on the Main Roads side.” She then turned to her staff and said, “Is this true?” and they said, “Well, yes, it is.” From that minute forward, I could see that I had her respect.

I was shaking internally, but they then started to work on solving the lead problem, but really the full solution and the full attention to the lead problem didn’t happen until government changed. I was so proud that we actually had a planeload—there was Colin Barnett and Brendon Grylls and I think Simon O’Brien was Minister for Transport and one other minister—all come to Esperance and meet with everybody. And then again I presented this strategy that had been really put to me by the community as to what they thought was the best response, and the government adopted it. I think they spent $30 million, but entirely to the satisfaction of the community. First and foremost, we needed to define the extent of the contamination. Really, no work had been done to do that. So independent people were brought in to test how far the lead had actually drifted from the port, and then having defined the extent of the contamination, to then settle down and thoroughly clean and then go back and test again. It turned out to be a very expensive exercise, but it was done by independent people who were appointed to the satisfaction of the local, very vocal but also highly researched environmental people.

The other very clever strategy was that they employed a lot of locals in doing the clean- up. The whole issue, I suppose you could say, died down. The whole issue was satisfactorily resolved for the community. They really just wanted to get on with being the fabulous place to visit and live, and to get the fact that when you google “Esperance”, they didn’t want the first search to come up “lead contamination”.

There was one group of parents who were very, very concerned about their little ones, particularly as some of the playgrounds close to the port were contaminated. I worked closely with them for quite some time just to try and get additional funding and support. A lot of them were almost suffering post-traumatic stress—a lot of the mums were very distressed—so in addition to the work that was done to clean up, I was really walking alongside those families. Yes, it was very rewarding, and we did well.

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Ms Anne Yardley: What happened then with that—it was $60 million, I think—federal government funds —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes it was.

Ms Anne Yardley: — to upgrade the port access corridors?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, that was a federal government commitment, but it was dependent on being matched by the state. I think, really, that was more something that Graham Jacobs got his side of politics to support, because the $60 million didn’t come out of royalties for regions; it was Department of Transport funding. So, yes, that did go ahead and we absolutely supported it, but I think Graham Jacobs can have that feather in his cap.

Ms Anne Yardley: All right, let’s look [laughs] —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes; okay.

Ms Anne Yardley: Something else on your wish list in your inaugural speech was the proposal to desalinate water in Esperance and then pipe it to the goldfields; what happened with that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was a proposal that was put together by a consortium in Kalgoorlie of pretty influential people with capital backing, along with a company called United Utilities back then which had those sorts of projects worldwide. Do you know it actually made a lot of sense, because there’s a lot of water being sent from Perth into the goldfields and feeding lots of sheep and things along the way at a time when Perth was really starting to run out of water. There was talk about desal up here and a lot of objection to it, environmentally. Not only that, the other side of the equation is that the water in Esperance is dreadful—the actual town water supply. It’s very highly calcified and it ruins your kettles and your hot water systems. Everybody hates the water supply in Esperance. So it seemed like a solution that would not only satisfy the people of Esperance, would help to solve the problem in Kalgoorlie, but also then reverse the pipeline and send it back up to Perth where people were objecting to a desal plant in Perth, and we were pretty happy to have it on the south coast. There’s good currents down there and there seemed to be quite reasonable environmental safeguards, I guess, down there. Of course, then there was the possibility—you’re going through some quite good agricultural regions. 136

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Salmon Gums—that’s right—had a dreadful water supply. They, in the end, thanks to my previous member of Parliament that I was working for, Ross Ainsworth, had converted an old disused quarry into a dam to store water for Salmon Gums, and of course Norseman was on the end of the pipeline and it was leaking. So there was a whole raft of good reasons why that water supply would be a good idea. To have private equity interested in it, we thought, “You beauty! This is going to fly.” In fact, we picked it up, the Nationals, probably first, and I know that Graham Jacobs was quite slow to come on board, but eventually he did because he felt that he had to, really, to match what we were saying. But the Water Corporation and the government were just so adamant that it wasn’t going to happen. It’s a very interesting thing really, because I think, more than anything, it was the competition that they didn’t want. I think that’s one of the flaws in the public provision of our utilities, is that they become averse to competition.

It’s funny—it’s probably not funny actually—but the tragedy of it all is that subsequently when the Liberals and Nationals gained government, who should be the Minister for Water but Graham Jacobs, and he just could not get that project over the line. I think it really did him a lot of damage, actually, in his own electorate and in the goldfields. Of course, you might remember that under the redistribution, his electorate changed from Roe to Eyre, part of Kalgoorlie–Boulder was in his electorate, as was Norseman and Salmon Gums and Esperance, so to fail to deliver that project was something that I don’t think he ever really recovered from.

It was not something that we were going to fund out of royalties for regions. We, in that early stage particularly, were pretty determined that we weren’t going to be putting royalties for regions’ money into services that should normally be delivered by government. Especially into the second four years and once the out years of the government we replaced—their budget—was no longer relevant, and I guess we’d dealt with a lot of the backlog that we’d identified, then we did start to put funding into things like water and power, but back then we were pretty reluctant to. So, no, that didn’t get off the ground. I still think it’s actually a good project.

Ms Anne Yardley: One thing that did exercise the minds of the Nationals, which seems surprising, is East Timor. What was that all about?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That actually wasn’t the Nationals; that was Wendy Duncan. It was an idea of mine. Having travelled, I guess as state president more than as a member of Parliament, into the Pilbara and into the north, I became acutely aware of the lack of 137

DUNCAN INTERVIEW unskilled labour—so hospitality, labouring, horticulture. Those sorts of industries were just desperate for labour and not able to get it. On the other hand, I had really followed the fortunes of East Timor, just out of personal interest really—the fact that what happened there I think was tragic at the time of the independence. Maybe—I’m not sure—but maybe Australia could have done more to prevent that awful outcome at the time of independence. We spend a lot of money sending dollars overseas for foreign aid. My theory is that that money often ends up in the wrong hands—you know, wallpapering the president’s palace or onselling stuff at exorbitant profit, so that the people it’s intended for don’t benefit but the current hierarchy do. I actually saw this idea as something that would have a dual benefit, in that instead of sending money over for overseas aid, if you actually gave work to East Timorese on a sort of fly in, fly out basis—no visa, no promise, not like a 457 where you can live; there’s no promise that you would get citizenship in the end—it would give them the opportunity to put some money together and then go back with new skills and start businesses, because hospitality probably is something that would work well in East Timor. At the time, youth unemployment was up around 90 per cent. Of course, being a student of history, you read about the fact that one of the greatest causes of revolution and unrest in a country is economic difficulty and unemployment, so I put that to Parliament. I don’t think even my colleagues knew that it was something that I had on my mind, but I discovered almost immediately that it is something that Alannah MacTiernan herself had been working on and a relationship, really through the union movement, had already been established with East Timor and they were working on trying to bring people into Broome and into the Kimberley. Of course, the East Timorese heard about my speech and made contact with me. In fact, I then assisted them bringing delegations out to Parliament. Also, when they had employees in Broome, I met with them and supported them and listened to whether they had any issues, so I acted, I guess, as a bit of a go-between for them. Then it sort of fizzled out. I think there started to be objections about foreigners taking our jobs—the usual stuff; jobs that Australians didn’t want anyway—and I got really busy, being parliamentary secretary and so on, and so it was something that I had to really let go. But I’ve always kept a weather eye on it, because it was quite exciting to see that what I thought was a good idea was actually happening and I didn’t even realise it!

Ms Anne Yardley: It really was a good idea. Look, another thing is that the Nationals, interestingly, worked well with the unions, which is not something that you expect necessarily.

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, and I think that was part of our strategy to demonstrate that we could work with both sides of government. I think we, just the same, went into it fairly naively. I think I mentioned to you in one of our previous interviews that we were targeting that second-tier issue, where we weren’t going to be headbutting the major political parties. We were talking about things like government employee housing, particularly for teachers and police, and we also became aware that the cost of living for public servants in regional areas was so much higher than it was for those in the metropolitan area, but they weren’t really being properly compensated for that. We became aware of that.

We were, first of all, approached by the police union, because they are more apolitical than most, and the police union had always come along to Nationals conferences. I actually remember Mike Dean, who was president of the police union when I first became state president of the Nationals, coming to me and saying, “Wendy, you don’t charge enough for corporates and unions and others to come to your conferences.” He said, “No wonder your party is going broke. The Liberals charge this and Labor charge that and you let us come along for the cost of a cup of coffee.” So Mike and I were good mates. He really mentored me in my presidency and working with corporates and so on—and then Mike mentored Brendon as well.

We started meeting with the police union and saying, “Okay, so what can we do for you? We know that we’re really having trouble attracting police into the regions”—and nurses and teachers, because a lot of them were being attracted into the mining industry, the higher salaries and fly in, fly out. They said, “Well, one of the biggest issues is the cost of accommodation.” So Brendon, which is something that he tended to do, and more and more as time went on, came out with this policy that we’d offer free accommodation to all police working in the regions. The police, obviously, grabbed onto that and thought, “You beauty! Thank you very much.” But then Toni Walkington from the CPSU contacted us and said, “Well, that’s all well and good, but that’s just for the police. What really needs attention is this regional allowance for government employees that are working in the regions, and it hasn’t actually been adjusted since the 1960s.” So then we came up with the policy that the regional allowance should move with the CPI and adjusted every two years, so that there would be an inquiry into the cost of living in the regions on a basket of goods for key regional areas, and then all the public servants’ salaries would be adjusted accordingly. So that was what we went to the election with.

Ms Anne Yardley: And had success with it?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes we did. Although, interestingly, the conversation with the CPSU was, “Do you realise that promising free accommodation is actually fraught with difficulty and inequity?” We, as I said, naively said, “Oh, why?” and they said, “Well, because some police officers actually own their own home in the regions. Others do get an allowance; some don’t. So it’s actually going to be very difficult to equitably roll that policy out, and if you do it for police you need to do it for all the public service.” And we’re going, “Oh, okay.” So we then said, “Right, well instead of the free housing we’ll just do this regional allowance.” In fact, the calculation came out at the time when Karratha was at its most ridiculously expensive and some police officers in Karratha got pay rises of $15 000, $18 000, just taking into account their cost of living. I remember visiting up there as parliamentary secretary, and the officer in charge of the Karratha Police Station—it was a new police station—was showing us through. They had one of these cardboard figures on the wall with a bullseye on it. They said, “Oh, this is what we do our Taser practice on.” They said, “We’ve got a corflute and we put Brendon Grylls’ face on it.” And I said, “That’s outrageous. We have done so much for you with this regional allowance and for all public servants.” “Oh yes, but you offered us free housing.” They didn’t ever let that go.

It was unfortunate, because in the end when the police—and we worked well with the police. I remember when they wanted to get rid of one-officer stations because they weren’t safe, it was the Nationals that actually got that delivered. But in the end the relationship with the police broke down completely and they don’t come to Nationals’ conferences anymore, and when they’d come to us with a policy that they wanted or some royalties for regions money, we’d say, “Well, if we make this commitment, you’re going to beat us up anyway on something else. We’ve learnt our lesson. We’ve done our best for you and you obviously just put that behind your back and asked for something more.” So it was quite sad actually, because our relationship with the police union was not good after that, in spite of the huge difference we made for them. They all got a lot of new police stations and new housing. All the government employee housing was refreshed with royalties for regions money, new police stations built, thousands of dollars in extra salary, and they’re still tasering Brendon Grylls in their back room.

Ms Anne Yardley: Had Brendon spoken out of turn to even say that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, look, possibly. This is where my biggest challenge was as state president, was to try and get him to respect the governance of the organisation because often there would be policy pronouncements and then a rushed state council

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Ms Anne Yardley: Look, before we go into more of the policy initiatives that you had as Nationals, I’d like to get a better sense of what the power-sharing arrangement really was with the Barnett government. It was an alliance —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: — rather than a coalition, but really what did that mean?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was based on the legal agreement that was drawn up in South Australia between Karlene Maywald and the Labor government, and so it really was quite a well-defined legal document that fortunately we had in our back pocket when we were ready to negotiate. It meant that we would guarantee supply and confidence to the government, but that we retained the right, I guess, to disagree on key policy matters that our constituency just wouldn’t stomach. The sorts of things were daylight saving, retail trading hours, you know, the things that—local government amalgamations became a huge issue, and the Nationals really didn’t ever support the Barnett government on that strategy.

So how that would manifest itself, according to the agreement, was that if an issue was raised that was contrary to what the Nationals would support or to their core belief, then our ministers would make that known round the cabinet table and then absent themselves from further discussion. Now, that’s all well and good in theory, but what started to happen towards the end of the Barnett government—probably the typical development as you become a bigger, more diverse group, so in the second four years of royalties for regions there were 12 Nationals members of Parliament around the table with the full spectrum of views. I think we’ve talked before about how we’re brought together by geography, not philosophy. Towards the end there became that situation where our cabinet ministers might sign off on something in cabinet, but then when the legislation was brought to the party room the party would say, “No, we’re not going to have a bar of that.”

Ms Anne Yardley: Can you give me an example of the party room differing from what’s happening in the cabinet?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think a classic example is the stop and search legislation. So that was brought in in preparation for the CHOGM22 conference in Perth, and obviously there were some very strong security concerns around that. There’s terrorism happening worldwide, and particularly where there’s large gatherings of world leaders. So the police and the government decided that really they should be allowed, within a certain designated area, to just stop and search someone without reasonable suspicion. That was something that just went through cabinet, but when it came into the party room the legislation was about to go into the house, and so then we get to see it. The cabinet ministers have seen it and they say, “Yes, that’s fine, you can bring it through to the party”. There was disagreement about whether or not we’d like to see this stop and search legislation. We felt that it was really, the police, it was giving them powers beyond what they should be allowed.

There’s people in the party room like Phil Gardiner, who has a very strong social conscience; myself, being a devotee of Nelson Mandela and just seeing what police powers had done in South Africa; and the other one of course, and the key person in this whole debate, was Mia Davies. I don’t think Mia had a very strong opinion at the beginning, but she was actually on the legislation committee when that bill was referred for consideration. Because I know the Greens had great concern about it and they’d come to us, I think, and we’d agree, “Yes, we’d send it to committee.” But Mia had the balance of power on that committee; so there were two Liberal and two Labor and Mia. Well, Mia, in typical fashion, did a huge amount of research on this stop and search legislation and where it was in effect in other parts of the world and what the implications of it were. She looked at the UK and Africa and the US. The other thing she did of course was look at our local legislation, and really came to the conclusion that the police had sufficient powers. They didn’t need this.

Interestingly, and it was probably one of our best moments around the party room because we all said around the table, “Well, we’ll wait until the committee has finished looking at this bill and then we will be guided by what Mia recommends.” So that’s basically what happened. There were quite a few of us who had misgivings, and Mia came back and said, “Well, the recommendation is that this bill not be supported”, and the whole party room fell in behind her, which was fabulous. I was really proud too because I’d done quite a lot of work and had said publicly that I didn’t support it; I’d really stuck my neck out on the bill as well. It was an example where the ministers really had to eat humble pie and go

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW back to the Premier and say, “Well, look, I’m really sorry, according to our agreement we probably should have left the room but we didn’t realise that that was what was going to happen.” So what happened in that case is the bill was shelved; it never saw the light of day.

That did happen subsequently on a few bills where the Nationals had a very strong objection to something that was being brought forward, particularly when we had the balance of power in both houses. But I think really the Liberal Party were getting more and more frustrated and angry about that, because they kept saying to us, “Well, your cabinet ministers supported it. That’s what the agreement is: how come suddenly you don’t want to support it?” So that created a great deal of tension towards the end of the relationship. Generally it worked pretty well, but I think under the surface there was always a fair bit of tension.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s go back to royalties for regions for a minute, because you had responsibility of that in the upper house, that discussion. Now, you led the debate. What does that really mean and what did it mean for you? Because you were quite a new parliamentarian—at that stage.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I wish I knew then what I know now about what it really means, because what is said in Parliament in response to questioning on a bill is actually used later to assist with the interpretation of the bill. You don’t get any tutoring in this. Nobody tells you how you’re supposed to do this. In fact, I think—and I think we talked about this earlier—parliamentary secretaries in particular don’t get a lot of support. Now, I got the bill in a folder and the explanatory memorandum and a few annotations against each clause, and I did my homework and went in there to the best of my ability.

But the other really interesting thing is that I think that Brendon Grylls and Paul Rosair23 had decided that the bill was just going to pass through fairly easily and quickly, that we had the numbers and why argue? It went through the Legislative Assembly without a great deal of angst. In fact normally when someone’s up at the table and a bill is being debated, the minister or parliamentary secretary in question has advisers sitting alongside them and it’s usually someone who’s an adviser on the political policy side of things, and there’s usually someone who’s also involved in the legal legislation side of—the technical side— of a bill. Well, we went in there, everyone’s going, “She’ll be right, Wendy, you’ll be fine,

23 Former director-general of Department of Regional Development 143

DUNCAN INTERVIEW in you go”, and it was myself and Paul Rosair sitting next to me—no legal counsel—and Sally Talbot opposite questioning me, who is a person I have a huge amount of respect for. The sharpest, most incisive mind and not only that, very good at manoeuvring you into a position you didn’t want to be in and then coming in for the kill when you suddenly realise. So there I was, and she just questioned every clause—every clause. I was aware that everyone was anxious to get this bill through, government wanted to get on with its legislative program, this nuisance royalties for regions bill that the Nationals want is holding everybody up. Of course time went on and I’m trying very hard to think of strategies to close down the line of questioning without actually indicating that I don’t know the answer, or being disrespectful. I’d heard talk around the traps about, “Oh, so-and-so, he’s hopeless, he just lets the questioning go on forever and we should have dealt with that bill in X hours and it took ages” and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, they’re going to be talking about me like that. In the end with Sally, I’d say to her, “If the honourable member’s not satisfied with my answer, she can always vote against this clause.” That was all I could do to try and move the debate on, but you can’t do that in the first instance; you have to really work around and around and around before you get to that. In the end it was two o’clock in the morning before the bill went through. I had instructions from Brendon and the team to say, “Today’s the day, we need to get this bill through” and Leader of the House Norman Moore is up behind me saying, “Wendy, we need to adjourn, the Hansard staff need to go home”, keeping everybody up and I’m thinking, oh gosh, because I’m a great supporter of Hansard and of workers’ rights and so on and I was feeling terrible, but then I knew that my team were all waiting upstairs with bottles of champagne. So I battled on, and we didn’t really get it through till about two or three in the morning. But everyone stayed. They were all still up there in the National Party room and we went up and we just—I don’t think we went to bed that night. Out came the champers and we celebrated till morning, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did you get what you wanted?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. There were no amendments to the bill, and we really knew what we wanted. I mean, the big argument about what was in the bill had happened before that. I think there are a couple of things we could have done better but you wouldn’t dare go back to try and amend that bill, I don’t think, unless you really had strong numbers in both houses. It’s very interesting to know that that now is legislated. Twenty-five per cent of the mining and petroleum royalties go to be spent in the regions. Sure, government can interpret however they like, but it still has to be spent in the regions. Now, it might be through the avenue of normal government expenditure, which I think is what the Labor Party will now do and subsequent Liberal Parties probably, but I can see even now where 144

DUNCAN INTERVIEW there’s funding going to roads and to schools and to hospitals which are normal government expenditures. So the benefit— even though the over-and-above strategy of royalties for regions might no longer be with us—I think that that expenditure of 25 per cent, which after all is the same percentage of the population that lives out there, is locked in legislation and safe unless—the only way it’s not safe is if the two major parties decide to change it. They may well do, but that’ll take a fair bit of manoeuvring.

Ms Anne Yardley: And they’ll have the Nationals to deal with along the way.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was that 25 per cent, how did you arrive at that figure?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, pretty well. I think we decided that that was how the population was divided and that that was probably fair and reasonable. I think probably the mistake that we made was that we didn’t calculate the GST implications, and so this 25 per cent was gross royalties, not net royalties. Even though a lot of people might not admit to it, I think it was part of the problem with the budget.

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m wondering about the people in the regions themselves and their reaction to this, because you’ve said the most important outcome is changing the mindset of people in the regions.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What was happening there? Can you give me an example of that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I talked about the fact that when we were travelling around prior to that 2008 election, that people were just so lacking in hope and in belief. I think I’ve recounted that I was told by the president of the Shire of Leonora that when I presented to them our plan to spend 25 per cent of the royalties in regional areas and met with him later and he said, “Gosh, Wendy, we never thought you’d pull it off, I’ve got to tell you that after you left that day we all rolled around on the floor laughing.” I think that that really is that “I’ll believe it when I see it”–type philosophy. In fact, we used to go into meetings and say, “So do you think things will be any different under Labor or under Liberal?” and they’d go, “No, we’re just being done by both sides of government.” To the point that people were not even thinking big; they weren’t even envisaging what their potential was or what could 145

DUNCAN INTERVIEW happen in their region or what economic development or population opportunities there were. They were really just hunkered down trying to survive. Particularly when you look at our hospitals—absolute disgrace. Here we are trying to attract professionals—nurses and doctors and specialists—into buildings and equipment that was from back in the 60s.

So I think there was this scepticism, “It’ll never happen.” I remember—I might have mentioned this—when we were negotiating government, a lot of text messages were coming in saying, “Oh my God! We didn’t think you would do this. Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll.” Then, when we went out into the regions and when they started to see the money flow out, and particularly into the country local government fund, because that was a quick and easy way to get the money into the system, people were just so excited and so gobsmacked and they were starting to say, “Well, what can we do? I’ve thought of this idea for so long and I just didn’t think it would ever happen.” You know, there used to be this standing joke about the strategic plans that were done, particularly under Labor; they were very much into strategic planning. There were documents that were done back then that were huge plans for Karratha and for Newman and Port Hedland that had this great vision out to 2020 and what the population would be and what the industries would be and how everything would look. Then the standing joke was, “Oh, there’s just another book to gather dust on the bookshelf; nothing will happen.” So when we were elected, the regions that had the strategic plans—the Pilbara was one of them—were just so far ahead of those that hadn’t. So that’s one good thing about the Labor government, because they just dusted them off and presented them and said, “We’re ready for you. Have we got a plan for you, if you’ve got money to spend on us!” That’s really why the Pilbara and Pilbara Cities [coughs, pause]—.

So they dusted off their strategic plans and basically said, “Here we are; we’re ready to go.” That’s really why Pilbara Cities was one of the first cabs off the rank, because Karratha and Port Hedland and Newman had done these forward-thinking strategic plans under the auspices of what was then the Area Consultative Committees—so that’s the federal government’s regional committees. The Pilbara Development Commission and the various local governments had already got together. There’s this quote from Andrew Forrest just talking about the fact that the Pilbara had a huge potential out into the future. When you read the preface to these reports, it talks about cost of housing, lack of labour, lack of medical services, fly in, fly out. So all the things that were wrong with the places were listed, and then all these what would have been seen as amazing, fantastic solutions that in effect actually came to pass.

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One of the frustrating things about royalties for regions is the jealousy between regions. They didn’t say, “Oh, fantastic; we’ve got some money at last.” They were saying, “Pilbara’s got more than us.” It was really quite frustrating and annoying to a certain extent, but really the explanation was that, (a) the Pilbara was more desperate—I mean things were just desperate in the Pilbara—and (b) they were ready. The same really with Ord stage 2, because the Labor government had been negotiating a native title agreement up there and it had taken forever, but it was actually done. So the Ord was ready for stage 2. We’d been up there. I think one of the things that really struck Brendon when he started to venture beyond the wheatbelt into the Pilbara and the Kimberley was the plight of Aboriginal people. He really saw the Ord and the Pilbara as opportunities to create jobs and better lives for Aborigines as well as those that are living there. So that’s why Pilbara and Kimberley were really first cabs off the rank—they were ready.

Ms Anne Yardley: And you, as a party, actually did a lot for the Indigenous people, which is something people might not assume is a natural kind of a thing for the Nationals to be concerned about. So you looked at home ownership and interventions and things. What was happening? What did you do?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I actually take pride in the fact that I think that that was one of the things I brought to my presidency of the Nationals—that we really are neglecting a whole segment of our population. Having been brought up around Aboriginal people and their languages and their culture and knowing them as not the normal image of someone in Midland misbehaving but actually beautiful people who know and love their land and we’ve got a lot to learn from them, I was really pushing that a lot in state council and with my colleagues. In fact, I was the first, in the big gala dinner we had following our election win, in my speech I acknowledged the traditional owners and made a comment about the fact that now that we’ve got royalties for regions, we need to make sure that it benefits all regional Western Australians. But at the same time, Brendon was travelling through the Pilbara and Kimberley—before we took government—starting to explore those areas and looking for support, and discovered for the first time really the despair in places like Fitzroy Crossing and Wyndham with just appalling housing conditions, drug and alcohol problems, lack of opportunity and lack of opportunities to even get yourself out of that terrible place that you’re in, even if you wanted to. So the two of us—because it’s been something that I’ve been committed to probably throughout my life, I was able to reinforce what he was seeing and saying to him, “There are solutions.” I mention Andrew Forrest again. He wrote an article in The Sunday Times back about that time, talking about his respect for Aboriginal people and how, as a child on a station—he’s brought up on a station as well, 147

DUNCAN INTERVIEW of course—it was so apparent how intelligent and adaptive and smart they are given half a chance. So I guess that reinforcement made Brendon decide that, yes, that was going to be one of his key focuses. He became quite evangelistic about it in many ways. He really put it front and centre of his policy.

I remember when he launched Ord stage 2 and it was running behind schedule. He was getting beaten up in Parliament over the fact that it was not running to schedule. Some of the people that were delivering the program in the Kimberley came to him and said, “Look, we can get it done in the time that you’ve committed, but we can’t reach this”—I think— “20 per cent Aboriginal employment target that you’ve set for us. We can do it but we just can’t get these Aboriginal employment targets.” And he said, “Well, then, do you want the money?” You know, this was talking to horticulturalists and others up there, and there was this silence and he said, “If you can’t meet these targets, well then, I’m not spending royalties for regions money up here.” So one of the reasons that that project (a) went longer than it should have and (b) cost more than it did was because he was so determined to meet the Aboriginal employment and housing and advancement objectives that were set in that program.

Ms Anne Yardley: So what were some of the objectives and how were you able to meet them?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was about getting jobs for Aboriginal people, but of course that has a whole range of complications around it, because you actually need to have breakfast and a shower and get to work and have a lunchbox and then you actually need to be able to have the benefit of your money when you get home. In fact, the last thing you want or need is to lose your Homeswest house once your income reaches a certain level— when, in particular in the Pilbara and Kimberley, those incomes are so high even at starting salary, you lost your house almost immediately. So there were those complications. That’s why there was this transitional housing program. They built a hostel so that young people that were in work could be mentored and fed and taken to work each day and brought home and, I guess, supported while they really tried to—it’s tough to say it—break out of some of the cultural constraints that really made it difficult for them to work. It’s so hard to live in two worlds. The fact that if you’re earning money, you’re really expected to give it away if someone asks for it, or if you get a house, you’re expected that anyone of your family can move in with you. All those things you really had to try and work. Then of course there was the need for training as well. So there were training centres set up, there were hostels set up, there was transitional housing built, so that people who did get a job and 148

DUNCAN INTERVIEW hold it down could still have a house without losing their Homeswest house. There was working with contractors to make sure that they all had the Indigenous employees. In fact, there was an Indigenous contracting company established, but then that needed to be mentored on its governance and how to pay people and how to make sure everyone turned up. It was incredibly complex.

Really, any lesser person would have given up, but Brendon—you’ve got to give him points—he was absolutely determined. He worked alongside the Miriuwung–Gajerrong people up there and gave them respect that then rubbed off onto the community. He’d say to people in the room, “You said you’d see Teddy Carlton walking down the street. Do you ever go over and shake his hand and say g’day to him?” and they’d go, “Oh, no.” “Well, you need to, because he’s co-signing to this deal.” People often aren’t aware of racism until it’s called out and you say, “Well, why don’t you talk to him in the street?” “Oh, well, maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me.” Maybe he doesn’t. They’re the sort of questions that go into your head. The other thing that Brendon did both in Broome and in Kununurra as Minister for Lands was, as part of subdividing land, he ensured that the local traditional owner group ended up with land of their own that they could then deal in.

One of the biggest challenges in Broome, and in fact throughout a lot of regional Western Australia, was shortage of land. I remember Barnaby Joyce was with us in Broome, or Port Hedland somewhere, and he said, “Shortage of land? Look at this!” and he’s pointing out to the vast nothingness inland from these places. But it was all about native title and trying to free it up. So he [Brendon] went to the Yawuru in Broome and basically said, “Righto, well, we need native title, we need to get Broome ready for James Price Point and we need land, but you can have some as well that you can develop and sell for people in James Price Point.” When the whole thing was going to fall over, I think again Brendon just indicated that he was quite willing to walk away, and that actually brought the traditional owners on board this time. He’s a very tough negotiator and he did some great work at that time.

Ms Anne Yardley: What did you see as the benefits—well, what did you notice with the local communities? Could you quantify the benefits that they got and how they felt about it themselves, their reaction?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think the Nationals, and Brendon in particular, almost reached a godlike status. You know, people just flocked to be near him. I remember in Carnarvon, I think, we were walking down the street and a car did a U-turn, came back: 149

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“Brendon Grylls; we love you!” Because they really were excited about the fact that at last somebody recognised and respected that they love where they live. That’s one of the things that I said in my maiden speech, is that we can’t get it through to the city bureaucrats and the city politicians that actually we love where we live and we need to be respected for that, and in fact we’re not hanging out to move to Perth at the first opportunity. To have somebody recognise that and to love the regions as much as they do just ignited a whole heap of pride and excitement in people and they started to really, I guess, value their regions.

The other thing, I think, is that they started to then think seriously about, “Okay, what can we do with these opportunities?” In fact, we needed—well, I in particular; I don’t know whether Brendon did it so much—I used to warn communities, to say, “Listen, it’s highly unlikely this is going to last forever. The major political parties don’t like it very much, so be very careful in your thinking and your planning. Put your highest priorities first, because don’t think that this money’s going to be around forever or, more to the point, that you are going to have command of how it’s spent.” In fact, one of the speeches I made in Parliament—I don’t think it was my maiden speech but it was very soon after—was about the philosophy behind royalties for regions, and that is that we needed to respect the decision-making of local people. “Subsidiarity” it’s called. That means that the decision about how money’s spent should be made as close as possible to where it’s spent. In fact, that’s something we explored quite deeply in my review of the regional development commissions.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did you see a change in the mindset of Aboriginal people? Did you see their spirits lift; their sense of being in control of their lives? Are you able to point to things where this did make a difference to them?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, certainly one thing I did see was that they started actually communicating with us. I think really up until then they just only spoke to Labor and the Greens and didn’t really think about the conservative side of politics. I think actually their minds had probably been poisoned against us, because that’s how politics works. We really found that we were welcomed and honoured in meetings that we held.

The other thing, I think, is that we insisted that we meet with Aboriginal elders. That is something that—I know even as member for Kalgoorlie it took me nearly two years, when I went out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands, to be able to meet with the elders. It’s always the whitefellas; it’s the community development officer, the shire people who will all say, 150

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“Hello, member of Parliament, we’ll take you around and show you everything.” And it’s only once you get to know who’s who. I mean, the hierarchy in Aboriginal communities is very complex and it’s something that you take a while to understand and learn. But Brendon’s insistence and mine—mainly that; and Vince, too, as well—was that wherever we went we would also meet with Aboriginal leaders.

So slowly but surely we got their respect, but I still don’t think they vote for us. Their leaders know who we are, but again it’s all about kinship, really, who they vote for. So if some elder says that, “I’m not voting for you,” then that’s it. For instance, I went out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands with Kado Muir, who’s a highly regarded Aboriginal man and quite senior as far as his initiation’s concerned; he’s an elder, very high. We went out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands to meet with the Aboriginal people and we met with one of his uncles, so a senior lore man in the Ngaanyatjarra lands. He said, “I’m not voting for you, Kado; I’m voting for Labor and so’s everyone out here.” And Kado’s saying, “Yes, but what about royalties for regions? What about your mobile phone towers? What about your art centre?” “No, no, I’m voting Labor.” I think that that is a challenge, is that they still follow the tradition and what the group decides should happen. That’s how they work.

Ms Anne Yardley: So you’re seeing that, not that you weren’t delivering for them, but that it was their tradition to vote a certain way.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. I don’t think they understand the connection between voting and delivering. So even though I’m highly regarded in the Ngaanyatjarra lands and in the Pilbara and Kimberley probably—I think; someone might dispute that—by the Aboriginal people, and in the goldfields, but whether they would then vote National is the next question. The interesting thing is that I had my billboards all the way out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands when I was standing for the seat of Kalgoorlie, and an Aboriginal person who was in Kalgoorlie came to the Kalgoorlie Hospital polling booth and he saw my photo and he said, “I’m voting for that one. She comes out all the time. I know that one.” So it’s not so much what you deliver but who you are.

But you see one of the interesting things about the Nationals, and about Brendon Grylls’ attitude and mine, is that we knew that. We knew they probably weren’t going to vote for us, but we also knew that they desperately needed some attention and some funding and some care and concern. That’s what we’re elected for. I remember Brendon Grylls talking about the Aboriginal community on the outskirts of Roebourne—Cheeditha. He’d say, “Look, Pilbara Cities; I’m proud of it. I can see there’s beautiful—there’s traffic lights, 151

DUNCAN INTERVIEW there’s a new hospital, there’s high-rise buildings.” He said, “But, actually, I didn’t fix Cheeditha.” The fact that there’s children still being neglected and hurt still breaks his heart, and mine. And no matter how hard we tried, it was just an incredibly insurmountable problem.

Ms Anne Yardley: Perhaps beyond one political party to fix.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Well, look, I honestly believe that it’s beyond all political parties to fix. The only way we can fix it is for the Aboriginal people to fix it, and we’re starting to see some of that. I know, for instance, when there was a meeting in Leonora about the rollout of the healthy welfare card, the , one very highly ranked elder—a lot of Aboriginal people there, which was fabulous that they all came— stood up and he was angry and he said, “It’s my money. It’s my right. I should be able to spend it how I want to.” A lot of people in the room were going, “Yeah, yeah.” Another elder, who I knew but most people didn’t because they’re not in the scheme of things, who was more senior to this one, stood up and he said, “But what about the rights of our children that are being neglected, that are being molested, that are being hurt? What about their rights?” The whole room just went, “Whoa.” You could see that he had really hit home to his own people that day. That’s what we need more of.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you think in a roundabout kind of a way that the money and the opportunities that came from the money from royalties for regions will actually make a difference to the way a lot of these people think—a lot of the Aboriginal people, the elders, think—and therefore might empower them? Do you see that there might be a connection there?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. One of the things I said to Brendon and I’ve said to others is that what we must do in relation to Aboriginal affairs is not wail and beat ourselves up over our failures, we’ve got to celebrate our successes, because every success results in a multiplier effect of success down through the generations. So, sure, you have failures, but every one of those people that you help to gain a better life, whatever it is, however they want to do it—and that’s the other thing to keep in mind, because there’s traditional Aboriginal people living in the Ngaanyatjarra lands who should not be moved anywhere else; that is where their life is fulfilled and their culture is being fully followed. But then there’s the others that really want to have a job and to be respected and recognised in society and to have a strong family and educated kids. So we really do need to work with those people. 152

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Yes, I think royalties for regions did make a difference, because what Brendon’s philosophy was is that, “I’ll help you if you’ll help yourself.” So there were no handouts. He was just as tough on the Aboriginal people who didn’t measure up to him as he was to the horticulturalists, and I think that that works. You really do need to say, “Come on, guys, you actually need to step up a bit here too. We’re trying to help but we can’t do it without you being engaged.” I actually think there is a change of mindset happening, where this sort of passive welfare is being rejected by the Aboriginal people themselves. That gives me great hope.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s see if we can finish up today with just mentioning a couple of other things that were there in your wish list of things: provision of additional funding for RFDS.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, yes. Well, that was a huge issue, of course, prior to the election, and, in fact, I think factored greatly into our success. We talked about it, I think, in our last interview—how Jim McGinty said, “Oh, the RFDS, they’re just an interest group.” That just caused outrage. It was irreconcilable outrage. There was no way that he was ever going to recover from that. The hatred for Jim McGinty over that comment was palpable. It was something that even surprised me. But what had been happening, as I think we mentioned at the last interview, is that the Royal Flying Doctor Service was increasingly being asked to fill the gaps of WA Country Health. So, 80 to 90 per cent of its flights were shifting patients from there. Not emergencies out in the middle of the bush, but transferring patients.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did you achieve additional funding?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely. It was right there upfront. In fact, I’ve been reading Brendon Grylls’ speech at the launch of royalties for regions and, front and centre, one of the first tranches of funding out there was for the Royal Flying Doctor Service—for new planes and additional planes. One of my, I guess, key platforms that I brought to Brendon—it wasn’t mentioned in my speech—and was also brought to me by Tony Crook, who was then the federal president of the Royal Flying Doctor Service—was that we needed a jet. Because there’s these stupid state laws, which fortunately we’ve seemed to have overcome in recent times, where, if somebody takes ill in Kununurra or Wyndham or even Broome, they’ve got to fly to Perth—not to Darwin, even though that’s closer and a fabulous hospital. Tony said, “Look, really, with the size of Western Australia, we need a 153

DUNCAN INTERVIEW jet”, and so that was one of the first things. I was so emotional when we unveiled that jet. Rio Tinto underwrote it but royalties for regions also funded it. One of the first things that that jet did was actually ferry patients back who’d been burned in a gas explosion off the North West Shelf, way off Broome. Then I saw another newspaper article where a little bubby with a heart condition, back when they weren’t doing paediatric cardiology surgery, was flown to Melbourne in our RFDS jet for a heart operation—open heart surgery—and survived. I actually had tears in my eyes when I read that. I said, “That’s my jet [emotion expressed in voice].” I was so, so thrilled. That jet’s made a huge difference to getting people down quickly. There was a fabulous story of—well, it was very tragic but had a wonderful outcome where the jet brought a little girl down from Kununurra who had a serious head injury. They were on the jet and had all the fabulous communications and they were really almost operating on her as they were bringing her into Perth, and she survived.

So, what’s the value of a life? We were wondering, in regional Western Australia. When you couldn’t have your baby in the local hospital or when you’re expected to wait a couple of hours for a RFDS plane to come and then a few more hours before you actually get to a hospital. It just was Third World. The RFDS has been very generously funded throughout the whole royalties for regions program: new bases, housing for the doctors, additional planes. So it really did make a huge difference.

[End of Wendy Duncan_8]

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WendyDuncan_9

Ms Anne Yardley: This is a further interview with Wendy Duncan. Today is Sunday, 29 October 2017, and we are at her home in Nannup. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Before we move on to some of the issues that we left aside from last time, one thing that you just brought up is the Ravensthorpe nickel mine and the closure of that. That was 2009, we think, and it was fairly early in your parliamentary career.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it was. It was in January 2009, so at that stage I was still member for the Agricultural Region because the Legislative Council hadn’t changed over, as it did in May 2009. Actually it’s quite amusing, because I was with the environment and public affairs committee doing a trip on the east coast of Australia looking at waste management processing and systems and with a cross-section of parliamentarians, including Paul Llewellyn from the Greens. Anyway, the message came through on my phone to say that there’d been an announcement of the mine closure and 1 700 people were going to lose their jobs. I commented naively to my group of colleagues from various parties and the next thing I know Paul Llewellyn has put a media statement out to say how dreadful it is this mine is closing and blaming the government and taking advantage of the knowledge. So, I had to be fairly quick off the blocks as well to come in with our government response.

But what really interested me is that there had been a huge amount of government investment and support in getting that Ravensthorpe nickel mine off the ground. It was BHP–Nickel West who was establishing the mine and, of course, it meant a huge amount to the people of Ravensthorpe, Hopetoun and Esperance. It was being shipped out through there. The government invested a lot into water and sewerage and upgrading roads and passing lanes and upgrading the port. So, there was that incredible investment and then BHP—I don’t think they covered themselves in glory—closed the mine with no notice really to anybody.

There was a huge amount of dismay and despair amongst people who had established businesses to service the mine, who’d bought homes in Hopetoun, who’d settled their kids into the primary school and so on. But the interesting thing is that the government—and I guess it’s because it’s in the Agricultural Region and a lot of the people in and around Ravensthorpe are known well to the Nationals and the Nationals know well about how to 155

DUNCAN INTERVIEW respond to things like drought and fire and flood, and so the response to the closure of this mine was more like it was a natural disaster than a normal cyclical event for a mine. The government then put in place an emergency group to manage all the fallout from this and funding was committed to try to mitigate the effects, so put a new tourism road into the Fitzgerald River National Park, build a tourism centre up at Ravensthorpe. So, do things to try to mitigate the loss of jobs associated with this mine closure. It was tragic and there were, in fact, some suicides from people who had really gone out on a limb in investing in businesses and homes and so on and found themselves high and dry.

But what interested me, I guess, as member for Agricultural Region—so therefore required to go down and smooth the furrowed brows and talk about government’s response and so on—is that if a mine closed in the goldfields or the Pilbara, everybody really just says, “Oh, she’ll be right. It’s just a way of life.” And even in the mining industry themselves when you have your downturns, people who have lived in and around mining for their whole life will say, “This is a good opportunity to bring in efficiencies to our mine, to downsize our workforce and prune out the inefficient ones, to perhaps push through some adjustment to wages that might have got a bit out of kilter at a time of high demand.” So communities and regions that are used to living with the mining industry actually respond without squealing to government, saying, “Oh, help! Oh, help! Natural disaster!” So, throughout this whole process, I must admit I looked on it all with a bit of bemused scepticism, but a lot of government money and royalties for regions money was poured into Ravensthorpe, Hopetoun and that region in response to the closure of the mine, which subsequently was bought by another mining company for less than what BHP invested in it to get it up and running. It was up and going again and everybody was employed again some time later and, in fact, just this year it’s closed again because the nickel price is low and the demand for nickel is low. But there wasn’t the same screaming outcry, because I think the people of Ravensthorpe are now a little bit more seasoned about the fickleness of the resources industry.

Ms Anne Yardley: Were they genuinely more vulnerable, not as resilient perhaps?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think so. The previous Labor government got very excited about this project and started to set up some of the supports and made predictions about population growth and the growth of the regional towns and the flow-on economic benefit to the region that might have been a little bit overambitious and perhaps committed too far into the long term. So expectations and hopes were very high and, in fact, they were only really just starting to be realised when the whole thing went belly up. But anyone who was 156

DUNCAN INTERVIEW really close to it and knew a bit about mining—I heard nearly several months beforehand that the process wasn’t going well, that the price of nickel wasn’t going well and so on, yet we all fronted up in probably about—so this was January 2009. We all fronted up in 2008, midway through the year, for the big official opening and everyone got a handmade glass ornament and a medal to commemorate this great milestone. So, yes, I think there were a few red faces around. I think BHP–Nickel West in particular realised that they needed to lift their game when it came to dealing with communities and stakeholders and they have done better since. But yes, it was really a salutary lesson for me about how you react in the farming areas compared to how you react in the mining areas.

Ms Anne Yardley: With your two different hats on.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s go back to some of the issues we were talking about and didn’t really finish last time. You introduced a daylight savings bill or you had carriage of it.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: People in regional areas—why is there a difference in their attitude to daylight savings to the city?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think the big issue is that this is a very big state and, in fact, in a lot of parts of the state the afternoon is probably one of the most unpleasant part of the day, because it’s around 40 degrees and doesn’t come down until the sun goes down, basically. So the thought that you need an extra hour of sunshine for leisure at the end of the day really only means that you sit in the shade of your verandah and drink an extra carton of stubbies.

Very interesting the result of that daylight saving bill because the referendum—I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but it helps to explain people’s thoughts—is that the regions with the highest yes vote were on the coast in the metropolitan area, so the people who want to go to the beach after work, basically. But even in the hills in Perth most of the electorates voted no. Even if you look at yourself—and I’ve been there, as a farmer’s wife—the men work on the land according to the sun. So, they’re out at sunrise and they come back at sunset. If sunset is at 6.37, then you end up having dinner at a decent time and the father actually gets to see his kids, but if dinner is eight or even nine o’clock by the time he gets 157

DUNCAN INTERVIEW in and showered and has his mandatory beer, then the kids either have to eat without their father or they’re very late to bed. But then the person at home who’s doing the dishes and sorting it all out and tidying up doesn’t actually get finished until 10 or 11 o’clock at night and then, particularly with me, you then get up and try to go to work the next day. So I think a lot of women didn’t like the effect as well.

The trouble with the daylight saving debate, of course, is that it always gets back to the ridiculous comments about curtains fading and cows not knowing what time to come in and that sort of thing, which has just actually got nothing to do with it. In fact, there are parts of our state like the Ngaanyatjarra lands and in the East Kimberley that do informally bring in sort of a daylight saving to mitigate the effects of summer. You think about Queensland. The reason they don’t have daylight saving is because it’s hot.

But the interesting thing is—and just having a bit of a look at this issue—the Nationals supported a petition. Daylight saving was brought on for a three summers trial and the final summer was to be the 2008–09 summer. Well, there was a petition put out in 2007 or early 2008. I didn’t quite get the date of it, but there were 61 000 signatures calling for an end to daylight saving and to bring on the referendum: “We don’t want another summer of it. Let’s just get this over and done with. In fact, that’s what my bill was about. It was very early in the time of when I was in Parliament and my bill, basically, was to say that we should do away with the final summer of daylight saving and that the referendum should be brought forward to no later than October 2008.

My bill was not introduced into the house in the end and I think it was because of some manoeuvring by Anthony Fels, who was a Liberal upper house member who was about to lose his seat when the changeover of the Legislative Council took place in May. There’s that anomalous situation where from when the election was in September 2008 through to May 2009, the Legislative Assembly was composed from the results of that election, but the Legislative Council wasn’t. So, Anthony Fels wanted to bring on a bill to say that there’d be no daylight saving over the forthcoming summer and that the referendum be held in conjunction with the next state election.

I think in the end we decided that there wasn’t much point in trying to go at cross-purposes. So, I didn’t ever read my bill into the house, even though I found my second reading speech and the whole works. But the thing is that it was very obvious that the Nationals were staunchly anti–daylight saving and our constituency knew we were, but both Liberal and Labor were divided on the issue. So, it was a really good clear-air issue for the 158

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Nationals to campaign on. So, when the referendum was eventually held, which was in May 2009, the Nationals, who were still on a high from having won the balance of power in both houses, then campaigned for the next few months on this daylight saving issue and produced little badges and T-shirts. I’ve still got copies of them. It really did cement our place as being that independent voice. So, it was just a continuance of the euphoric wave for the Nationals in 2009.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did this help you then with some of the other things: the introduction of the Country Age Pension Fuel Card and taxi fares, that concerned you; Kalgoorlie Hospital funding; and the trading hours?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Now, it’s interesting because a lot of the promised things that we said we would fund from royalties for regions were rolled out quite quickly. The Kalgoorlie Hospital announcement was just about the first cab off the rank and then there was the country local government fund, so $400 million into local government. There was—I think we mentioned this before—the regional community services fund, which was extra money towards the patient assisted travel scheme, getting people to their nearest hospital for treatment; of course, the much promised and highly political contributions to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which had really caused a whole heap of grief to Jim McGinty and Labor. The other commitment was to fund our little community resource centres, which we might explore a bit more at a later date. Then there was funding that was going to go out through our regional development commissions for small grants for community groups and larger grants for larger organisations.

But the Country Age Pension Fuel Card was something that was one of those spur of the moment things that Brendon Grylls is very good at and most of the time he gets away with, where he noticed and people were saying it to us, that pensioners in the city, of course, get subsidised public transport and subsidised taxi fares if they’ve got ill health or a pensioner card. But people in the country don’t have that same access to government support to travel to medical appointments or to visit family and friends or to do their shopping even. I mean, for some it’s hundreds of kilometres’ drive. So, the Country Age Pension Fuel Card was something that we hit upon as being something that would really press the buttons of regional people.

The average age of people in the regions is a bit towards the seniors’ level. A lot of the farmers are older. A lot of regional people like to try to retire near where they were brought up and so on. And, of course, it was just so welcomed in our campaigning. But then the 159

DUNCAN INTERVIEW question came: how do you do it? That became a real challenge for us and we thought, “Oh, well, we can just roll it out on the back of a Medicare card or something like that.” Far more complex than that, it involved really—just because of due diligence and to make sure we were seen to be aboveboard, we had to call for tenders to see who could deliver this fuel card. Then you had to think of the rules around it to make sure that it wasn’t really exploited. In the end, we started getting actually quite a beating in Parliament from the opposition saying, “Where’s the fuel card? You promised the fuel card. Where’s the fuel card?” It wasn’t until later in 2009 that we managed to roll it out. But oh, gosh, it hit the spot. So, that’s $500 for every country age pensioner. You had to be on the Centrelink pension card so not just the state Seniors Card, which everybody gets once you reach a certain age—a discount everywhere. This is the card that means you can get money from the government through Centrelink.

So, that rolled out and was immediately taken up. In fact, we’d go out and have little celebrations in various—because it was through the post office that you applied for it. So, Brendon and I would go out with our big plastic fuel card and deliver the 10 000th and the 30 000th and each fuel card as we reached these milestones and it was big news.

But, interestingly, one of the first things that happened was that we had people with disabilities and carers come back to us and say, “What about us?” We said, “Absolutely. We didn’t think of that.” Then quite quickly the fuel card was modified to then go to all people who were on Centrelink pension cards, so seniors, people with disabilities, carers, widows, single parents. Everyone who was eligible to that assistance got the card. But the beautiful thing about the card, and perhaps one of its weaknesses as well, is that the fuel card could be used by anyone, really. The senior could say to their grandchild, “Hey, little Johnny, will you take me to the shops and I’ll put the fuel in your car?” and little Johnny would go, “Oh, you beauty, grandma; I was out this week.” It was good for those relationships and allowed for flexibility of use. But, of course, unfortunately, in some section of the community, it became a problem because there was maybe some coercion for the person to share the card around. So, it wasn’t as effective in some parts of the community as others.

Ms Anne Yardley: You were also having to negotiate with a federal agency through Centrelink for this. So how did that work for you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was difficult and at that time, of course, the Labor government was in power. So, we were dealing with Kevin Rudd and and I 160

DUNCAN INTERVIEW think in many ways that probably made it better for us because they could see, I guess, the philosophy behind it and it matched theirs and they didn’t have to pay, really, but they did actually have to make their database available. There was a fair bit of toing and froing over that, but Brendon had a really good relationship with Kevin Rudd and subsequently with Julia Gillard and they worked very well together on quite a few issues—Ord stage 2, classic example. So, we got there in the end. But it was slow and because everyone was so excited about it and so anxious to see it happen, we did get beaten up a bit about it. But in many ways, like, even in this most recent election, fear of losing your Country Age Pension Card actually kept a lot of people voting National.

Ms Anne Yardley: So not without its problems but also with a lot of good points too. A couple of things closer to home to you and dear to your heart I know is looking at the pastoral industry and ways to improve security of tenure and sustainability and things. What were you able to achieve there? What was the problem? What were you able to achieve?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, the pastoral industry had been trying to improve its security of tenure for decades. In fact, my father, who became quite highly placed in the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, was involved in an inquiry in 1979 on that same issue—came out with recommendations and they failed to be implemented. Then there’s examples through time since then where proposals to try to tidy up the industry were presented to the industry and never got over the line, and I’ll explain why shortly.

The other critical thing is, of course, that the other states of Australia managed to sort out their rangelands tenure. What it is, is that the pastoral industry is just a lease. You don’t own a pastoral station; it’s a lease. The other states saw the writing on the wall before the Wik native title decision and tidied up this pastoral tenure to the point where pastoralists were fairly secure in their tenure and they didn’t have to negotiate ILUAs24 to make changes on their property. What happened in Western Australia because of the difficulty in getting everybody to agree is that the Native Title Act came into effect with the pastoral industry still without its tenure sorted.

So, then any effort to modify or improve the pastoral industry tenure immediately triggered a future act, which triggered the Native Title Act and became very, very complex. It’s very unfortunate and makes me angry and sad that they didn’t get it sorted when they could. I

24 Indigenous Land Use Agreements 161

DUNCAN INTERVIEW often quote the fact that when Richard Court was Premier and Barry Court, his brother, was president of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, and they couldn’t sort it out, how silly of little me to think I could. But I went in to it with a great deal of optimism and confidence. The reason I managed to get it off the ground so quickly with Brendon is that I had been talking to him long and hard about the increasing predation of wild dogs in the pastoral industry to the point that they had really decimated the small stock industry in the goldfields. Of course, my family is now up to the fifth generation in the pastoral industry and about that time my brother, who was still on our family property, was really forced to go completely out of running small-stock sheep because they were just getting devastated by wild dog predation. Your lambing percentage just goes to rock bottom, so no lambs, but also to see your sheep so badly mauled and disabled and dead was just a huge mental strain on people in the pastoral industry. My brother said he just used to lay awake at night thinking how can he protect his animals.

There was this wave coming in from the Central Desert of wild dogs. How this happened in the first place—there’s a few reasons. Government and particularly the department of agriculture, who I didn’t see eye to eye with a lot of the time, said that it was all the pastoralists’ fault; they dropped the ball because the price of wool was low and there was a drought and the number of sheep was low and they just didn’t invest. I think, yes, there might have been some of that but, more to the point, in the 80s, they moved from having employed doggers working up and down the boundary with crown land, just preventing the dogs coming into pastoral areas, to aerial baiting with 1080 baits. They just think that was the best thing since sliced bread, but, of course, you and I know that dogs are intelligent animals and it doesn’t take long for them to work out that this manna from heaven results in a fairly nasty outcome and not only that, 1080 is a poison that’s natural in Australia, so the dogs didn’t enjoy the baits, but the goannas and the crows and everything else that was carnivorous in the bush thought it was fantastic and so the baits didn’t even remain in situ for very long. They didn’t kill the native animals because they’re all immune to 1080 and the wild dogs very soon stopped taking the baits. Then at the same time, the government said, “Well, we’ve got a solution, aerial baiting, so we won’t employ doggers anymore.” By the time the penny dropped that the aerial baiting wasn’t working anymore, there were no people employed or capable of being employed. It’s a highly skilled and pretty specialised job. You spend weeks and weeks on end on your own out in the bush. There’s people who loved doing it back then, but once that connection where father teaches son is broken, it’s very hard to retrain someone in how to track a dog and to understand wild dog behaviour.

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The other thing, of course, too, people say, “Oh, but dingos, they’re part of the environment and they’re part of the natural balance.” Yes, that’s true, but dingos have only one or two pups and only in a good season, whereas a hybrid dog or an escaped dog will have eight or 10 in a litter and at least once a year. What we were seeing is that we were getting this sort of hybridisation of the dogs in the rangelands and particularly with the establishment— it’s very interesting and I probably should do a PhD on it or something, because under that homelands plan in the 70s with the establishment of these little Aboriginal communities that actually, believe it or not, didn’t exist before; they were places that Aboriginal people moved through, but they weren’t actually physical permanent resident in. But with the establishment of all these places and their dogs, because dogs are very important to Aboriginal people, there then came the issue of dogs who were surplus to requirements or left behind when people went on a walkabout or something, then actually moved into the bush and started fending for themselves and crossbreeding with the dingos. So, it’s a huge issue.

Ms Anne Yardley: Are dingos protected? They can tolerate 1080?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, they can’t. That’s interesting because dingos really only came to Australia in recent times. They haven’t been here forever. Some people say between 2 000 and 4 000 years. So, that’s interesting. To get back to the story, the thing is that I was heartbroken to see this happening and it was a very strong and proud wool industry around the goldfields. In fact, there’s even a statue outside the post office with a ram on it. We won a National Fleece Competition. So, I was talking to Brendon a lot about this and how the wild dogs were decimating the pastoral industry. I remember when we first won government, Brendon said—we were sitting around the table working out our priorities to where funding would go—“And $10 million for wild dog control just to shut Duncs up [laughter].” That was the start but, of course, it wasn’t, really, enough. What really annoyed me is that most of that money and subsequent funding went into closing gaps in the state barrier fence, which was actually protecting the agricultural regions not the pastoral regions.

Ms Anne Yardley: What were the pastoralists saying to you? Were they really keen for you to have some success with this?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. The pastoral community is quite a small community, so they all knew me. They all knew my pedigree, so they were very excited to think that I might be able to do something for them. Brendon established—no, it wasn’t Brendon. It was Terry 163

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Redman, the minister for agriculture, established this southern rangelands pastoral advisory group, more to review the reviews that had happened. Because one of the things about the pastoral industry is that it seems to get reviewed ad nauseam but nothing ever happens. We looked at existing documentation and things that happened. I really had quite strong influence in who was around the table with me on this and I got a good cross- section of pastoralists from the Nullarbor, one from the goldfields region, one from the Murchison and some environmental scientists to make sure we had a good balanced committee, someone from the department of ag.

We looked at those documents and we then did a certain amount of consultation, but not a lot, because I knew pastoralists were sick to death of it, came up with a report, which is another story in itself because I was having terrible trouble with the officer who was allocated to me from the department of agriculture who had a preconceived idea as to what this report was going to say at the end. Every time we sent him away to prepare a chapter on the particular issue we were looking into at the time, be it wild dogs or diversification or rangeland condition or the successfulness or not of the pastoral advisory board, it would come back just dripping with department of agriculture viewpoint, which was, basically, the rangelands are unsustainable; particularly the southern rangelands are degraded to the point that a lot of the pastoral industry should be closed up; that we don’t want to see any diversification; and mostly to the point which really annoyed me is that it is too difficult because of native title and other issues to actually tap into the opportunities that carbon sequestration might provide for regenerating the rangelands. My pastoral colleagues around the table were also getting very frustrated with this process.

I remember going to Brendon Grylls and Paul Rosair and Dexter Davies I think might have been in the room and I said, “Look, I can’t produce this report by your deadline because what I’m being given back as a draft from the department of agriculture just doesn’t reflect what we’re saying around the table.” They said, “Oh, well, just get something out by X date.” So, not much sympathy. In the end I just got all the documents and all the draft chapters that this fellow had produced for us. I went all night and all day, didn’t sleep, and I wrote the report myself. It was probably not one of my greatest efforts but at least it reflected the view of the people around the table.

Then we launched into what we called the rangelands reform program—the wild dog control part of it—which was supporting diversification in the pastoral industry, and an important aspect was amendment to the Land Administration Act to improve tenure for pastoralists. The rest of my time as parliamentary secretary I seemed to spend going in 164

DUNCAN INTERVIEW ever-decreasing circles consulting with pastoralists and the Pastoralists and Graziers Association and their various iterations around the state. Unfortunately, the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, as I said, has got very, very strong ties into the Liberal Party. They took exception to one particular aspect of our proposed legislation, which actually was to disband the Pastoral Lands Board, which all the consultation had said to me was inefficient, ineffective and not doing its job. In fact, unfortunately in retrospect, Brendon had put a bomb under them and they did start doing their job so, by the time we got round to the legislation, everyone’s going, “No, there’s nothing wrong with the Pastoral Lands Board [laughs].”

Anyway, what happened in the end is that someone high up in the Pastoralists and Graziers Association went to Colin Barnett and blocked my legislation at the eleventh hour. Never got into Parliament. I was devastated—devastated—and begged Brendon to try to come to some sort of compromise with the minister, or even just bring one small part in that would have made a huge difference and leave the rest that was too complicated. Unfortunately, pastoralists are their own worst enemy in many ways, because they’re out there because they love living by themselves, they’re feisty, they’re independent, they’ve got very little respect for other people who happen to need to live close to settled areas. A particular representative of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association just gave Brendon such a serve in some of their meetings, and Brendon is the sort of fellow who won’t take that. He just refused to have anything to do with them after that, and that was end of story because no way we were going to progress without Brendon and the Pastoralists and Graziers Association agreeing on the way forward.

The interesting thing is that in retrospect I look back and I see that Alannah MacTiernan hit exactly the same roadblock. So all the negotiation, get to the final point, and then the PGA block it. Even before that, I’ve got a letter that was written to my father in I think it was 1988 from Yvonne Henderson, who was the Minister for Lands. It was written to all members of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, saying, “These are the things we offered you as far as secure tenure and diversification. However, because of opposition from the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, I’ve decided not to further pursue this.” Looking at that list, every time they presented a list and rejected it, the next time less was on offer, and less was on offer. So they’ve really been their own worst enemy, because they won’t accept anything other than 100 per cent what they want. What they can’t accept is that there are other users of the rangelands other than pastoralists, being Aboriginals, being miners, being environmentalists who just love the outback—tourists. We can’t rule the rangelands just for pastoralists. I mean, obviously they live there and play a huge role 165

DUNCAN INTERVIEW in managing that country, but they cannot hold the government to ransom about how the legislation should apply to that crown land. What I’m delighted to know is that Alannah MacTiernan is back in charge of sorting out the pastoral industry, and if anyone can do it, she can. I’m really watching with great interest.

Ms Anne Yardley: You’re wishing her luck, are you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I am indeed, and in fact I’m toying whether or not to send her a text and say, “Does she want a hand?” I’ll go and bang some heads too [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: I think that might be a good idea.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look at the sandalwood industry, because again sustainability issues, and there’s illegal harvesting. What was happening there and why did it touch a nerve with you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, the sandalwood industry has been around forever, and the thing about the sandalwood industry is that it’s almost a hunter and gatherer industry so it allows people who maybe aren’t educated, who like to bash around in the bush, to make a bit of money. It’s a bit like gold prospectors. So, as soon as you start applying rules and regulations and requirements to fill in lots of forms and get in front of a computer, it makes it very, very difficult for those people who are out there actually having a go, making a quid and staying off the dole.

The other interesting thing about the sandalwood industry is that, believe it or not, the first concerns about, what’s the word, regulating the harvest of sandalwood, because it was really just a fairly unregulated activity—the first concerns about the sustainability of harvesting sandalwood out of the rangelands were raised by my father. He actually many years ago, decades ago, objected to harvesting sandalwood. He said, “It takes 40 or 50 years for a tree to grow to maturity. Now that we’ve got rabbits out in the countryside, the seedlings really battle to replace what’s been harvested, and we would rather see the whole industry banned.” He had no success on that front, so then his next line of action was to say, “Well, if that’s the case, if there’s going to be sandalwood pulled on my property, I want to be doing it, so that then at least I can make sure that it’s being done in a sustainable manner.” So, the legislation back then basically gave contracts to people to 166

DUNCAN INTERVIEW harvest sandalwood, and it was often the pastoralist who’s already a resident but it would also be contractors—a lot of them were Aboriginal, who’d been doing it for decades—and they would pull sandalwood according to the amount that they were allocated in their contract and it would go to a monopoly, Wescorp, who would then onsell it on behalf of the government. So it’s fixed price, very controlled all the way through.

When Mt Romance first decided to get started, actually the first time we really saw commercial processing of sandalwood in Australia, the government of the time I think made a mistake. Sure, they wanted to encourage new industry and I absolutely applaud that, but they gave Mt Romance a very favourable contract price for their sandalwood over too long a period. So they were guaranteed part of the harvest at a low price when the world market then started to go through the roof. What happened of course is that when the world market went through the roof, and the harvest of sandalwood was so tightly controlled by government, including the price you got for harvesting it, because—just go back a step. In the crown lands, the tree doesn’t belong to the pastoralists; it belongs to the government. In fact what you were being paid to harvest sandalwood was not for the wood—that belongs to the government; it was for your labour to deliver the wood. Well, what started happening of course is that sandalwood was then being pulled illegally and it was being shipped out of the state by various methods—out through the Ngaanyatjarra lands, out through South Australia, out through Geraldton port. The police were really not taking any interest in it at all, and the main reason was that in the legislation, which was very old, the fine for illegally harvesting sandalwood was something like $200. So, people were just well and truly prepared to take the risk.

There was also some undercurrent of possible corruption in how the whole thing was working. In fact, there was this one fellow on a property out of Menzies, who is very eccentric and probably proved to be quite difficult to deal with. He wanted a royal commission into the sandalwood industry. I was the member for Mining and Pastoral at the time and I said, “Look, a royal commission’s probably going over the top, but what we can do is a petition into the Legislative Council which should trigger an inquiry with the Environment and Public Affairs Committee”, which I was a member of. I thought, that’s great, because what happens when petitions come into that committee, you can’t look at all of them, so the committee members get to decide which ones are inquired into and which ones aren’t. I tabled the petition in Parliament, but then of course subsequently became a parliamentary secretary and so wasn’t on the committee anymore, but I’d laid the groundwork sufficiently for the committee to decide to have that inquiry. It’s quite interesting. I remember Terry Redman, who was the minister for agriculture and would be, 167

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I guess, the respondent to the inquiry, coming to me at one stage and saying, “Wendy, don’t go there, you’re going to open a real can of worms here.” I thought, that’s interesting and, who was telling him to tell me that? So it actually had the opposite effect; I was so determined to see this whole industry sorted.

It caused a lot of disruption and delay in the industry because while the inquiry was on and then subsequent the recommendations was that the legislation be reviewed and rewritten, and then the decision was that the legislation wouldn’t be a separate sandalwood act but would be incorporated into the new biodiversity act, which was a massive act which was taking forever to get to the table. So there were nearly two years of limbo with the industry, and in that time I actually received death threats from people who were saying, “It’s all your fault that this industry is now”—you know, “We don’t know where we’re going, we can’t get contracts, I’ve lost my income.” I got all that, so I had to get dignitary protection on the job. I was getting letters and phone calls and being followed. Subsequently, I found out that there was actually a fairly strong bikie involvement in the illegal harvesting of sandalwood and so, I guess quite naively, I’d stepped into a fairly nasty area of inquiry.

But we came out the other end and made some brilliant amendments to the Biodiversity Conservation Act, which then really focused strongly on the sustainability of that wood in the rangelands. It increased the fine to $20 000 if you’re an individual and $1 million if you’re a corporation. Interestingly, there was also a bit of a test case before this legislation came through which really threw the cat among the pigeons, and probably was the catalyst for the death threats in that the regional manager of the Department of Conservation and Land Management, as it was then, and then DPaW, was very much in favour of what I was wanting to do. He, I guess, was emboldened by the fact that we were on to it. He knew someone who was blatantly stealing sandalwood and managed to convince the police to arrest this person not under the Sandalwood Act, but under the Criminal Code because he was thieving from the crown, so stealing property of the crown, being the sandalwood trees. That case was going through as a test case, and the value of the sandalwood is in the millions of dollars so jail was a possibility there. So, yes, there was a fair bit of angst and disquiet.

One thing I’m very proud of, and I’m still disliked for in some quarters, is that in reorganising how the sandalwood contracts were issued, I managed to get into it that there was a strong component of Indigenous involvement and labour. So that if you wanted a contract to pull sandalwood for the government, one of the things you needed to demonstrate was that you are either an Indigenous corporation or you are employing Indigenous labour. That’s 168

UNCAN INTERVIEW been great and there’s been some excellent contracts let with purely Indigenous companies, who are tickled pink, and they are now getting supply chain agreements with perfumeries in Paris and it’s really very exciting to see that breakthrough where there’s some ownership and control of where the product’s going and so on. But then there’s others, and I perfectly understand, who have tried and failed trying to get the Indigenous involvement. It’s not easy; it’s not their fault. It’s a very, very difficult thing to achieve, but one of the things I’ve said throughout my political career is that on this particular issue you must never give up.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is the biodiversity act where this belongs? Were you happy to have it come under the umbrella of that act?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I am, I think. There were some that weren’t happy, because they said, “Oh, God, it’s in the clutches of the greenies”, and pastoralists have got an abiding hate of greenies. They did have. I think in more modern times there’s a much better understanding of the rangelands and the need for biodiversity, and after you’ve been there for generations you love it, you love the country, you understand it. I think one of the challenges and one of the reasons that the rangelands were so badly decimated in the early days, is that—like my grandfather, he just didn’t understand the capability of the land. He came out from England, for goodness sake, so he’s running the same stocking capacity as he would there, probably. It takes time to understand what the land can stand. But the thing about the Biodiversity Conservation Act is that it actually links into the federal biodiversity act as well, which means that you can not only manage the sandalwood—the plant—in the state, but we could then work with the federal government to check it going out through the ports. So prior to this, because we’re state government and sandalwood is a responsibility of the state government, we couldn’t get AQIS25 involved to say, “We want you, customs, to actually check for illegal sandalwood.” Whereas now, because the acts are entwined and there’s an agreement between the state and federal government, we’ve got a full tracking system. So you can’t send anything out through an Australian port now that hasn’t got proper certification to say it’s been legally harvested.

This fellow with the Department of Conservation and Land Management, Ian Keeley—I’ll name him because I’m very honoured to have actually been part of him getting an Order of Australia for his work in that particular area—feels that the illegal harvesting was almost two or three times more than what was legal. So just stopping illegal harvesting has made

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW a huge difference to the sandalwood industry, along with the fabulous work that he and his team were doing, and the Forest Products Commission, on regenerating, so planting seeds. They’re getting some great results, to the point where, if we can sort out pastoral industry legislation and diversification possibilities, you could even grow plantations of it out there now. It’s so exciting and something—when I think back on my disappointment with the pastoral industry, the sandalwood industry, warts and all, it’s not perfect, but hugely better than it was. To have sorted out some bikies along the way, yes, it gives me a bit of—puffs the chest out a bit [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: And so it should it’s a massive achievement. But I’m just wondering, when you did get those death threats, did you wonder whether it was worth pursuing? Did you ever consider just bailing out?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No. Am I stupid? I don’t know. But no, never. Actually, those sorts of things just make me try harder. A bit like being told by the minister, “Don’t go there, Wendy, this’ll be bigger than Ben-Hur”, made me all the more determined. At that stage I didn’t realise that there were bikies involved; it was only at a later stage. Some people had had some quite unpleasant experiences in challenging illegal harvesters on their properties, so we knew there were some nasty types there. I guess, too, you sort of depend on the system. Dignitary protection knew that I needed to be watched, and also you’ve got the emergency alarm buzzer in your office in Kalgoorlie. It was quite funny because at this time when this was all going on, I actually [chuckles] put my hands under my desk to pull my chair in and accidentally set off the buzzer. And I’m frantically trying to ring the police to say, “It’s all right, it’s a mistake” and they were at the door; they were in in less than five minutes. So they were watching me. And I’m going, “I’m sorry, it was an accident” [laughs]. So, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is that what that involves—the dignitary protection?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes—well, no, all electorate offices have the duress button, but I think in normal circumstances they would say, “Oh, the office button’s gone off. Well, we’ll give them five minutes and see if it was a mistake.” But at this particular time I had no time to ring them to say I’d pressed it by mistake; they were right there, three or four of them. So they were looking after me.

Ms Anne Yardley: So what else did it involve? What extra measures were taken to look after you? 170

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, gosh, I had to fill out a form in which I had to fully describe [chuckles] how I was and how they would identify me. Interestingly—you’d find this amusing—I told them that I’ve always got three silver bangles on, which you make me take off for these interviews [chuckles] because they rattle on the table. So you’d get the full details of who your next of kin is, where you live in Perth when you’re in Perth, so really just get all that detail—phone numbers. They probably then start watching all that; I always assumed that anyway. And a direct line. You’ve got the name of somebody. Ben Cousins [laughs] was his name.

Ms Anne Yardley: Another one [laughs].

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. So you’ve got a direct line to an officer who’s got your case there and knows what the risks are. I presume that they do a bit of due diligence behind the scenes. They don’t tell you what they’re doing, but they are just keeping an eye on what’s going on.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did you feel reassured by that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I did. I’ve always been a bit of a fatalist. I wasn’t really too worried about that. The only thing I’m not a fatalist about is going into the ocean [chuckles]. Being born and brought up on a station and not knowing how to swim anything over knee deep has always terrified me but other than that I’m pretty brave [laughs].

Ms Anne Yardley: Wendy, I’m interested in how difficult it was for the Nationals to sit in cabinet but without having a joint party room meeting, or a joint party room, which is what would have happened before under a coalition. There’s a couple of things to look at here— maybe the trading hours discussion and local government amalgamations. They are a couple examples of things where you had to negotiate your way through what’s probably new territory for both members of the alliance. How did you do it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it was difficult, and there were matters where our position was well and truly known by the public and by the Liberal Party. So they strayed there at their peril, and there were examples of that. But there’s other examples where some new issue would come up and perhaps our three cabinet members didn’t properly assess how their party room would respond. The agreement was that if the Nationals didn’t agree with something that was coming into cabinet, then they would absent themselves and then they 171

DUNCAN INTERVIEW were free to argue against whatever cabinet agreed. Of course that happened with the retail trading hours, and, in fact, the three ministers did absent themselves for the discussion of that. In previous years when we were in coalition there would be the individual party room meetings, then the joint party room meeting, then you’d go into Parliament. It was decided that we didn’t need joint party room meetings anymore because we were independent. The deal was that if there was new legislation coming into the house, then it was incumbent on the minister progressing that legislation to brief both party rooms, so the Liberals and the Nationals. That happened for a short period of time, but then of course with all the pressures and time—and growing disrespect, perhaps—that often didn’t happen, and that caused a great deal of disquiet in the National Party, in that a bill would be introduced into the house without our party room having had the opportunity to even see it.

At that point our leadership, Brendon, said to the Liberal Party, “Well, if you do that then we can’t be answerable to what happens in the house. You need to brief us.” Of course, I was Leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council. After May 2009, I was not on my own—there were five of us—and I was the first female Leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council. I really thought that that was just a cumbersome way to do things. So I talked to Norman Moore, who’s the Leader of the Liberals in the Legislative Council, and said, “Look, okay, we won’t have joint party room meetings, but perhaps I could come and sit in at the beginning of your party room meeting where you’re talking about what bills are coming into the house and any strategies or predicted outcomes, and then I’ll leave and go and report to my party room. You can talk tactics and we’ll talk tactics.” He agreed that that was a good idea. I said to my party room, “This is what I’m going to do with Norman Moore.” They said, “Oh, you won’t get on with that old bugger” sort of thing, pardon the French, but Norman and I got on very well. I mean, we had quite a lot of respect for each other, and in fact that system worked very well. So I would go and I’d sit in in the party room. I wouldn’t say much most of the time in the Liberal Party, unless I was asked. So just take a few notes and then I’d go and report to my colleagues about what was going to happen in that day’s Parliament, as determined by the Leader of the Legislative Council, and then we’d discuss our response to that, and then I would report back to Norman to say, “Yes, all okay” or, “No, we’ve got a problem with X or Y.” That worked really well, but the relationship became more and more fraught as time went on, particularly, I suppose, in the second four years, when we had additional members in the Nationals who perhaps were not as aligned to the Liberal Party side of politics and more aligned to the Nationals’ independent stance and wanting to really stamp that on everything we did.

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The local government amalgamations were something that came totally out of the blue and very quickly after we formed government. In fact, I think it was accidental. You might remember that John Castrilli addressed WALGA26 in early 2009 and made some comment about the need for amalgamations in local government and all hell broke loose. Of course, then local governments were really asking, “So what’s your plan? How’s it going to affect us? Where does it start?” I think the government was caught really flat-footed because that had been announced early—it was something that was pretty dear to Colin Barnett’s heart and he wanted it to happen—but they really didn’t know how they were going to do it.

Ms Anne Yardley: Had they not done their homework?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think they were in the process of their homework. Look, I can’t speak for the Liberal Party. What we found, of course, is that it came out of left field for us, too, in the Nationals, but we had a very clear policy—always have had—about no forced council amalgamations. We acknowledge the need for some amalgamations, but also acknowledge the incredible parochialism and dedication to little regional towns that you can’t overcome unless they agree to it. So we were very quick off the blocks to say, “We don’t agree.” Then, of course, the pressure fell onto Labor to say, “Well, do you?” Labor had been saying in the past that we must have council amalgamations and then all of a sudden they decided they didn’t need them after all, so it became a festering sore for the whole of that government. Every iteration that came up was rejected, and then back to the drawing board and out to a commission of inquiry, and then back, and then rejected and off to some review board of eminent persons, and back and rejected. The whole way through the Nationals were consistent, and I think it did us a lot of good. Probably why we did so well in that 2013 election is because we were consistent and we held our own.

At the same time, Max Trenorden had brought forward a plan for what he called “subsidiaries” of councils. Really what he was trying to do was to bring legislation in which allowed regional councils to actually form a separate autonomous corporation that would be able to manage matters that the subsets—the councils—had agreed they would do together. You see it often now with local governments, but it’s informal. One particular local government has to handle the money, but they, for instance, will share an engineer or share their environmental health officer or do some regional planning for roads or sewerage or waste management together. This bill of Max Trenorden’s was actually a very

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW good bill and it was supported by the WA Local Government Association. I spent a lot of my time as Leader of the Nationals and parliamentary secretary to Brendon trying to get this bill into the house with both Max and Norman Moore becoming more and more difficult to get on with. It was very sad, really, because if they had actually both pulled their heads in, instead of wanting to get the upper hand, we probably would have got that legislation through, which would have taken a whole heap of heat out of that debate. The legislation did eventually pass in the second term—the second four years—but by that time Max wasn’t in Parliament. He left very sad and disillusioned. I’m disappointed that Max didn’t get the credit he deserved for that legislation.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is there a difference between local governments in regional and rural WA and metropolitan? Were you, as Nationals, perhaps speaking for a lot of people in the city areas as well who didn’t want council amalgamations?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think we were. It all comes down to parochialism. You look at what happened in places like South Perth and Victoria Park, where there was incredible toing and froing, and angst about a proposal to amalgamate there. Look what happened when, eventually, they decided to expand the City of Perth and the mess that happened there with Nedlands and Dalkeith and Shenton Park. There’s just got to be a better way. There’s no doubt that 139 CEOs on salaries well in excess of $100 000 is extravagance in the extreme. I often remember—I don’t know if you remember—when we were at school and we were learning, for some unknown reason, British history and how back in goodness knows when, Oliver Cromwell’s time maybe, they were getting rid of pocket boroughs and rotten boroughs and this borough and that borough, and, of course, it’s a very similar situation now. Like Menzies, where my father was a councillor for 40 years, has only got a few hundred ratepayers, but, the thing is, it’s got hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of land to manage. This is the dilemma for government, because if you’re going to amalgamate councils—and Menzies has got this dilemma because Tjuntjuntjara, the Aboriginal community, is in the Shire of Menzies and is way out near the South Australian border. To be able to hold a council meeting, particularly as communications technology is not crash-hot, they had to hire a small plane every time there was a council meeting, which cost $26 000, and yet they were also very determined to make sure they had representatives from out in the Aboriginal community of Tjuntjuntjara. But in the end none of them stood anymore, because it was just all too hard. How we overcome that dilemma of representing these vast areas—the human and financial cost of trying to get people around a table—is something that I don’t know how you fix, except, perhaps, through these regional subsidiaries. 174

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Ms Anne Yardley: Has that ever gone anywhere—through WALGA, for example?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, I think it is happening by osmosis, really. The legislation passed towards the end of the last government, so we really haven’t seen it manifest itself, but you are seeing councils like Kalgoorlie–Boulder, for instance, providing services out to Coolgardie and up to Menzies and down to Norseman. I think that is really how it should work, but you still can’t deny that local representation. In fact, I remember [chuckles] when they amalgamated the Shire of Boulder with the City of Kalgoorlie—which is now called Kalgoorlie–Boulder because nobody would agree to either of those names being dropped—Boulder was the hinterland, so it included all the pastoral areas and Boulder, and Kalgoorlie was just the city. Well, when those two were amalgamated—and there’s no wards, no electorates within it—there’s actually no councillors on the City of Kalgoorlie– Boulder from outside of the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder and yet they’re representing the pastoral industry that my brother is in. The people on the Nullarbor Plain and the Aboriginal communities out there that are desperate for their roads to be upgraded and so on are really struggling to get a voice. In fact, a classic example is that in the Murchison, where there’s lots of little shires, most of whom have pastoralists as councillors, and Aboriginal people, they’re putting money in for wild dog exclusion fences, but you can’t even get it on the agenda of the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder, even though it’s got a vast pastoral land decimated first in Western Australia by wild dogs, but just not a priority because there’s 33 000 people who live in the town.

Ms Anne Yardley: That’s a very good example, isn’t it? Another one that tested the alliance a little bit: trading hours.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh gosh, yes. Trading hours is a hardy annual. It’s interesting with the Nationals because our main objection to the extension of trading hours is to do with the dominance of Coles and Woolworths. The thing is, if you extend trading hours, particularly in regional areas, Coles and Woolworths move in and all the little shops can’t compete, and they all close and the town then really loses its character. I always said that if we could get antitrust laws similar to what’s in the US, where no corporation can have more than whatever it is, 30 or 40 per cent of the market, I think the Nats wouldn’t be against retail trading hours being expanded. It’s a very, very interesting debate, and particularly when you look at the Labor Party, for instance, who have got this dilemma of one part of the party saying, “Yes, we want extended trading hours for business and for families and so on” and then you’ve got the shoppies who are saying, “Well, our people 175

DUNCAN INTERVIEW don’t want to work on Sunday and we don’t want extended trading hours.” So it is an issue that I think will be resolved over time by attrition, and that’s exactly the strategy that Colin Barnett hit on in the end. In fact, I found an article the other day which had the perfect headline, which was something to the effect that—I’ll just find it; where is it?—“Nats outfoxed by Barnett on trading hours”. And that’s exactly what happened, because he knew that there was no point bringing legislation to cabinet to change retail trading hours, because the Nats would walk out. We had the balance of power in both houses and we wouldn’t allow it to come in to the house. So he and Troy Buswell and —I think Christian was around at the time still—very cleverly decided that instead they would use regulations which expanded the special tourism precincts of the City of Perth and Hillarys and so on, because they had exceptions in their trading hours. So he has achieved his goal, really, and the issue’s just going to, I think, slowly go away.

The interesting thing is, and I read some debate from Parliament, that there are a lot of regional towns that have unregulated trading hours because they’re tourism precincts or because they’re mining precincts. In places like, Newman or Karratha, or somewhere, the Woolies is open 24 hours. So for the regions to claim that they don’t want extended trading hours is a bit of a furphy, really.

The other side of the argument is the fact that—and I think this goes back to our agricultural roots—we don’t like to see our farmers screwed by the likes of Coles and Woolworths. If they get that market power, then they can really make our farmers hurt, and we’ve seen that. The beautiful thing is now with social media and that news cycle there’s some really lovely examples of the community coming to the rescue of the small producer. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the story of Spring Gully in South Australia that makes the pickled cucumbers and so on. One of the big retailers decided they wouldn’t give them space on their shelf anymore and there was uproar. In the end, Spring Gully’s everywhere you can find it. Coles and Woolworths backed off.

Ms Anne Yardley: Probably a good place to leave it for now.

[End of Wendy Duncan_9]

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WendyD10

Ms Anne Yardley: This is another interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Tuesday, 23 January 2018, and we’re meeting at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms. The interview is for the parliamentary history project, and I’m Anne Yardley.

Wendy, let’s start with an issue that you describe as critically important in relation to preselection divisions prior to the 2013 election, and that’s to do with the grain rail transport. What was that about and why did it matter?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: There was a report brought out in, I think, 2010, which was a review of what was called the strategic grain networks. In that review, which was signed off by the WA Farmers Federation and CBH and Brookfield Rail, they basically said that what they called the third tier rail—so the less used, narrow gauge railway lines—should be closed, they’re no longer viable to be operated. This caused a great deal of consternation out in the eastern wheatbelt, around Narembeen and Bruce Rock and so on. There was a real pressure on Brendon Grylls to ignore that report and put royalties for regions money into upgrading those railway lines, but, of course, Brendon was a key member of the cabinet. In fact, I was reading something just yesterday, dated in 2011, which was already predicting that the GST was going to drop to 33c in 2015–16, so the government knew that they had to watch their money. Brendon took the stand of saying, “Well, we can’t spend taxpayers’ money on railway lines that CBH have basically said they no longer see as viable to use.” That just caused a whole heap of grief within the National Party; and, in fact, they found a quote from Brendon in 2008 where he said that royalties for regions money should be used to keep the grain rail up to scratch. But throughout that whole period of the debate, every state council meeting of the Nationals just was acrimonious in spite of the fact of a huge amount of money being directed into the wheatbelt and into the heartland of the Nationals through the half-a-billion dollar Southern Inland Health Initiative; through the Country Age Pension Fuel Card; through the Country Local Government Fund, which was fixing up all the local government infrastructure; and, a promise of $300 million into agriculture and improving innovation and expansion and development of agriculture as an election promise coming up to 2013. None of that put this grain rail thing to bed.

Ms Anne Yardley: How was it resolved? Was it resolved?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it wasn’t really. I guess the issue was deferred inasmuch as Troy Buswell agreed to fund the rail lines for an extra 12 months and then we committed royalties for regions money into upgrading wheatbelt roads. But in the meantime what happened is that longstanding key members of the Nationals in our heartland and longstanding friends of Brendon Grylls actually then took a stand against him. They had the Wheatbelt Rail Retention Alliance that all the local governments joined. It was chaired by Bill Cowan, who was Hendy Cowan’s brother and branch president of Narembeen forever—names that had been around in the Nationals forever, like Parsons and Fuchsbichler and Cowan, all lined up against Brendon Grylls and the Nationals in that eastern wheatbelt.

Of course, another side of this issue was that Max Trenorden and Phil Gardiner, who were working very closely with the wheatbelt people not only on this, but also on another issue that Brendon refused to commit royalties for regions funding to—that is, multi-peril crop insurance. The fact that he wouldn’t fund that made Max Trenorden and Phil Gardiner increasingly disgruntled. But behind all that, if we go back to the deal that was done in 2008 where Max stood for the number one seat in the Agricultural Region so Brendon could stand in Central Wheatbelt, at that time Max gave a commitment to say that he would only do two years and then he would step down to allow the next one on the list, who was Martin Aldridge, to come into Parliament and therefore have the wherewithal to campaign for what we thought he was going to do, which was to stand for the seat of Moore.

It’s a very similar strategy to what was used with me when Murray Criddle stood down, because I had a few months as a member of Parliament to use those resources and so on to campaign for—what I eventually stood for was Mining and Pastoral. What happened was that Max reneged on that deal and decided he would still continue to stand for preselection. But, of course, Marty Aldridge and the Young Nats and his cohort of supporters weren’t going to allow that to happen, so without Max being given the heads- up, which I think was very unfortunate, state council didn’t preselect him in the number one position when it came to the Ag Region. Max, I think quite rightly, took umbrage and pulled out altogether and said he didn’t want to stand at all. Phil Gardiner was very upset about how Max was treated, so he who had been preselected—Max was preselected as number two and Phil as number three. Both pulled out of the Ag Region ticket, moving Paul Brown up to number two, much to his amazement and everyone else’s, and leaving Max and Phil, really, on the outer and licking their wounds. So when this whole grain rail thing blew up, Max Trenorden and Phil Gardiner decided to take on that issue and set up their own

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW independent party to stand against the Nationals in the Central Wheatbelt. It caused a whole heap of division.

I think that whole grain rail thing and the fact that some of Brendon’s close friends and strong supporters turned against him is probably one of the reasons that he decided to move from Central Wheatbelt and stand in the Pilbara. Obviously, we both were keen on a strategy to expand our bridge that we established with my position in Mining and Pastoral into lower house seats in the Mining and Pastoral Region—so him standing in Pilbara and me standing in Kalgoorlie was part of that strategy. But in many ways, I think, Brendon was quite happy to just get out of the wheatbelt, where he really felt that he’d done everything he thought was of high priority for them: health, local government, infrastructure, aged pensioners—really, I think, had delivered everything he’d promised. To be treated so badly, and the disrespect and acrimony in state council every time it met would wear anybody down. Brendon’s tough, but I think it was probably part of the reason why he decided to move out of that seat. It was the only way to defuse the issue, really, because Mia Davies, a fresh face, related to Dexter, who’d been around forever and federal [vice] president, sort of a real heartland National—probably helped to defuse that issue even though she did suffer a 10 per cent swing against her in that seat but was never going to lose it.

Ms Anne Yardley: What about you, then? Let’s tease out the strategy to move you into a lower house seat, the seat of Kalgoorlie.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: In many ways I was very comfortable and very happy in the Mining and Pastoral Region; in fact, it was probably the happiest times I had as a member of Parliament. I adored it. I loved getting out into the red-dirt country. I love the Kimberley. I love the Pilbara. I would have quite happily stayed there, but John Bowler indicated to us fairly early on, even though it was not public knowledge, that he was going to retire and that he would back a suitable Nationals candidate in Kalgoorlie and he thought we could win it. Then months ensued where various candidates were presented to John Bowler saying, “What about X? What about Y?” Brendon and I went to Kalgoorlie on several occasions and approached people saying, “Will you stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie?” and they’d say, “Oh, no.” So we couldn’t really get anyone over the line who (a) wanted to do it, (b) could win and (c) met John Bowler’s approval.

Time was marching on and two people had expressed an interest and who’d stood for the Nats before. One was Dave Grills, who was a police officer from Leonora and by that time 179

DUNCAN INTERVIEW had risen to the position of vice-president of the party. Another was Gary Brown, who worked for Tony Crook as the federal member and a local government councillor and really well known in Kalgoorlie as well. Both of them had expressed an interest in the seat, but John Bowler had really said that he thought that they probably couldn’t win it against a good—we knew the Liberals were going to be the big issue. So in a moment of absolute madness I went to Brendon Grylls and said, “What if I stand in Kalgoorlie?” and then just left that hanging—I was sort of almost passing in a corridor—because we knew it was winnable with the right candidate.

I think I’ve told this story before on our tapes, but it was probably the next evening I walked into the parliamentary dining room and there sitting at the table was John Bowler, Brendon Grylls, Colin Holt, who was then the party president, and Jacqui Boydell. They called me over. I sat down and they said, “Well, we want you to stand for Kalgoorlie.” I thought, “Oh dear, what have I done?”, because I really, as I said, loved my job. I said, “I’d better check with the husband—the other half.” One thing about Ian is that he’s backed me every inch of the way. He probably should have said no then, but—so it was 24 hours and I came back to them and said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” Once the news was out, both Dave Grills and Gary Brown stepped aside and said, “We won’t contest the preselection.” So I went into the preselection unopposed and with John Bowler’s backing.

I’ve just been reading through some newspaper clippings about that. The media in Kalgoorlie were very excited about that, because I am local born and bred, and although I had lived in Esperance for 27 years, believe it or not, I still had strong family connections to the goldfields and had still, as member for Mining and Pastoral, taken a very strong interest in the goldfields and the Ngaanyatjarra lands, never really with the intention of standing for the seat of Kalgoorlie, but just feeling that with all the focus that royalties for regions was giving to the Pilbara and to the Kimberley. I was quite concerned that the goldfields was going to miss out because I could see the Nationals focus starting to swing towards the south west, towards Colin Holt and Terry Redman’s part of the world, and I thought this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the goldfields. When Brendon Grylls and I first thought up royalties for regions, we thought we would get only four years. The fact that we got eight was a miracle. A lot of the rollout of royalties for regions was really very dependent on how efficient the various development commissions were. The Goldfields–Esperance Development Commission really weren’t coming up with the goods in a timely manner to be able to commit funding to projects that had good strong business cases behind them. I was concerned that the goldfields was going to miss out, so that’s

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW why I’d given that focus. They all knew me pretty well and were a bit excited about me standing for the seat.

Ms Anne Yardley: What were the issues then, apart from royalties for regions, for that community?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was really about infrastructure. It was sealing the road through to the north, to the Pilbara, which I got a funding commitment for but it got reneged on with the change of government, so that broke my heart; things like getting the Laverton Hospital and Laverton infrastructure up to scratch; getting some of the key infrastructure up to scratch in Kalgoorlie–Boulder, like the sporting facilities, the Ray Finlayson Sporting Complex; getting funding for the arts centre, for Great Eastern Highway—this is THE lifeline into Western Australia from the eastern states and yet there were no passing lanes, or very few, between Kalgoorlie and Southern Cross and a lot of car accidents on that road—issues with the high school, which was really in dire need of an upgrade. So, those sorts of things were, I guess, my priorities. Also, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation service in Kalgoorlie and mental health facilities—Kalgoorlie hospital is the only regional hospital that had an acute mental health unit and no step up, step down facility associated with it. I got funding for that and then the government reneged on it as well towards the end, so that was a disappointment.

I was pretty clear on what we needed to fight for, but I was also very, very aware that it was not going to be a lay down misère. Kalgoorlie is an interesting seat and—Brendon actually commented on this—they love their politics. You hold a political event there and 100 people will turn up; you hold one in the wheatbelt and 12 will turn up. They love their politics and they vote for the person not the party. They love independents and they love someone who is feisty and who will get stuck into anyone who comes to town. I had to be that person even though I was a girl. I knew I could do it, because I come from pretty tough stock.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was it a different experience campaigning for a lower house seat and campaigning in that area?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. Campaigning for an upper house seat is all about the party and its recognition, and all about supporting your lower house candidate. Unless your lower house candidate gets good results, the vote doesn’t flow on to the upper house, so my main campaign in 2008 was (a) to support the lower house candidates and (b) to 181

DUNCAN INTERVIEW remind people: don’t forget to vote in the upper house the same way you did in the lower house. I think I mentioned the fact that in 2008, we got 101 per cent vote transfer in Mining and Pastoral from the lower to the upper house. That was really about my work, saying: support your lower house candidate but make sure if you want the balance of power in both houses, you have to do the job in both houses. So it was a totally different campaign. With a lower house campaign, especially in the seat of Kalgoorlie, it is really quite—what’s the word—discombobulating; it makes you feel quite uncomfortable because it is all about the individual. People are looking at you: it’s about who you are, about what you’ve achieved, about what your own personal views are. It’s very personal and it takes some getting used to, because having been party president and then campaigning more on whole-of-party issues, going to stand for a lower house seat was a very different experience.

Ms Anne Yardley: Going into that election you had Tony Crook, of course, who’d moved into the federal arena, how did that affect you—the party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It’s interesting, because I worked very closely to help Tony win that seat; but, in fact, as I mentioned before, we didn’t think he was going to. It was all about him improving his name recognition, ready to stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie. That was the strategy. If it hadn’t been for him, I guess, not winning in 2008 against John Bowler and then winning federally, I wouldn’t have had to stand in Kalgoorlie. But Tony’s time in Canberra also put quite a lot of strain on the party, particularly on Brendon Grylls, because he went into a situation where he was trying to prosecute the Western Australian Nationals’ independence stance. He went into that Parliament, which was a hung Parliament—Julia Gillard’s Parliament, so she was working with Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor, Bob Katter, Adam Bandt and Tony Crook to try to get things through the house. Tony went across to Canberra and sat on the crossbench even though he is a member of the Nationals and the Nationals were in coalition with the Liberals in opposition. That caused a great deal of consternation federally and also in conservative parts of the federal seat of O’Connor. Although Tony always did what he said he was going to do—that is, be independent and stand-alone—the Liberals were horrified and they preselected Rick Wilson to stand against Tony at the next election, which was also due in 2013, pretty well straight after the previous election in 2010. Rick Wilson was out there as the preselected Liberal candidate the whole time that Tony was the member. Brendon was involved very closely in a lot of Tony’s negotiations federally, and Brendon and Barnaby Joyce fell out over some of that stuff. When you think of the fact that he had that on this plate, with the federal side of things; he had the whole wheatbelt grain rail thing happening; and, also, as the 182

DUNCAN INTERVIEW government was staring down this financial debacle of the GST, which they could see coming, Brendon had $1 billion a year to spend in royalties for regions, and so he was the only minister that anyone wanted to speak to in the Western Australian government because he was the only one who had any money. I remember when I was his parliamentary secretary that he came in one day just absolutely exhausted and discovered that his wife’s birthday, six months away, had been committed to something that he really had to be at. You could see that it was just all getting too much for him. He was just never home and at the same time, of course, he was having his family. He had his first child just before the 2008 election and two more little boys, some of whom had a very similar personality to Brendon’s. I would imagine Brendon was a very difficult child because he was just very focused, very charismatic, very single-minded, and he had some children like that and a wife who’s a corporate lawyer and wanting to get on with her career, so the pressures on him are just totally understandable. I can see why in the end he decided he needed some time out.

Ms Anne Yardley: There was criticism of royalties for regions in any case, wasn’t there? Mark McGowan called it pork-barrelling.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Did this have any traction in the community? How did it affect you and how did you respond to that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, we loved it. Every time anyone in the city got stuck into royalties for regions, and Geoff Hutchison started talking about it on ABC radio and the regionals were all in before 10 o’clock in the morning, there would be a flood of calls saying, “Don’t you dare touch royalties for regions. It’s the first time in decades that anybody’s done anything for us. It’s not pork-barrelling; it’s just filling the gaps that you guys have left for decades.” The other interesting thing is he called it pork-barrelling when, in fact, the most we were spending was in Labor seats in the Kimberley and in the Pilbara. Sure it was the regions, but it wasn’t necessarily Nationals seats. The way Brendon set it up—and I think it was the only way to make it really effective, but it did cause some difficulty—was that he established what he called the “Kimberley revitalisation fund” and a big wad of attention would go that way, and the Pilbara Cities, so each region really took their turn. The ones that weren’t in the first tranche were saying, “What about us? You’re spending all your money in the Kimberley or in the Pilbara.” In fact, I remember David Templeman standing up in Parliament and railing against the fact that the Peel region, 183

DUNCAN INTERVIEW even though it was a region under the classification of having a regional development commission, was getting very little of the royalties for regions money, but it was more about where the greatest need was according to what we’d heard back from our campaigning.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? I often think about this, that every time the Nationals federally and in the state successfully achieve funding directed into the regions, it’s called pork- barrelling. But look at this pool that’s just been opened in Scarborough, less than 500 metres from the beach, for goodness sake. Is that pork-barrelling? I haven’t heard anyone say that’s pork-barrelling and yet it was organised at the time when the Deputy Premier—it’s her seat. Nobody’s accused them of pork-barrelling and yet I think a swimming pool would be far better used out in the areas where we have a high degree of ear disease and lack of amenity in regional areas. It’s a cheap shot, really, but it never hit the mark because we just had the regions come back in spades and say, “Hands off!”

Ms Anne Yardley: In your book Blood Nose Politics there’s a note about your preparations for going into the election in March 2013, that one of the things was to strengthen your influence in any future Barnett government. What were the plans to do that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh!

Ms Anne Yardley: I’ve put you on the spot there, haven’t I?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, you have. I’m just trying to recall—my own personal interest or the Nationals’ interest?

Ms Anne Yardley: The Nationals’ interest.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Okay. The sort of agreement between the Liberals and the Nationals always has been, federally and in the state, is that you’re allocated a number of ministries according to the number of members of Parliament that you have. I’m sure that’s what I was referring to. Obviously, the more members of Parliament we could successfully get into the Western Australian Parliament, particularly in the Legislative Assembly, the more ministers we would be entitled to in our negotiations with the Liberals—ministers and parliamentary secretaries and other positions, like Grant Woodhams as Speaker and obviously, subsequently, Deputy Speaker. One of the things that we said back when we first talked about being independent from the Liberals was that we wouldn’t ask for Deputy 184

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Premier. We were quite committed to that position, much to the chagrin of the likes of Hendy Cowan and so on, but I think that that position is now probably there for all time, that unless we go back into a formal coalition agreement like they have federally, we probably will never have Deputy Premier again. It’s no loss really, I don’t think, because we’re more focused on delivering to regional areas. So that was that focus; we really needed to continue expanding our footprint.

We knew royalties for regions would be gone the minute we lost the balance of power— we knew that. Both Labor and Liberal hated it. In fact, I am probably jumping ahead a bit now, but we might as well cover it. When you think about the fact that we went into that election committing $300 million to agriculture in the advancing agriculture fund, following the election, Colin Barnett put a Liberal into the minster for agriculture’s position—of course, then they had the $300 million to spend even though it had to go through the Minister for Regional Development. It was because there were many Liberals, especially regional Liberals, just saying, “Look, these Nationals are just turning up at every plaque unveiling, every ribbon cutting. This is our government. We’re the majority in this government, and in the regions the Nats are getting all the credit, and we need some way to actually be part of getting the credit for the work that’s happening in regional Western Australia.” So that was one of the reasons, I think, that Colin Barnett did that.

Ms Anne Yardley: Going into the alliance and you said, “No, we don’t want the Deputy Premiership”, were there any guarantees, any trading, as to which ministries the Nationals would get?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: When we went into our first negotiations in 2008, we said we want 25 per cent of the royalties and the Minister for Regional Development. In 2012–13, I wasn’t party to those negotiations, but I suspect it was probably the same line, because we got the Minister for Regional Development but I think it was really up to Colin where the other ministries were allocated. We’ll probably discuss that a bit more, later.

Ms Anne Yardley: I think we probably will. Now, one of the things—in the end it didn’t happen—was about Graham Jacobs in Eyre, there was a thought for a while there that you would stand against him. What was the thinking behind that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, there was a very strong current of thought that I would stand against Graham. In fact, the Liberals were taking every opportunity to make sure I didn’t get opportunities in the media and so on in that part of the world because of that fear that 185

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I would stand against Graham. I remember at one stage, when Graham was still a minister actually, I was talking to his chief of staff at some event, which was quite late in the evening, and a fair bit of alcohol had passed people’s lips—not mine; one of the things I decided in politics was that I wasn’t ever going to find myself in that situation. But his chief of staff said to me, “Are you going to stand against Graham Jacobs?” and I said, “No, I’m not, and I never will.” I said to him, “I wouldn’t do it to the people of Esperance.” I’m a person of my word, but the reason I didn’t stand against Graham—and I could’ve won that seat. I would’ve won that seat because the seat of Eyre had a substantial chunk of Boulder and the goldfields in it, where I was well-known—Esperance where I had been around and got funding for their full share on the hospital and the residential college, and things that everybody knew that I had a hand in and didn’t flow to Esperance until I was their upper house member. Also, of course, the electorate extended into places where I had been the previous member of Parliament’s electorate officer and they all knew me well. I wasn’t going to stand there, (a) because I wasn’t that comfortable with representing agricultural regions anyway. I was a pastoralist at heart and very familiar with the mining industry. Anything to do with farming, I did my best, but I really didn’t ever have my head around it, which is why, in fact, I was happy to move from the seat of Agricultural Region to Mining and Pastoral, because I really am not a farmer. I don’t understand how they tick, really. But the other thing, which made life awkward, is that my sister-in-law was working for Graham Jacobs as his electorate officer in Boulder—my brother is on a pastoral property north east of Kalgoorlie—and quite active in the Liberal Party. I felt that I didn’t really want to cause family tensions. Those three reasons were why I really decided not to stand; but, most importantly, the people of Esperance loved Graham Jacobs and they also were pretty happy with me and the work I’d done for them, and I just didn’t want to put them through having to put 1 and 2 against our names, really, which is probably a bit soft of me, but anyway that was the decision.

Ms Anne Yardley: Strategically it worked too, because with that election in March 2013, there was a swing towards you in the seat of Kalgoorlie, when you did win.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I did.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did you feel about that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I was amazed and I was exhausted. I don’t think people realised how hard I worked to win that seat, because, as I said to you before, the people of Kalgoorlie go for personality politics. The Liberals eventually preselected someone who 186

DUNCAN INTERVIEW had very similar credentials to me—that was Melissa Price, who was born in Kalgoorlie, educated in Kalgoorlie, had worked in the mining industry and had very strong links in the Kalgoorlie–Boulder community. In fact, her own grandfather had been a member for Kalgoorlie. My own political party all thought, “Don’t worry, Wendy will win that seat.” I knew I was really up against it.

I think, in many ways, that was the beginning of, sort of, the drifting away of my contact with Brendon and my parliamentary colleagues, because throughout 2012, which is the period—I was preselected in May 2012—I really moved to Kalgoorlie at that point and just turned up at everything and spent a lot of time getting to know individuals, not only the mayors and the presidents of local government and the chamber of commerce and so on, but everybody. Like, I went on the Laverton history walk so I could actually meet all the people. I turned up at everything. I remember going to events and walking around an oval where there was a game on and talking to individual people—something that a lot of people when they are campaigning don’t do. I didn’t doorknock because in a mining town where people work very long shifts and often night shifts and where they have very big and scary dogs, I didn’t doorknock. Kyran O’Donnell says that he won his election against Tony Crook because he did doorknock, and he probably did, but he is an ex-police officer and he’s brave—who he might meet at some of those doors in Kalgoorlie–Boulder and their big dogs.

But I effectively doorknocked because I went to every event. I didn’t just stand up at the podium and make a speech and talk to the shire president; I moved through the crowd and spoke to everybody and listened to what their stories were and articulated it back to them through the media. The other thing, of course, is that I had John Bowler on my side and, whoa, did I learn something about campaigning, and that was straight out of the Labor instruction book. So I had an incredibly eclectic campaign team, which ranged from ex- Liberals through to ex-Labors through to people who supported John Bowler when he was an independent and a smattering of Nationals who were wide-eyed and learning very fast about how to campaign. Really, John Bowler, he was my campaign chairman, and in some ways it proved a problem towards the end, but he really set up the campaign team and the campaign strategy really well. But also, I’m a bit OCD about when I’ve got a team together in making sure—I did it when I was state president of the Nationals—that everybody felt they were part of the action and that they had a job to do. So I set up this group on my mobile phone where I could send a text message to everybody and just say, “Okay, John Day is coming to town to talk about X and he’s going to be at the arts centre at one o’clock, everybody get your T-shirts on.” We had these bright lime green T-shirts, 187

DUNCAN INTERVIEW which were not party paraphernalia, and so I got a bit of a smack on the hand from head office. But we had these bright lime green T-shirts and everyone had to wear khaki pants— we were practically in a uniform—and on the back it had “Duncan’s me mate”, which only my generation understood, I discovered later. But we turned up at everything. Much to the chagrin of people like Melissa Price and John Day and the Premier—anyone who turned up in town—my guys were all there in spades gate crashing the photos and demanding time with the media and so on. It was fun.

There was no agro, and Melissa Price said that. I saw that in one of the media analyses during the campaign. She said, “It’s going to be clean. It’s going to be respectful”, and it was. But it was also cheeky. I had this old Subaru station wagon, which we called the trainer wheels—every one of our kids learnt to drive in it—and we got it covered in my face, top and bottom. Part of my team would just go and park it somewhere different in Kalgoorlie–Boulder every day, for over a year. Especially if someone else’s political vehicle was parked, they would go and park next door to it so that it wasn’t as visible, or get the best position at the Kalgoorlie races. Really, quite, I guess, silly stuff, but it all just shows how dinkum you are—you know, how committed you are.

I remember we were going to every Boulder markets and every Kalgoorlie market day. We had a little stall and my team would all be there in their T-shirts. I remember we had a commitment to turn up at the spring festival in Kalgoorlie. I drove up from Esperance and I said to my team, “Righto, where’s our stall? Where’s our table?” And they go, “Oh.” I said, “Who’s on the roster?” and they said, “Gee; actually, we haven’t done anything about that.” I called them all together and I said, “Okay, I’m standing for the seat of Kalgoorlie for you, not for me. If I’m going to be working my butt off, I expect you also. If you’re committed to seeing the Nationals win this seat and me win this seat, don’t think I’m going to do it without you. So if we say we’re going to turn up to something, I expect you to turn up.” They often quote the fact that I went up one side of them and down the other. In fact, Mia Davies, when she made a little speech just last year down in Esperance, thanking me for my time as state president and as a member, basically indicated that you didn’t dare get on the wrong side of Wendy Duncan. It was all over. I don’t bear grudges, but I do expect that if you commit to a team, then you actually fulfil your commitment. But they all loved to be part of the team because they were fully informed of where I was, what I was doing. I’d put a text message out saying, “Driving to Laverton tomorrow. Bit tired. I don’t want to do it by myself. Who’s going to come with me?” and someone would put their hand up. So I was so blessed; I had a brilliant team.

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Ms Anne Yardley: No wonder you got over the line. I bet they found a table and chairs for you [laughter] very quickly!

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely, they did. And it never happened again. Everything we committed to be at, they were there. I remember the night before the election, we were exhausted—I was exhausted. By that time I was having chest pains, actually, and I ended up in hospital not long after, but we were absolutely wrung-out. We decided the night before the election we’d do one last pub crawl. I wanted the whole team in their T-shirts and we were going to start at the top of Hannan Street and work our way right the way down to the bottom and go into every pub. They were all there, and yet they were all up at midnight, putting all the decorations on the—our team were the first in every polling booth to get all their livery and placards and posters up. Funny thing was, one of the things John Bowler suggested was to have a life-size photo of myself at every polling booth. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I just can’t cope with that!” It just wasn’t me, to see a photo of myself, full size. I argued long and hard against it and they eventually wore me down. The photo was taken by Lynn Webb and it’s one of the nicest photos of me—thank goodness— that I have ever seen. There I was with this cheeky grin on my face and one hand on my hip—full length—at all the polling booths, and the opposition hated it. They’d sort of stand themselves in front of them and everything, but it was very effective.

But the interesting thing is—I’ve got to tell you about this—at the polling booths, I had every one of my polling booths fully manned, with a full age group of people, so a lot of young people supported my campaign. Of course, I’ve got four kids, three of whom were there with their partners as well, so I had a lot of young people on my polling booths. John Bowler’s got four kids. The other big issue for the goldfields was a shortage of doctors—a huge issue—really needed over 40 doctors and they were down to 23. One of the things that came up during the campaign was this shortage of doctors. Kim Hames flew to town and stood beside Melissa Price and promised a drag strip for the speedway mob, and said nothing about this shortage of doctors. I really jumped on this, and we were talking about doctors, not drag strips. In fact, my husband, cheeky sausage, set up a Facebook page called “Doctors not drag strips”. But on the day of the election, they had all these young ladies in very short shorts, frayed denim shorts, and very revealing tops, handing out how- to-vote cards that just had black and white chequered livery on them, no party political indication at all, saying, “If you want a drag strip, vote for Melissa Price.” We were aghast at this, and probably if it was the Nationals doing that, everyone would have complained, but we don’t complain to the Electoral Commission. Labor had paid students from the WA School of Mines to hand out their how-to-vote cards. So there they were, and people were 189

DUNCAN INTERVIEW going up to these young girls with their plunging necklines and saying, “So what do the Liberals stand for?”—starting to quiz them on policy. They’re just saying, “Oh no, we’re just supporting a drag strip.” But it was very effective campaigning, and on the day the Liberals had got some of the transport companies onside and they had cranes with banners on them, and trucks, and flashing—you know those signs that they have on the roads, the lit signs, flashing, saying, “Melissa Price”. So I was—getting back to your question, which was a very long time ago—not confident at all. I knew it was going to be very, very close.

Ms Anne Yardley: What were your expectations, after that election?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I suppose one thing that was in my favour—and this is also thanks to John Bowler—is that in spite of a different decision in other parts of the state, the Labor Party preferenced me in Kalgoorlie, and that in the end was why I won the seat. But what happened, it was tragic, really. What happened is on the day of the election, Melissa Price’s 19-year-old daughter was suffering from a headache. We’d all been standing out in the sun—it was March, stinking hot. They just thought it was sunstroke. Thank goodness my sister-in-law, who was in the Liberal tent, got news very early that in fact it was a brain aneurysm or something, and Melissa Price’s daughter was flown to Perth the next day, the day after the election, and subsequently passed away within a few days. I was so grateful that I knew that because my team, a couple of them, came out saying, “We’re going to win. Up you!”, basically. I just sent a message out to all of them: I want no comment about the election; I can’t tell you why now, but you need to all just hold your exuberance until we know what the outcome is.

Even though I didn’t win on primaries, our booths were reporting to us that I was getting a very strong flow of preferences, so we were pretty confident that I was going to win. The media were contacting me saying, “So, Wendy, are you going to claim victory?” and I’m going, “No comment. I don’t want to comment about this election at the moment”, because I knew that the minute I did, they would go to Melissa for her comment and I knew she was going through hell. In the end, once I knew the news had started to trickle out, I said to Sam Tomlin, who I’ve a huge amount of respect for—a journalist with the Kalgoorlie Miner and subsequently with the ABC—“Look, the reason I’m not commenting is because of the tragedy that has happened in Melissa Price’s family.” I said, “I will claim victory when the Electoral Commission does its final declaration of the polls and I’m not making any comment until then.” It’s very interesting because there really was never—a lot of people came to me afterwards and said, “Did you win?” There was never really an 190

DUNCAN INTERVIEW acknowledgment in the media of the fact that I won that seat and it was because of that tragic occurrence. It’s interesting because Melissa subsequently won the seat of Durack, of course, but she and I always give each other a hug in the airport when we see each [other]. We have a huge amount of respect for each other. It was a great campaign and I think she was very grateful with how it all panned out after the actual day.

Ms Anne Yardley: So there you are now, an MLA. What happened with cabinet positions after the election?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, just before the election Brendon had been talking to me about the possibility of a cabinet position and basically telling me to get myself ready for that thought. There was some discussion that Tuck Waldron would retire from the ministry and just continue that final term as the member for Wagin. There was an unfortunate incident just a week before the election where there was an article published. It was actually a full-page advertisement published in the Kalgoorlie Miner, which went into far too much detail about how the royalties for regions strategy came about and the input from Kalgoorlie, but I guess more to the point the negotiations that happened around the time of formation of government and the decision of whether or not to go with Liberal and Labor, sort of quoting Brendon Grylls and some of the discussions he’d had with John Bowler over the formation of government; information that John Bowler had given to the person who wrote the article, not me.

Ms Anne Yardley: But it also quotes you, this article.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It does quote me; it does quote me about how royalties for regions was formed and also that discussion, which I think we’ve talked about on the tape, as to when I phoned Brendon and said, “We really can’t go with Labor because we’ll give the balance of power to the Greens.” So it went into very great detail. It was at a time when you’re just in that frantic last period of trying to cover your polling booths and get someone—there’s early polling outside the Electoral Commission and you’re trying to be there to see voters coming through, and the media want to talk to you and there’s just so much going on. The person who wrote this article and John Bowler had their heart totally in the right place and thought it was a great idea to put this ad in the paper, went off and raised the money from some mining company or something, came back and said, “We’ve got the funds. We’re going to put this full-page ad in the paper.” I just didn’t give it enough thought. They’d been nagging me about it for quite a while and I’d said, “I don’t know. I’m

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW not really comfortable with this.” In the end I said, “Look, okay. If you think it’s the right thing to do, go for it.”

Well, Brendon, quite rightly, took offence. I think he was particularly concerned about the fact that we knew the seat of Eyre was really close in a fight between Colin de Grussa and Graham Jacobs. A letter had been written by a highly regarded person in Esperance to everybody in the Eyre electorate, basically saying, “You can’t trust the Nationals. They’ll go to Labor”, in an electorate that was very conservative, and that was not sitting well with them when we did it first time round. So I think that advertisement not only upset Brendon, but upset the campaign team—Jacqui Boydell, Mia Davies, Colin Holt—the key people who were in head office. I came to Perth; we all came to Perth to celebrate the outcome of the election and I immediately felt that things were very cool. In fact, in Brendon’s speech to all the party faithful—well, all the candidates really—he praised Colin de Grussa for his fantastic effort, and the counting was still going on and we might get you over the line, and he really didn’t comment at all about my success in Kalgoorlie. I couldn’t work out what was going on. It took me a while to twig that we’d made a big mistake. But also I think that I believe that Colin Barnett wanted me as a minister at the time—that’s what I hear—but I also understand that Tuck, being minister for sport and rec and in charge of the stadium, really wanted to see that project through. I think Brendon was in a very difficult situation. He was going to have to break somebody’s heart—mine or Tuck’s. Tuck had been around longer than me and he was one of the boys, and Brendon, I think, then decided that to make me Deputy Speaker, which is a highly paid position with lots of travel opportunities and plenty of kudos, would, I guess, sufficiently reward me for the work I’d done.

I was pretty disappointed because the Deputy Speaker position is a great honour, but I am really not so much into the process and technicalities of Parliament and how it runs. I was always a big picture, policy, strategy person and was really looking forward to the opportunity of a ministry, and felt that I was capable of it. But one of those girl things, I think, is that I probably didn’t fight hard enough after that. I sort of thought, “Well, okay. I get that Tuck wants to finish the stadium.” Brendon basically said to me, “You know, Tuck will retire a bit later on and there’ll be another opportunity.” I took him at his word and really probably didn’t do the work that I should have. Thinking about Churchill’s comment about your opposition being in front of you and your enemies behind, the thing that I didn’t take into account was that there were now a large number of Nationals in the Parliament who all could see their need to be a minister, particularly the likes of Colin Holt; Vince Catania, who’d been in Parliament a long time and was very experienced; Jacqui Boydell, who’s 192

DUNCAN INTERVIEW very ambitious; and of course Mia Davies—all of whom, I’m sure, could see their path to the ministry. I guess I accepted Brendon’s assurance that Tuck wants to finish the job and you’ll be next, and settled into trying to do my job as Deputy Speaker really well.

One of the issues of being Deputy Speaker, of course, is that you have your own office right over the other side of Parliament from where my colleagues were, just outside the Legislative Assembly chamber, when the entire National Party—because there were so many of us, we actually moved from what was on the south side of Parliament House, which is not far from the Deputy Speaker’s office; they actually moved us to more the west side of Parliament, over on the Legislative Council side. The whole Nationals team and the Nationals executive officer were moved to the opposite side of Parliament. What happened really is that, as Deputy Speaker, I just didn’t ever see my colleagues. I was on the other side of the house. When they all got together, chatting about what was happening or who was doing what, or what the latest goss was or what the latest policy idea was or strategy, I just didn’t ever really find myself in the loop again, unless I actually deliberately went up the three flights of stairs to the opposite corner of the house to see what was going on, in which case I then had to take my eyes off what was happening in the chamber, which as Deputy Speaker—and next door to the Whip. I was really keeping an eye on Tony Krsticevic’s job to make sure that we always had people in the chamber who needed to be there and that someone was in the chair and that they were coping, because Michael Sutherland often left that to me. I was a country member; I didn’t have a home to go to, so I was often there. I said to him, “Go home.” I was there late at night most times as Deputy Speaker and the Speaker would be off at a school function and doing the things that a city member of Parliament needs to do. I just went home and had no-one to talk to so I may as well stay at Parliament. That’s what happens for regional members. So a lot of the time I was actually in charge of the house. That meant that I couldn’t be communing with my colleagues. I guess, naively, I wasn’t really aware of the fact that slowly but surely people forgot that I existed.

Ms Anne Yardley: You had a different role, I suppose.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: I look forward to talking about how you found the differences between the upper and lower house, but I think we’ll leave that until next time.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Okay. Thank you. [End of WendyD10] 193

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Ms Anne Yardley: This is another interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Tuesday, 6 February 2018, and we’re meeting at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and the interviewer is me, Anne Yardley.

Last time we spoke, you talked a bit about Brendon Grylls and some of the reasons why he stepped down. But let’s look at when he did step down from the leadership, because it was described as a shock move. Was it a shock move to you, his colleagues?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think we were all very concerned about Brendon’s wellbeing following the 2013 election and the huge workload that he had taken on as well as the incredible scrutiny of the royalties for regions program and the need to make sure that every tranche of funding had proper governance around it and business plans—a bit unlike the $39 million we heard about this week where the local members of Parliament decide on which little sporting group might get a cheque, which had the member of Parliament’s name on it. That just totally would not have cut it under this royalties for regions program. Brendon was absolutely determined that it was going to be squeaky clean and there would be no misuse of that funding. But as the program developed, the number of projects being funded—we ended up with something like 3 700 projects, $6 billion worth of royalties for regions money by the end of the Barnett government’s term.

So there was that he was keeping an eye on, but the other thing is that Brendon was on the Executive Council of the government. Brendon was with, what were they called?—the Expenditure Review Committee; that’s right. So he, Colin Barnett and Troy Buswell, and then the subsequent Treasurer Mike Nahan could see the whole GST issue coming down the line like a freight train and were really, in many ways, powerless to act to mitigate that effect because not only had they already committed to funding things like the stadium and Elizabeth Quay and, of course, all the incredible funding that was going out to regional WA, but also they were acutely aware that the construction phase of the mining industry was about to come to a fairly sudden end, which meant that thousands of jobs were going to be no longer needed up in the Pilbara. If the government had actually put a stop to its construction program at the same time as the mining industry, the hit to the Western Australian economy would have been dreadful—incredibly painful. It was a very tough time and I think that Brendon lost a lot of sleep over it. Then there was the other side of

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW the issue, which was the constant problems with the issue of grain rail, and the discord with Max Trenorden and Phil Gardiner, I think, really just took its toll. Brendon, I think quite wisely, decided that he needed to take some time out. He was a huge loss to the Barnett ministry. Colin Barnett was quite shocked when Brendon said that he needed to take time out.

His inner circle, which at that time wasn’t me—as we’ve talked about last week—were in the know, I think, that he was considering doing this. In fact, I think they had a fairly clear idea of how the chess pieces on the board would move as a result of him resigning and moving to the backbench. There was not a lot of jockeying for position that took place at the time of him announcing his retirement. Even though there had been a commitment given to me that the next ministerial position that was available would be mine, it was immediately obvious that if Brendon stood down as leader and he anointed Terry Redman as his replacement, then the party needed a new deputy leader, and that wasn’t going to be me because, according to everyone else in our team, I was on the way out, being too old, just over 60. It really was not worth fighting for in some ways and, in fact, I’d pretty well made that decision.

I remember when Colin Barnett came up to Kalgoorlie just before the decision was made as to who would be the new person into cabinet to replace Brendon when he stepped down. Colin and I had a fairly frank discussion. He asked me to pick him up from the airport, which was most unusual because he’d usually ask his Liberal colleagues— Graham Jacobs also had an office up there—and it did set tongues wagging. But in the conversation in the car, Colin basically said, “I hope you’re going to be able to step up to the ministry, Wendy.” I said, “Don’t hold your breath, Colin. It’s not going to be me.” So I knew that Mia Davies had been anointed as the up-and-coming leader of the party. But then some friends of mine and colleagues in Kalgoorlie basically said, “Don’t give up so easily”, so I did actually put my hat in the ring at the time for that position. We had to make a little speech to our colleagues. I basically said that I really felt that I had the credentials and the runs on the board to be a minister; that I didn’t necessarily see myself as deputy leader because that is a stepping stone to the future. But, anyway, there was a vote had in the party room and I was not successful and Mia got the position. Then Terry Redman was leader and Terry Waldron continued on as Minister for Sport and Recreation.

Ms Anne Yardley: Was Terry Redman the obvious choice? Was he a popular choice for leader?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think Terry certainly had the seniority and had the—I guess he’s sort of respected from all sides of the house. The thing is that the party really was very much—that is, the parliamentary party—still in a position to do what Brendon Grylls suggested that they should do. The interesting thing is that that was not a good way for Terry Redman to become leader of the party because he actually, I don’t think, ever had his own personal base of support. He was always there courtesy of Brendon Grylls and, you know, when one hand giveth, it can always taketh away.

Ms Anne Yardley: We’ll talk about that one later on too, probably. What about the concerns, because Brendon Grylls, as you said, went to the backbench—he resigned from cabinet as well. How concerned were you and your colleagues that you would lose the regional development portfolio, because, in fact, I think it was Graham Jacobs who said it should be taken away from the party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. I don’t think that was ever a very great risk. We were very strong on the fact that that was the only portfolio that we wanted when we were in government and the arrangement with the Liberal Party was fairly secure; it was sort of a legal document. Probably of more interest was the risk of losing the agriculture portfolio. But in many ways, with the dramas with grain rail and so on and the fact that a lot of the work that the Nationals wanted to do in rolling out royalties for regions and particularly the Water for Food program, which is continuing with Ord stage 2, using water in the Pilbara to expand agriculture and fixing up the water supplies in the wheatbelt and the south west, meant that in many ways the water portfolio was a better one to have than agriculture because we could direct the royalties for regions money through that portfolio and achieve some of the innovative things as far as the economic development of the regions. So Mia Davies took on that portfolio—the Minister for Water. She continued to work very closely with Brendon Grylls even though he wasn’t the minister, and Brendon continued to work very closely in the Ord and the Pilbara even though he wasn’t a minister, so representing Mia and Terry Redman. He, I think, took on the role of party Whip for a bit, but probably didn’t see that as something that should be taken very seriously.

One of the things about the Nationals in Parliament is that they really did see their highest priority as being out servicing the electorate. One of the things about being a city member of Parliament is that you can do that even while Parliament is sitting. As a regional member of Parliament, you can’t. The idea of taking a pair or taking a day out of Parliament to go to the Dowerin field day or Newdegate field day and so on is something that the Nationals did with impunity almost. In both houses, there’s often digs at the Nationals that they’re 196

DUNCAN INTERVIEW sometimes not there when they should be, but it’s not that they are down on the beach or anything; they’re usually out working in their very vast electorates.

Ms Anne Yardley: And they are vast electorates, aren’t they?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look at you, because by winning Kalgoorlie, you found yourself in a fairly unusual position of having been a member of both houses. Let’s look at those two houses and your different experiences there and your observations about the different houses.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it’s fascinating, actually, because one thing that you’re very conscious of is the competition to the point of dislike between the staff of the two houses. When I moved to the Legislative Assembly, the Legislative Council staff, whom I had known quite well, were saying, “How are you going down there, Wendy? Are you going to survive?” Just sort of culturally, if we look at that in the first instance, the Legislative Council is far more formal, far more respectful of the Chair and across the chamber. You just wouldn’t dare walk across the chamber without acknowledging the Chair. You absolutely wouldn’t walk between the President of the chamber and a member of Parliament on their feet, speaking. You would really get the wrath of the President if you did that. The language in the house was much more constrained. But even the dress code, I found that interesting. The dress code in the Legislative Council of members was far more formal. The President still had his academic gown and the staff all had their little gowns and bow ties, but even I noticed that the women—people like Helen Morton, Robyn McSweeney and Donna Faragher—all dressed very formally; a lot of jewellery and sparkly. It was a bit over the top, really. I remember thinking, gosh, this is going to cost me a fortune! In fact, one thing that should go down in the record is that your clothing is not tax deductible, as a member of Parliament, nor do you get a clothing allowance. My daughter who works in the fashion industry in Melbourne was absolutely horrified to hear that. But here I came, a little farming girl who had a uniform when I worked in the Shire of Esperance, into the house where everybody was wearing Carla Zampatti and Anthea Crawford. It really was a very expensive exercise to actually get the wardrobe for the Parliament—things that I’ve got hanging in my wardrobe now that I wouldn’t wear anywhere else, not even to a corporate function because they were just very formal. So there’s that.

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When I went to the Legislative Assembly, there were male members with their jackets off, female members—you did wear pants in the Legislative Council, but not often, and still with formal jackets and so on. But in the Legislative Assembly, the dress code for the women was far less formal, often with pants and a nice looking cardigan, but a cardigan nevertheless rather than a jacket. I found that quite interesting. But the other thing is just the far more lackadaisical attitude to moving around the chamber and crossing the floor in front of someone who is speaking. I know that as Deputy Speaker, I would try to call those things into line. I remember Michelle Roberts, who was Leader of the Opposition at the time, saying, “This is not the other place, Deputy Speaker”, because I was actually demanding too high a standard ,according to them in the Assembly, of how to respect each other. That was a big difference.

Ms Anne Yardley: Were these codes of conduct formalised in any way or have they just evolved?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No, it’s just a cultural thing. There was nothing written anywhere. It’s just how everybody behaved. You just had to sit in there and take it in through the skin. But a lot of the clothing, for instance, that I wore in the Legislative Council I didn’t wear in the Assembly. It was more business suits rather than formal wear. It was quite interesting.

The other thing is that the Legislative Council, even though question time in the Legislative Council is very formal and you had to give notice of your question at 11 o’clock in the morning to be considered at 4.30 in the afternoon—so you would give the minister time to get a response, often because the minister was in a representative role, the actual minister was in the other house so you needed to get that—but there was nothing stopping anybody standing up to ask a question, be you in government or not in government. In fact, when I started in the Legislative Council in opposition, every member of the opposition had the opportunity to ask a question in question time. There was actually a huge effort to be able to make that possible, but the questions were short and the answers were short and it was in the standing orders that that’s how it had to be.

Ms Anne Yardley: So they were on notice?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, they were on notice. There could be questions without notice directly to a minister, but it was not that regular an occurrence. I found that there I was, the lowly single little member of the Nationals in the Legislative Council when I was first elected, and I could have asked a question every day if I wanted to. But being in the 198

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Legislative Assembly and particularly being in government, I didn’t ever get to ask a question of my own. You were handed a question—a dorothy dixer—that you were told to ask. The answer was pre-prepared and the actual government side of question time was really very boring. But, of course, the opposition’s questioning of the government in the house of the Legislative Assembly was well and truly without notice. There was no question in that morning and you had an answer ready for question time. Ministers had to be ready to take whatever was thrown at them at zero notice, so that was just a huge difference between question time in the two houses.

Ms Anne Yardley: The dorothy dixers, who put those together? Who handed them to you and how did they decide who they were going to hand them to?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: They came out of the Premier’s office—the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. They decided who asked them based on a few things. One is what the story of the day was, and so a question that might clarify some issue that’s in the paper or announce something that the government has done and so on. The person who asked the question was often the person to whom that question related as far as their electorate or their particular area of interest. But, then again, there was always that tension between the Liberals and the Nationals, so sometimes the Liberals would be given a question to ask about royalties for regions when it was a Nationals policy. Then everyone would get uppity about it, “It should have been my question”, and the usual rubbish that goes on behind the scenes. In the Legislative Council, when we were in government and we had the balance of power in that house—Liberals and Nationals—then we didn’t really get to ask questions then; it was all just mainly the opposition and the Greens.

Ms Anne Yardley: From your observation, how do you reflect on the different roles of the two houses?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The idea of the Legislative Council being a house of review, I think, is an excellent one. There are discussions about the fact that it’s not representative, even since 2005, when each region has six members—the house has got 36 members; so three regions in the regional areas and three in the city. But I personally think that that is a good thing, because it allows minorities to have a say, particularly if you have little parties like Shooters and Fishers or the Greens and so on. The other thing is I saw it in operation when we were in opposition and the Greens had the balance of power, and Labor was governing. You could see a lot of legislation was being sent off to the legislation committee, and it was all part of reviewing the legislation and I’m sure there were negotiations going 199

DUNCAN INTERVIEW on behind the scenes between Labor and the Greens to actually get the legislation through, because if those two didn’t work together, we could knock the legislation off. The legislation committee was worked overtime in that period. But, interestingly, when the government changed and the Liberals and the Nationals had the balance of power, so the government had the majority in the Legislative Council, which is pretty unusual, the legislation committee might as well have gone off to Rotto! There was really not a lot of work for it to do and if something went to that committee, it was usually when the Greens and the Nationals agreed that it should. So things like the stop-and-search legislation or mandatory sentencing—what else? Amalgamation of local governments.

Ms Anne Yardley: The more contentious issues.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Retail trading hours. Those sorts of things would be sent to the legislation committee. But often what would happen is that if the Liberal Party thought that the Nationals had a problem with their legislation, it wouldn’t even arrive in the Legislative Council. It would get passed in the Assembly and then disappear into the ether because they knew that they couldn’t pass it in the form that they wanted to, so rather than negotiate or put it to the legislation committee, it was really shelved often. That was quite interesting, because in the previous Parliament where Labor and the Greens were working together, I’m not aware of much legislation being shelved. I am aware of legislation being quite extensively amended. In fact, one of the traps of that situation is that we ended up with legislation which was quite unwieldy. Towards the end of the Carpenter government, people were complaining about red tape, green tape, the bureaucracy, the difficulty of getting anything done in the state, and it was often because of these extra checks and balances that had been put into the legislation, probably by the Greens I would have thought. That is interesting. You see where legislation goes through without being slowed up by the Legislative Council, without that scrutiny that the Legislative Council is supposed to apply, turn up, out in the big wide world, flawed. Often there were things that had to come back through and be fixed because it was probably passed too quickly, without proper scrutiny.

Ms Anne Yardley: So you’re saying that depending on the balance of power often, in both chambers, the legislation either would be overworked or underworked and it was hard to find that balance to get that correct sense of review; proper sense of review. Am I understanding you properly there?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, and you see legislation go through the Legislative Assembly and it turns out to be almost an argument between two people—the minister who is working on it and the shadow opposition. Really, not many others took much interest in it. In the second reading stage, often Labor would make sure that every one of their members spoke on a bill, which was a strategy just to slow it up rather than to scrutinise it. In fact, it was interesting hearing this week that Colin Barnett said the standard of debate in Parliament has fallen. I haven’t been around Parliament quite as long as he so I cannot really make that judgement, but I certainly saw a pretty low standard of debate at times in the Legislative Assembly because what each member was doing was repeating what the one before said to take up the government’s time. To me, that was pretty frustrating and disrespectful of Parliament.

In the Legislative Council, there was far more scrutiny and it’s because the Greens were there and the Shooters and Fishers. I have mentioned this before: I have huge respect for Giz Watson. She was there when I was in opposition. It was Giz, and Paul Llewellyn. The power of work that she got through! The actual analysis of legislation was incredibly effective and useful. She did a great job. Even in the next Parliament, where we were in government, and there were the Greens and Labor, Giz, again, worked her heart out and did a fabulous job. She was backed by Alison Xamon, who also had a very good brain.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look, then, at the opportunity for different members to speak and how you saw those differences between the two houses.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it’s quite stark, really. In the Legislative Council, they have what is called an adjournment debate at the end of every day. Anyone can stand up and speak for 10 minutes on a matter of importance. The Parliament would go as long as it took to make sure that everybody who had something to say on that particular day got to say what they wanted to say. It was a tradition in the Legislative Council that all the adjournment speeches would be pretty well cleared. They were a set time—10 minutes— so there was no opportunity to waste the government’s time.

In the Legislative Assembly, the opportunity for individual members of Parliament to bring forward a matter of importance to their electorate was far more limited. They had what they called a 90-second statement, where you had one and a half minutes to stand up and say something. The other alternative was a grievance. You had to notify the minister that you were going to raise a particular issue and then he or she would respond. It had set time limits but the thing about that was that you actually had to get on the list. You needed 201

DUNCAN INTERVIEW to go to your Whip and say, “I’ve got a 90-second statement” or “I’ve got a grievance on a particular issue.”

I remember, for instance, on the issue of the step up, step down mental health facility in Kalgoorlie, they took the funding away from that in the budget after I’d fought so hard for it. It was taken away in the 2015–16 budget—early—and I put my name down for a grievance on that. That was in May. I didn’t actually get to speak until November. That was how hard it was to get the opportunity. Also, it was up to the Whip, the Premier, the Leader of the House and the minister to decide whether or not they wanted to hear you. If they thought that what you were about to say was going to be damaging or difficult or so on, then there would be these delaying tactics. For government members, it was actually quite difficult in the Legislative Assembly to get the opportunity to voice the grievances or issues of your electorate.

The other way that matters could be looked at would be through petitions. There is another really stark contrast between the two houses, because a petition that is given to a member of the Legislative Council is read into the Council and then referred to the environment and public affairs committee, who decide whether or not to conduct an inquiry into the matter that that petition relates to. In the Legislative Assembly if you, as a member of Parliament, table a petition, it is tabled and that’s it—end of story. Nobody actually takes any interest in it. You can send a photocopy of it off to the minister and say this is what everybody’s talking about, but in fact putting a petition into the Legislative Assembly is a pretty futile exercise.

With the Legislative Council—and I experienced it myself with the issue of the sandalwood industry where I was of a very strong view that an inquiry was needed, I had a petitioner in the goldfields who was also of that mind. We put the petition together. I did the work, I guess, behind the scenes in Parliament to say, “This is a really important issue”, to the members of the environment and public affairs committee, who meet behind closed doors and I’m not privy to their deliberations. But they decided to hold that inquiry. There’s been some quite effective inquiries that have been held in the Legislative Council. Max Trenorden undertook one into the poles and wires of Western Power, which was hugely important. There was the issue of grain rail, which was looked into in the Legislative Council. So the work that’s done in those committees in the Council is actually pretty important for government.

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Ms Anne Yardley: I’m wondering then, when you understand the workings of the two houses, do members in one house refer to a colleague in the other house to place a petition or an adjournment speech? If you realise the limitations of the house that you’re in, do you talk to a colleague in the other house? Does this take place?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Well, certainly, within the Nationals, sitting around the party room table, we would say, “This matter needs to be raised. How’s the best way to do it? Do we do it as a grievance in the Assembly, or do we do an adjournment debate in the Council, or we get a petition and see if we can get an inquiry?” So, yes, I think we do—I’m sure the other political parties do as well—work out the best way. Sometimes I noticed with Labor’s tactics towards the end of 2016, or during 2016, that there would be a series of questions on notice going to the Legislative Council, which was gathering statistics and information, and then once sufficient information was gathered, then the shadow minister in the Legislative Assembly would then target the minister with the cracks in whatever issue they’d been corralling him or her on.

So, yes, there is that sort of use of the different houses, but there is also quite a tension between the two houses as well, as again we saw this week, out at Rottnest Island, where the member for South Perth and the leader of the Legislative Council, I think, almost came to blows over whether or not the Council was worthwhile keeping [chuckles]. But I think it is (a) because it means that minorities get a voice and (b) because it does conduct quite necessary scrutiny of legislation. Everyone gets cross about how slow government is, but actually in some ways it’s good to slow up legislation, just to take the time to think through the implications. The thing is that the staff in both houses are highly qualified legal brains. Even if a member of Parliament might sit in the Parliament and read through the clauses and try and ask intelligent questions about it, in fact, it’s actually the work that’s done behind the scenes supporting those committees that can often identify issues that need to be dealt with or modified in the house.

Ms Anne Yardley: Where did you personally feel that you were able to be more effective, which house?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think I was very much at home in the Legislative Council, but that’s because I was parliamentary secretary, so I was sitting on the front bench, and I was leader of my party—the first female leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council— so I had a role negotiating what was going on.

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I often regret that I didn’t really have any experience of the committee system, apart from procedure and privileges, because in the period of time that I was in the Legislative Council as a member of the opposition, I was on the environment and public affairs committee, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We went off to the eastern states investigating waste management issues. It was at the time of all the trouble with the odour from the SMRC here in Perth. That was fascinating and illuminating and really very valuable when it came to then making recommendations on waste management legislation and strategy. But then when I came back as parliamentary secretary for Regional Development—when you’ve got an office of the Crown, you’re not entitled to sit on any committees, but because I was Leader of the Nationals in the upper house, I was automatically on the procedure and privileges committee in the Legislative Council. In the Legislative Assembly, because I was Deputy Speaker, I was automatically on the procedure and privileges Committee. Now that was a very interesting exercise because the comparison of those two committees and how they operate was fascinating. One of the interesting things that happened to me was that there were several issues that were deliberated upon in the Legislative Council procedure and privileges committee that were subsequently referred to the Legislative Assembly, so I got to consider them twice. They turned up and I said, “I remember this when I was back in the Council.” Sitting in the Legislative Assembly, the Assembly staff would say, “I don’t know what on earth their staff were thinking to actually suggest this or that.” So there was this incredible tension between the two.

But the other thing I really noticed, and I tried to talk about this in a paper that I delivered in Samoa to the Presiding Officers and Clerks Conference that I went to, was to do with the shield laws for journalists, which was an ongoing saga. It was an election promise and there was a lot of behind the scenes argy-bargy going on to try and get that legislation through Parliament to the satisfaction of all concerned. In particular, up for debate was the issue of parliamentary privilege and could Parliament compel a journalist to disclose their sources. So, the journalism shield laws were designed to shield journalists from the law, but the big conundrum was how do you shield journalists from Parliament? In the Legislative Council we considered this, and it was decided in the end that what the Council would do was just incorporate holus-bolus the clauses out of the shield legislation into the standing orders, because one of the things that Parliament—both houses—were very, very staunch on was the separation of powers. They didn’t want any role for the judiciary in Parliament’s deliberations over journalists revealing their sources or refusing to. So, that was quite interesting. There were I think 11 clauses or something was agreed would be inserted into the standing orders, and the final part of that recommendation is that we should recommend to the Legislative Assembly that they do the same. 204

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So time passed, and I happened to be in the Legislative Assembly when this recommendation arrived, and the talk around the table is, “Well, why do we need to put all that in our standing orders? That’s very unwieldy and unnecessary, we’ll go and get some parliamentary counsel advice” and sent off to some solicitor in the eastern states and so on. The advice all came back and eventually the Legislative Assembly just said that they would pay due consideration to that legislation, so they didn’t actually include all the clauses. It was very interesting, because the conclusion I came to—which I didn’t quite have the courage to say in Samoa—is that the outcomes of the procedure and privileges committee are entirely dependent on the advice that they’re given by their expert staff around the table. Because really, those of us in the procedure and privileges committee, we’re not lawyers—particularly not constitutional lawyers—and you’re thrown into this position where you have to make deliberations on some very technical and quite difficult stuff. To be quite frank, a lot of it just goes straight over your head, and so you’re very, very dependent on the advice of the parliamentary clerks who search off to Westminster and federal government and New Zealand and Canada and find all the examples of what everyone else has done, lay the advice on the table, make a particular recommendation. Most times that’s what happens.

Ms Anne Yardley: But you’re saying that, in the case of the shield laws for example, the upper house made its own recommendations in-house, essentially, for the standing orders, without outside advice?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. So what happens is that both houses made an amendment to their standing orders to deal with this particular issue. So both houses agreed, yes, we needed to stay away from the judiciary. That’s what this—what is it called—“exclusive cognisance” means, in that Parliament likes to look after its own affairs; it doesn’t like to be beholden to or subject to judicial review. But the thing is that the Legislative Council, because it’s just so consistent with its culture of formality, decided to put all 11 clauses in its standing orders, whereas the Legislative Assembly basically said, “Well, we know what we want and we’re not going to be beholden to the judiciary, but, yes, we will give due reference to that law that we just passed.” So that was pretty interesting.

Ms Anne Yardley: Balance of power—I’m wondering how that is handled differently in the two houses. Now, when you were in the upper house, you were in opposition and the Greens had balance of power then.

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, the Greens, that’s right, were working with Labor. Labor was in government.

Ms Anne Yardley: Were working with Labor. Then when you were in government, of course, the Nationals had the balance of power there. I know these are different situations, but do you see that balance of power being exercised differently in the different houses, or does it really come to pretty much the same thing?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Look, I think it is exercised differently, and it’s probably because the Nationals have a long history of coalition with the Liberal Party and so are probably more inclined to go along with what’s put forward. I suppose we had our key issues of difference, which everybody was aware of, but we also had this philosophy that the Liberals were the majority party, they won government really pretty well—almost, anyway, but they were definitely what the majority of Western Australians wanted. I think the relationship between the Greens and Labor, and not that I’ve been party to any of their discussions, is quite different in that I think the Greens see every piece of legislation as an opportunity to have an influence. That means that it creates a power of work for everybody, and I just don’t know how they did it. Whereas with the Nationals and the Liberals, we would basically look over the legislation, we would hear from the minister or from our cabinet ministers who’d heard the discussion round the table, we’d decide whether or not it really was of dramatic importance to our constituency, which, as we said way back, is defined by geography more than philosophy. So a lot of the time we would probably take not a great deal of interest in some of the legislation, the Nationals. The stuff that’s really important to us we’d get involved in.

At times I found that quite frustrating, because as Leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council and a member of the procedure and privileges committee, we did a full review of the standing orders. That was Norman Moore’s; on his to do list before he retired was to sort out, to streamline the standing orders from the Legislative Council. Well, that took us 18 months. It was a long and tortuous process, and a lot of it was involved where Sue Ellery and Giz Watson were going back to their colleagues and running things by them: “What do you think? How do we do?” I’d go back to my colleagues and they’d say, “Oh, I don’t know, Wendy [chuckles]. You do it. That’s all pretty boring.” They just weren’t worried about things like that. I know even in the Legislative Assembly where there was some discussion about—what was it? It was something to do with the timings with the program for the day and when things occurred and how long was allocated and so on. There was a big debate over that, and some negotiation going on between Liberal and 206

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Labor about who gets what time and members’ business and reduce this and extend that and so on to get legislation through. I would present this—I said I’d need a one-pager for my colleagues [laughs]—but it just wasn’t on their priorities, really, yes. So that was one of the frustrating things about being Deputy Speaker, is that I really, I guess, was pretty alone in doing my job, because none of my colleagues were particularly interested in what I was doing, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: You did talk a little bit about being physically isolated from your colleagues when you became Deputy Speaker. But is that part of the role for a Speaker and Deputy Speaker? Are they supposed to sit separate from their parliamentary colleagues in a lot of ways?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I think that certainly is the tradition, and particularly with the Speaker. You know, you’ve got to try and be as apolitical as possible—well, you must be apolitical in the chair. A classic example where I was just thrown into a position where I knew it was going to be a disaster for my government but I had to be apolitical, and that was when I was watching in horror from the chair as, one by one, the members of government decided to leave the chamber and go and have afternoon tea until there was nobody left. David Templeman, the member for Mandurah and the opposition Whip, stood up and moved a motion to adjourn the house. I could see it coming. I’m in the chair and everyone’s saying, “Well, Wendy, why didn’t you faint or something?” But I had to accept that motion and put it to the vote, and we adjourned the house, and all hell broke loose, but there was really nothing I could do to avoid that situation because I was apolitical. In fact, I was just leaning forward to say to one of the clerks, “There’s nobody; there’s no government members in the house, what do we do now?”, when Templeman leapt up and moved his motion. I knew that that was going to happen but there’s just nothing you can do. You just have to play by the rules.

Ms Anne Yardley: That was exactly going to be my question: how did you find that, having to be apolitical when you sat in that chair?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I enjoyed it. Yes, I enjoyed it. It’s very—I remember reading somewhere Grant Woodhams said every day he went into that chair with trepidation. I know the feeling, because you just think, “What situation am I going to be thrown into today?” Often if you do make a ruling, you incur the wrath of one side or the other. But I think that was probably the bit that I enjoyed the most, to be the tough down-the-line person, particularly in estimates, where the whole idea of estimates is that the opposition 207

DUNCAN INTERVIEW gets the majority of questions of the government in scrutinising the budget. The people in the chair are always getting flak from their own side saying, “Hey, you’ve given them too much time” and “What about us?” and so on. But that’s how estimates is supposed to work, and I really enjoyed making sure that it did work that way, and got some, I guess, appreciation from the opposition for the fact that we made that happen. But there were times, for instance, when I had to call the Premier to order and so on, which I had no compunction in doing, because he needed to be called to order when things were getting out of hand, but you sort of think, well, that would be a career-limiting move, I’m sure [chuckles]. That’s probably the one part of the job I did enjoy—being in the chair and trying to make sure that things were fair. I enjoyed the fact that you’ve got to be very quick thinking and quick with your response. There’s times when you go home and you think, “Oh, I should’ve said this or that. Damn, you were just a bit too slow off the mark.” But that was the challenge and, I guess, the enjoyment of the job was to just be on the ball and quick thinking and listening and watching the whole time. I really enjoyed that.

Ms Anne Yardley: What are the qualities that make a good Speaker and Deputy Speaker? Being on the ball is one, quick thinking —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Good hearing! I discovered subsequently [laughs] I probably could’ve had better hearing. Yes, I think you need to be on the ball, you need to have a good power of concentration and you need to have the courage of your convictions. You can see that as soon as somebody in the chair starts to waiver if they’re being questioned, then everyone comes in for the kill. Some of the Acting Speakers got into very difficult situations just because they really couldn’t be firm and they couldn’t withstand the howls of dismay from the side of the house; they would start to question themselves. I remember once I asked a member of the opposition to withdraw a comment—it was not so much the comment but the way it was said with such aggression and vehemence that it was just out of line, I thought—and, anyway, that particular person called a point of order and objected to my ruling. I repeated that I wanted the withdrawal and then the person stood up and said, “I disagree with you.” I said, “The only way you can disagree with the person in the chair is by way of a motion to move that you have no confidence in the Chair.” This person said, “Well, that’s probably what I’m going to do”, and I said, “I’m still calling on you to withdraw what you said.” She did move the motion of no confidence in the Chair. There was quite a lot of, I guess, horror in the chamber that it had got to that, but the whole way I was really sure of my ground. I spoke to the Assembly staff and to the Speaker afterwards, and they said, “No, you did the right thing, Wendy.” The interesting thing is that from there on, there was a whole deal more respect for me in the chair. I remember 208

DUNCAN INTERVIEW one of the things that I guess I am quite proud of is that the Hansard staff and the media staff downstairs all said, “We really like it when you are in the chair, Wendy, because you’re really clear and precise and you don’t stand for any nonsense.” It’s a job I was given and I really wanted to do it well, and that side of it I think I did. I don’t think I made too many enemies, but I certainly wasn’t a pushover.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is it difficult not to take it personally, say, when that motion was called against you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Look, I think you do sort of question yourself and there are times where, particularly early in the piece, like that comment I mentioned earlier on, “You don’t even know what you’re doing here; you’re straight for the Legislative Council”, which was true, I got put into the chair straight from the Legislative Council, when they’re probably right to a certain extent, but there’re so many people in Parliament that are doing jobs they’ve never done before that you’ve just got to crash or crash through, really. So, no, that didn’t worry me so much.

It was the technicalities of some of the things that we were considering in privileges and so on that really used to make me struggle, because I’m a person who likes to have command of what I’m doing, and to find that I don’t quite understand something is not what I’m used to. That used to throw me a bit, but the rest of the time, the actual process— towards the end of our term in government, there were a couple of really big bills that they decided to run concurrently with the house in what they call a legislation committee, which the Deputy Chair in Estimates chairs. It’s a way of getting through a very complex bill more quickly, because not just the key members of Parliament involved are there, but also all the key public servants, advisers, are available. But you still have to work through the process very formally, and that I really enjoyed, too. I think I did quite well because it was just a case of being disciplined and making sure people didn’t talk too long. That was good.

Ms Anne Yardley: How does the Speaker work with the Whips? What’s that relationship?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The Deputy Speaker’s office is right next door to the Whip’s office. Now, in theory, you’re apolitical, so you actually probably shouldn’t work with the Whip, and I don’t know whether the Speaker does. But just because I was alongside the Whip’s office and got to know the Whip’s staff really well and that I was always watching the monitor to make sure that my people—my Acting Speakers—were all coping okay and that things were running smoothly, you would notice if there were things starting to come 209

DUNCAN INTERVIEW unstuck. For instance, if a minister’s getting a bad time from the opposition and there isn’t anybody sitting in the house behind him to give him moral support and show we’re all here together, I would often go into the Whip’s office and say, “So-and-so is getting a bit of a doing in the house. You’d better send some people in to give him some moral support.” That sort of thing I used to do. In fact, that time when there were no members in the house, I had seen that coming for a few weeks, really, and tried to warn the Whip that everyone was getting a little bit slack about making sure that there was at least one minister and several members of Parliament actually in the house at any one time.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is that really your role, though, to keep an eye on them?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Probably not. I don’t know. I just wanted to see the house run smoothly. The thing is that when that adjournment happened, it was really a very complex situation to try and reconvene the house after it had been adjourned, because the adjournment motion was moved without any—usually when you move an adjournment motion, there’s a date of resumption included in the motion, but there wasn’t that. So then there had to be a whole heap of negotiation between the two sides as to how they were going to reconvene the house in a manner that fitted the rules and the laws. It was actually a really terrible thing to happen. It sounds silly, and it was, but it caused a whole heap of grief. They had to shred all the daily notice papers and reprint more to indicate that this is a new day’s Parliament. It was just crazy. It was probably bureaucracy gone mad. But when you’ve got legislation being debated, if there’s any flaw in how it’s passed or in the constitution of the Parliament, then that can be a way to actually invalidate the legislation, so you have to make sure that all that is fine.

Ms Anne Yardley: Is that really the Whip’s fault that the chamber was so empty?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The Whip’s job is to make sure that there are people in the house at all times, that there are people to speak when you need to do a second reading speech on a bill or so on, that people have their questions and that they stand up in time when their turn comes, and that they’re all there—if you’re on the roster for a grievance, you’re actually there on time—because if you miss your call, you’re in all sorts of trouble. I remember poor Kyran O’Donnell, who won the seat of Kalgoorlie after me, a Liberal member of Parliament, who had never stepped inside Parliament before in his life and had no idea how it worked, was doing—what was he doing? A grievance?—no, that’s right, tabling a petition in Parliament. It was something really important for the goldfields; it escapes my mind at the moment. He missed his call and all the media were on to him, 210

DUNCAN INTERVIEW saying, “Did you table the petition?” and he’s going, “Actually, no.” That’s the sort of thing that the Whip, particularly if you’ve got a new member of Parliament like that who doesn’t know what happens next, has to make sure that everybody knows what they’re doing at the right time, otherwise it can become a bit of a shambles. Of course, those sorts of lapses—if you miss your question in question time, then the opposition get two in a row. If you miss your grievance, then the minister’s inconvenienced. The job of the Whip is pretty important and it’s a challenging job because you really have to be taken seriously. How do you actually get that discipline in there? I know that Tony Krsticevic said if you missed a division—that’s another thing—you had to get him a bottle of wine and there’s just no way you could get out of it. It is a very important job and it’s quite demanding because the whole time Parliament’s sitting, you’ve got to have your eye on the ball, which is why I tried to give the Whip a bit of a hand, particularly when Libby Mettam took over as Whip right towards the end. She’s very new to Parliament but she did a brilliant job. She has great attention to detail, so that was good.

Ms Anne Yardley: Thanks for today, Wendy.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Pleasure.

[End of WendyDuncan_11]

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Wendy Duncan_12_edited

Ms Anne Yardley: This is an interview with Wendy Duncan, former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Wednesday, 7 March 2018, and we’re again meeting at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms, and the interview is for the parliamentary history project.

Before we go any further, it’s 7 March not long after we’ve had all this imbroglio with Barnaby Joyce. Mia Davies, the Nationals leader at the moment, really withdrew support for him and for the WA Nationals. You came out shortly afterwards with a statement. Why did you feel the need to do that, and what was it important for you to get across?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, my statement came out in that intervening period between where the Western Australian Parliamentary National Party announced the withdrawal of their support for Barnaby Joyce as leader of the federal Nationals, and the news then breaking a couple of days later that there had been a sexual harassment claim against Barnaby by a young woman in Western Australia who was a past Rural Woman of the Year, and someone who I knew and had a huge amount of respect for. But in that intervening period, I must say that I was a bit aghast that the WA Nationals took that step— the Parliamentary Nationals. I was very suspicious that they had done that without referring to the party organisation, which is something that—I firmly believe that as soon as your members of Parliament start to think they don’t need the lay party and the party organisation, is about when things start to go pear-shaped. And we’ve seen it. Having written or been involved with the history of the Nationals, you just see this happen time and again, where the members of Parliament become so confident and full of their own understanding of things that they lose respect for, and fail to refer to, the party organisation. I was receiving lots of phone calls from the ABC and the Kalgoorlie Miner saying, “So, Wendy, what do you think about this?” I was declining to comment. In fact, Geoff Hutchison from ABC rang me and he said, “Oh, come on, Wendy, you know you and I have always worked well together. Surely you can come on air and make a comment.” I said, “Well, Geoff, I don’t want to be like Michael McCormack”, who had just been interviewed about three days before about whether or not he supported the leader, “and be asked the same question seven times.” I said, “I’ve been there, done that. I’ve finished being grilled by the media; however, I will write you a statement.” That was because I very strongly believe that you stick by a mate when they’re down. In fact, there’s this song by Kate Miller-Heidke called Caught in the Crowd, which is about how she, at school, walked away when someone she knew and rode to school with every day was

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW being bullied and didn’t stick up for him, and she was heartbroken. That song brought me to tears when I first heard it.

So after talking to my wonderful husband, who has always been an absolutely invaluable sounding-board, I decided I couldn’t let this go, and in my statement I explained why. That is that in 2006 and 2007, when we were campaigning madly to be an independent political party, willing to go into government with either side, and when Barnaby had the balance of power federally and was as busy as a one-armed paperhanger dealing with the sale of Telstra and so on, he came to the west. He flew around the state with myself and Brendon, helping to tell our story and trying to get the Nationals revived in Western Australia. At that time he had four little girls—very small—and there were many times where I’m saying, “Come on, Barnaby; come on, Barnaby”, and he was on the phone to his wife. Subsequently, when Tony Crook went into federal Parliament and decided to sit on the crossbench and not with the Nationals, Barnaby still came to Western Australia and didn’t really make it—you know, it didn’t really break his relationship with the west, even though he was not happy with that arrangement, and even more recently, when Brendon came up with his $5 a tonne charge on Rio Tinto and BHP, which Barnaby didn’t support, but he still came to the west and helped campaign with us. I just felt that he had never really sought to interfere in our affairs or strategic direction, but was always here to back us as one of the members of the Nationals’ family. So, I was quite aghast that our members of Parliament should stand on the steps and say, “Well, we don’t support Barnaby because of what he’s done.” Because at the time we haven’t got a federal member of Parliament, and, really, we’re probably the least likely part of the Nationals organisation to make a statement like that. So really I just in my statement said that Barnaby had been a great friend of Western Australia, that he’d not sought to interfere with how we decided to run our party, and that we, the Western Australian Nationals, shouldn’t interfere in their federal decision-making. That was all.

I then declined further interviews. I didn’t want to be speaking on radio. Since retiring, I’ve been quite determined about the fact that I would not be pontificating about what the current bunch of members of Parliament and leaders are doing; there’s nothing more annoying. So I’ve been quite fastidious about that, and there’s only really a couple of occasions that I’ve made comment and one was this one with Barnaby Joyce and the other was, of course, the Labor government’s decision to close the Schools of the Air, which I became quite actively involved in the campaign to reverse.

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Ms Anne Yardley: What were you hearing from members? So not the parliamentary team, but members. What were they saying to you about Barnaby Joyce?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I have not had a lot of contact with members, but I suppose my intimate knowledge of the members of the Nationals, having been state president and having taken a great deal of time to get to know them and their philosophy and what they expect of their party, I had a pretty good idea of what they were thinking, and that was really why I chose to make that comment. Because I would imagine that many, particularly lay party members, of the Nationals would have absolutely supported what I said, and, in fact, after my statement, somebody distributed it on Twitter. That was fine, because I sent it through to the ABC so it’s on the public record. But I got a message back from one of the staffers in Canberra to say thank you for sticking up for Barnaby, and really got the message that Barnaby was ropeable about the intervention of the WA Nationals.

Ms Anne Yardley: Right. Let’s move on to something different.

We have been talking about your time as Deputy Speaker. What we haven’t talked about are the couple of overseas trips that you took, one to Canada and one to Samoa. What was behind the trips? What did you do? What did you achieve?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, back in 2010 I was fortunate enough to be selected as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association representative for the Western Australian government to go to the centenary of the CPA in London. At that point I became quite interested in how the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association worked, and in particular some of the challenges with the fact that the most numerous, I guess, countries or nations that were members of that body were the African nations, and to discover that there’s an incredible amount of politics going on as to who was the ruling body of the CPA and so on. So that was quite interesting. Having become Deputy Speaker, I did remain quite active in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. One of the things that Grant Woodhams had established as Speaker when he was in the role was an exchange with the western Canadian provinces of members of Parliament. This inevitably is called out as a junket by the media, but in fact it was an incredibly valuable trip. It was bipartisan—cross-party—so there were members of each political party who went on this trip, plus the Clerk and several parliamentary staff from the Legislative Assembly this time. Actually, no, it was from both houses, come to think of it, because we had Kate Doust with us from the upper house, and I was Deputy Speaker, so both houses.

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We visited British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and we looked at each of those Parliaments and how they operate and we met with the Speakers and we met with the Leaders of the Houses and we watched them in operation. It was an incredible experience to see these Parliaments that all had their birth in the Westminster system diverging in how they manage business, and there were certainly things to learn. For instance, some Parliaments have a time limit on the debate of a bill, so it has to be all over and done with by 16 hours, which really stops that filibuster. The thing that really frustrated me most of all in my latter days, especially in the Legislative Assembly, was that custom that every member of the opposition stand up and say exactly the same thing about a bill, just to delay its passage and frustrate the government’s program. It is really very frustrating and it’s part of the reason that people lose faith in Parliament and its operations.

The other thing I saw over there was how Hansard operates. Here in the Western Australian Parliament, Hansard go up and down the stairs and sit in the house and then go back up and down, and to me that seemed to be fairly inefficient. Some of the Parliaments—much as I love Hansard, who, I know, are transcribing this—but, you know, they were using technology to record. So that in one of the Parliaments—I think it was in Saskatchewan—the Hansard was offsite; no, it was Alberta. All the team were offsite just with headphones and recording just from the sound, and there was one Hansard officer actually in the house and if it became confusing as to who was speaking, they would whisper into the microphone whose voice it was, so that there would be this concurrent recording, so they had the voice and then they had the Hansard officer just saying who it was. Particularly as our Parliament is so overcrowded and no government seems very willing to spend any money on it, we really do need to think of ways to try to more effectively use the space there.

But probably the best part of the trip was that each of us was then allocated a member of Parliament to go and spend a week with. I went to a member of Parliament whose electorate was in the north of Saskatchewan, and so really quite remote—icy. The snow was just starting to melt. We saw the first robin while we were there. We were there at Easter in 2014, I think. But I went with her on a trip around her riding [electorate], and just met so many people who are in agriculture, in mining, in forestry that really had a lot in common with my constituency, particularly down around Esperance and then in the mining industry. But most importantly, we visited some First Nation communities.

I was really interested in some of their strategies to encourage the First Nation people into education and into jobs, and the relationships they developed with mining companies that 215

DUNCAN INTERVIEW had a holistic attitude to training. So they’d take someone with no skills and work with the training organisation to train them how they wanted them, and then ensured they had a job at the other end. But not only that, they’d group them in threes or fours so that when they went off to their job in the mine or the fertiliser plant or whatever, they were with their own people. Then they also had quite stringent management of their funds when they first started working, so that they really had support in learning how to manage their money. They were supported to buy a house and to buy a car and to get their kids educated, and slowly but surely the strings were let go and they were allowed to then manage their own affairs. There was just so much that I learnt from that that I could see had application in my own communities. Then subsequently, a First Nation female member of Parliament came out to Western Australia, and I was able to host her in the goldfields and it was wonderful. I took her to meet some of our elders, and to see that communication between them and that instant understanding of the challenges that First Nation people face. Yes, it was really fantastic.

Ms Anne Yardley: What happens with what you’ve learnt and the what you’ve seen when you come back?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, you write a report, which is tabled in Parliament, and I think that the intention of Grant Woodhams was that the exchange would continue, and subsequently there was another group of Western Australians that went to Canada and vice versa. I think perhaps funding constraints might mean that it doesn’t happen quite as often.

You say, “Well, what happens next?” I think one of the things that members of Parliament really struggle to convince the public that they need is professional development. You come into this job as a member of Parliament with really no training as to how it all works, no understanding of what’s good and what’s bad as part of the strategy, or how to represent your constituents or how to use the way Parliament works and the opportunities to speak. So, really, I think these exchange opportunities and these trips, which are labelled—screamed from the rooftops—as junkets by the media, are actually very valuable to most members of Parliament. Some skim the gig; some don’t do it properly, and you hear about the ones that go over and then head off on a motorbike trip around the southern states instead of attending the meetings they were supposed to attend. But one of the interesting things about the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association centenary in London is that it was a bit of a standing joke that most of the African representatives all turned up in London in their chauffeured cars and so on, and that was the last you saw of 216

DUNCAN INTERVIEW them. They were really not there for much of the proceedings of the conference. So I suppose there is some justification for that, but 99 per cent of members of Parliament benefit greatly from these trips.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you believe that flows through to what happens in people’s electorates?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it certainly did for me. Not only am I still in touch with my colleague in Canada—a member of Parliament—but it really does give you new ideas of how to represent your constituency. Even things like alcohol abuse and domestic violence and child protection, which were huge issues in my electorate, I came back from Canada with new eyes to look at that and knowledge of things that had worked in Canada and we hadn’t yet tried in Australia, and in fact implemented some of that and we might talk about that a bit later on when we talk about Laverton. So I did see direct benefit from that trip.

Ms Anne Yardley: Samoa: what was the purpose of that trip?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Samoa was slightly different. Samoa was the Presiding Officers and Clerks Conference, where the President and the Speaker and the two Clerks of each house in the Pacific region all go to meet and discuss technical things about how Parliament runs. That was less up my alley. But the whole object of the exercise, really, is mentoring the Pacific Islands nations and their Parliaments. They are really in a transition between their sort of chieftain and those sort of family ruling parties trying to transition into democracy, and how they run their Parliaments, how they elect their Speaker, how they manage their debate was all really very different to what you’d expect in the Westminster system. But what the purpose of this was—we all were expected to sort of deliver a dissertation on a particular aspect that had taken your interest in the last 12 months, and then there was debate and questions. So I guess in that instance it was more about us leaving lessons and learnings rather than taking away.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look at what was happening in your electorate, in Kalgoorlie, and we’ll probably get on to some of the Indigenous issues as well. What were some of the things that were important then? There was, for instance, the Goldfields Arts Centre.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. That’s right. The Goldfields Arts Centre was a magnificent building which had been more or less bequeathed to the goldfields by the state government as part of a—I should know this, but I think it was the state’s bicentenary or 217

DUNCAN INTERVIEW whatever it was—150th anniversary. It then became rather a difficult issue in that there’s this beautiful building but nobody really wanted to manage it. It ended up being shared between the TAFE and Curtin University—ended up with this arts centre that neither of them wanted and that the Department of Training and Workforce Development owned and Curtin leased. There was no maintenance being done and not a lot of effort to attract shows. Eventually Curtin, quite rightly probably, decided that they didn’t really want anything to do with it anymore, but the community was up in arms because who was going to run their arts centre? So it became a very big issue at election time. The government was just really running a hundred miles from this issue. We were really trying to say to the government, “Well, you support the Perth Theatre Trust. You support the WA Museum. You do all this in Perth. Why can’t you support the arts centre?” It needed a quite substantial upgrade because it wasn’t disability accessible and had fire and emergency issues and so on. There needed to be about $10 million spent on it, but there also needed to be a resolution of who was going to own and manage it. I got mixed up in that as I was campaigning on the steps of the arts centre and determined to save it and managed to get a promise of some royalties for regions funding for it, but there was still the question of who was going to run it and own it.

It became almost a crisis point because there’s this annual event in Kalgoorlie that attracts about 4 000 people called Diggers and Dealers. It’s where all the mining companies and finance brokers all get together. It’s a very blokey affair. But they use the arts centre and it really is probably the biggest use of the arts centre. So then there was this fear that Diggers and Dealers would have to move to Perth if the arts centre closed down. I was involved in a lot of negotiations behind the scenes and managed to get the commitment of royalties for regions funding. Ruth Shean, the director general of the Department of Training and Workforce Development, was dragged kicking and screaming—we’re good friends and she’ll be amused about this—to agree to continue to own the building, even though she didn’t really want to, and we finally got the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder to then take on the management of it. But the agreement was for four years and it was really one of those boxes that I ticked in my achievement sheet as the member for Kalgoorlie. But, blow me down, just last year, after I’d finished as the member of the Parliament, the whole issue blew up again because the four years was up and who was going to fund and run the arts centre? I think now the Perth Theatre Trust have finally been dragged into it, which they should be. These big major arts centres in places like Bunbury, Geraldton, Albany, Kalgoorlie, where you can host major performances and coordinate regional tours, should really have some state input and support, I believe.

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Ms Anne Yardley: Student accommodation for WA School of Mines—why was that a an issue?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, the WA School of Mines was really struggling to attract students and, in fact, Curtin University, at the same time that it was talking about walking away from the Goldfields Arts Centre, was also talking about walking away from the WA School of Mines. Now, this institution had been in Kalgoorlie since 1903 and really saw itself, and so did the people of Kalgoorlie, as a centre of excellence for mining and metallurgy and mining engineering. Of course, it’s a perfect place for a school of mines because you’ve got the Super Pit there. You’ve got quite a variety of minerals in the goldfields. It’s not just gold, but there’s also nickel and lithium and iron ore, so it’s a great place for people to study the mining industry, but it’s expensive.

One of the interesting things, which I didn’t have a success on, is that because Curtin University were running the WA School of Mines, they weren’t eligible for the federal regional university subsidy. In the eastern states, a university like Armidale or Toowoomba or whatever gets an extra 18 per cent funding from the federal government in recognition of the fact that it’s more expensive to run a university in the regions. The WA School of Mines didn’t because it’s being run by a Perth university and we didn’t ever have a breakthrough on that.

But, anyway, what we really decided—and I was heavily involved with this and one of my very dear friends from Esperance, Jane Coole, originally started working with Curtin University in Esperance, had come to Perth and was with them looking after their regional matters. She and I decided that the best way to resolve the issue with the WA School of Mines was to try to attract some more international students, but you couldn’t do that in a building that was built in the 70s, had no air conditioning, had shared bathrooms at the end of the corridor, no internet connectivity, and so it was really not attractive to someone in India or China or the Middle East. A lot of people come from the Middle East to send their precious little offspring off to Kalgoorlie into really substandard accommodation. It just took forever. It’s interesting this debate about royalties for regions and how some of the decisions were made rashly. I think it took us three years to get this project over the line; $20 million of royalties for regions, another $18 from Curtin University, built brand- new transportable buildings—not transportable. They are—what’s the word?—sort of building blocks. They are constructed offsite and put together. I can’t think of the word; it will come to me at some stage.

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Ms Anne Yardley: Modular.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Modular; thank you. That’s it—modular buildings. That really made a huge difference not only to the School of Mines, but also to just Kalgoorlie, how it felt about itself. It was at the time when the price of gold was low, when the iron boom had come off, thousands of people were losing their jobs in Kalgoorlie, and this three-storey high set of buildings was going up and just made everybody feel like there was a future. It was just interesting, the psychological effect of a big project like that, as well as the fact that then, subsequently, I think they doubled their student numbers and have really started to focus on international students, who then of course become—a lot of the international students are postgraduate and research fellows—the tutors and lecturers for the lower years. So we’ve been building back the Curtin University student cohort from the top down. Probably one of my proudest achievements. Interestingly, I think it’s probably one of only two plaques in the state that’s got my name on it, because I wasn’t a minister. Even though I had a fair bit to do with a lot of these things, I didn’t get to open them.

Ms Anne Yardley: But you did that one?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. I was very pleased.

Ms Anne Yardley: Really, it’s separate from the resources boom. It doesn’t matter what’s happening with the resources boom in a way, does it, because that school can still exist and still thrive and still be successful?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. In fact, there’s studies been done as to how to avoid what they call the Dutch disease. When you’ve got a big resources asset in your nation, actually make sure that you develop your downstream services—so, your engineering and technical services that are associated with the mining industry—and education. If we look at the Western Australian economy and the fact that it is so dependent on the mining industry, really our performance as far as attracting international students is very poor compared to the eastern states, yet the income that that brings into the state is very significant and it’s something that the state government should focus more on. In fact, the current government, I think, is. This was part of, I guess, my philosophy in saying that this will not only support the WA School of Mines and Kalgoorlie, but it will also add to economic activity for our state.

Ms Anne Yardley: Yes, for the future. 220

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Mental health. This is another facility, isn’t it—the step-up, step-down mental health facility?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It’s interesting. Kalgoorlie is a substantial regional city and it has an acute mental health facility at the hospital which was upgraded with royalties for regions. Remember, we talked about it being one of the first projects funded. We had this incredible tug of war because Graham Jacobs, of course, was made the Minister for Mental Health in the first four years of the Barnett government and promised to provide mental health accommodation in Esperance, when, really, if you’ve got an acute mental health facility and a regional hospital in Kalgoorlie, it was the only hospital in Australia that had an acute mental health facility and no step-up, step-down associated with it.

Just to explain what a step-up, step-down facility is, it’s when your mental health status is not so severe that you need to be hospitalised, but that you are maybe needing to leave your home or your family and be more closely monitored and assisted with your medication and other strategies to avoid hospitalisation, really. That’s the step up. Step down is having been in an acute part of a hospital for a mental health issue and ready for discharge but not really ready to go home, particularly if it’s back to Esperance or out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands. You need somewhere where you can go, where you can start to manage your own affairs, cook for yourself, take your medication if you need it, socialise with other people, prove to yourself and others that you’re okay to go home. That was missing in Kalgoorlie. In fact, when I was member for Mining and Pastoral and still resident in Esperance, we heard some horrific stories of mental health patients that were discharged from Kalgoorlie. They might’ve been delivered there in an ambulance or Royal Flying Doctor Service, put out on the front step and say, “Okay; you can go home” and have no means of transport, no family, no nothing to actually take care of them and get them home and transition them back into the normal community.

It’s interesting because it was while I was still member for Mining and Pastoral and I was down on the beach at Esperance and we met up with some friends—because I love my horseriding; I don’t know whether we’ve talked about that—who were camping on the beach at Esperance with their horses. We went down. It was New Year’s Eve and we’re all around the campfire and the horses are there in the glow of the coals. It was a most magnificent night. Anyway, at about 11 o’clock at night, two of these now dear friends of 221

DUNCAN INTERVIEW mine started to get stuck into me about this issue with the mental health step-up, step- down facility, just as we’re counting down to new year. Their partners are saying, “For goodness sake; give Wendy a break.” But it really stuck in my mind and so once I actually became member for Kalgoorlie and got to know these two ladies better—I will name them; they were Suzie Williams and Cheryl Ball, who were official visitors into the mental health wing and Cheryl herself had a son who had mental health difficulties. I said to them, “I’ll get you a centre. I promise.” So I really was determined to do that, but I was up against Graham Jacobs, who wanted the facility in Esperance. It took me two years. Fortunately, I happened to be sitting in Parliament one day when he was making a speech and he said, “I’ve come to realise that the facility needs to be in Kalgoorlie” and I’m going, “Oh, you beauty” and I was hoping nobody from The Esperance Express was in the gallery! I knew that we had a breakthrough.

But then, of course, Graham was demoted as the minister and Helen Morton became the minister, who I have got a great deal of time for. So then we started all over again with our lobbying and eventually we had regional cabinet visit Kalgoorlie in June–July of 2015, and Helen Morton said she was going to make an announcement and we all had to meet at this designated place. We waited. I was there. Graham was member for Eyre so it was important to him as well and she announced that there was going to be a step-up, step- down facility built in that place. We were so excited. Everybody was just thrilled to bits, because there’d been a couple of suicides in the time that I’d been campaigning and the parents of these young people that we lost were just so relieved and excited. I said to Helen, “So where did you find the money?” because it wasn’t in the budget. She said, “Oh, I had a bit of an underspend in an area of my budget and I knew how important it was.” I said, “Oh, thank you. That’s wonderful.”

The tragedy was that Helen Morton then lost her position in the ministry and the mental health ministry was taken over by Andrea Mitchell. When she was very early in the job— I’ve seen this happen a few times now—I think the public servants decided to pull a swiftie while she was still not that familiar with the portfolio, and basically said, “You can’t use operational funding for capital works” and they pulled the funding for the step-up, step- down in the subsequent year’s budget, so 2016. We were all absolutely heartbroken. It’s still not there. The Labor government did promise it and I’m hoping they’ll deliver, but we didn’t elect a Labor member. So I hope they don’t punish the goldfields by not building the step-up, step-down, because they need it.

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The thing about the need for mental health facilities is that there’s a lot of drug and alcohol issues in the goldfields across all sections of the society and people feel very alone trying to deal with them. A lot of people don’t have the wherewithal either financially or mentally to come to Perth and seek the specialist care that they need. In the budget in May 2016, royalties for regions funding went to Bunbury and Karratha. I sometimes wonder if I’d been a minister, I might’ve been able to retain that funding, because a lot goes on behind closed doors and if you’re not in there, you don’t get to fight. It’s one of the things that I felt I let my constituents down on, because I really was determined to see that happen and I thought I had it in the bag and it got pulled.

Ms Anne Yardley: Are there these facilities in other regional areas?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, there are, but only associated with the major hospitals— so Bunbury, Geraldton, and Broome have got one. There’s another level of accommodation, which is called supported accommodation, which is different. It’s more long-term accommodation for people who will never be able to really live fully on their own. There’s examples of that, not enough, through the regions. These step-up, step-down facilities, they need to be close to where family and familiar surroundings are. People don’t need to be shipped off, especially if they’re in a straitjacket in a Royal Flying Doctor plane with a police officer and a gun on his hip, and you end up down in Perth and nobody knows or cares about you; you need your family member there. They are the ones that are going to be going in batting for you when you’re going through the toughest time and least able to fight for yourself. So, yes, it was something that was very important to me, and, on similar lines, I fought long and hard for funding for the expansion of the drug rehab centre in Kalgoorlie as well. For instance, they had drug rehab beds there but no detox bed and so you can’t start rehabilitation until you’ve detoxed, but detox is a very serious period to go through and you need a proper facility for it. We did manage to get the funding for that and it stuck, so I’m quite pleased about at least that side of it, yes. But the mental health step up, step down is still a huge gap in the services in the goldfields.

Ms Anne Yardley: Quite possibly related to that are the child protection issues. You were talking about drug and alcohol problems and antisocial behaviour in Laverton. How did you deal with those?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, it is greatly associated with that and also the traditional movement of Aboriginal people through the regions at various times of the year. A lot of the remote communities in the Ngaanyatjarra lands and Tjuntjuntjara, they’re dry, they 223

DUNCAN INTERVIEW don’t have alcohol, and so the Aboriginal people often come then to places like Laverton and Kalgoorlie and so on for, basically, their men’s business. It’s usually their business time of year, but also their summer holidays. So they turn up on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie and Laverton and all meet up. Of course, they’re not dry communities, so there is a lot of alcohol consumption and to the point that children are not being properly monitored or cared for. In fact, there was a report written by an officer of the Goldfields–Esperance Development Commission, which was put through to Brendon Grylls, just highlighting some of these neglect and child protection issues, and I was aware of it and very concerned. You think: “Well, it’s not really the province of the Minister for Regional Development to be dealing with this issue.” But then it became apparent that, you know, I was hearing stories of children being pushed through the door of the community resource centre, little two-year-olds, and then the parents—this is in Laverton—disappearing off to Kalgoorlie for the week. We just couldn’t have that. Of course, then also, juveniles having nowhere safe to go to bed at night and being short of food, roaming the streets at night, breaking into things, stealing cans of paint out of the shire depot and sniffing—breaking in, graffiti, windows and so on. I had someone say to me in the Laverton store—because whenever I went into the little towns, I always used to just do a bit of a street walk, just knock on the doors and say, “How’s everybody going?” I had a little notebook—I think I told you this—I’d pull up on the outside of town and remind myself of the names of all the people in the various shops. So you go in, address them by name and ask them how they’re going. The lady in the Laverton store said, “Look, I’ve lived here for a very long time; I love Laverton, I love my friends.” But she said, “I can’t stay. I can’t stand this; I don’t feel safe. I’m at the end of my tether.” And everyone was feeling like that.

We were really fortunate in that we had an officer in charge of the police and a community development officer at the shire who decided that enough was enough, so they called a meeting of all the agencies that were coming into Laverton. They’d done a bit of an audit and said there were 45 agencies visiting Laverton dealing with various aspects of child protection, social services and so on, and they really just sent a message out to all of them: “We want you here on this day, and we want you to explain what you’re doing because this place is dysfunctional and everyone’s had enough.” Anyway, a lot of them didn’t turn up, so these guys contacted me and said, “Wendy, we’re at our wit’s end and we just don’t know what to do.” I basically said, “Well, leave it with me”, and I contacted the minister’s office in each of those situations and said, “Your officers have been invited to Laverton to help sort out this situation. It’s at crisis point; somebody’s going to get hurt. We will see vigilante action if there’s not something done. You need to make sure your officers—and a senior one at that—gets their tail up to Laverton.” 224

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Then I set about trying to bring a few ministers to town. So I brought Helen Morton, Terry Redman and the Minister for Housing at the time and the Minister for Health—a few of them had come up to just visit Laverton. Those boys, the OIC and Marty Seelander from the shire, they always talked about how Wendy brought all these ministers to town and she told those public servants to get their arse up here. But what we did then is we finally got everyone around the table and they asked me to co-chair this with the shire president, Patrick Hill, who I’d been on School of the Air with; we knew each other from way back. We sat around the table and talked about this situation and I said, “You know what’s really missing here is that we’re all whitefellas sitting around this table.” I said, “Until we get some buy-in from the local elders, we’re not going to get anywhere.” So, the next meeting we held, there were two Aboriginal people at the table. Wonderful Bruce Smith, who’s a very senior elder, and his wife, Janice Spencer, were at the end of the table, and we said, “Right, over to you. What do we need to do to fix this?” They started talking about various strategies, some of the problems and the fact that the local Aboriginal people were fed up with these people coming in and camping on the outskirts of town as well, and there needed to be a few ground rules established and proper communication and so on. So we started from there—small steps. We started engaging the Aboriginal elders to work with these young people.

Towards the end, when we tabled our community safety plan—which we’d already pretty well implemented anyway, but really just to say, “This is the strategy in case anybody wants to know about it”—we had so many Aboriginal people we had to move out of the shire council chambers into the hall next door. They were all part of it and the OIC of the police stood up and said, “We have had three consecutive juvenile crime–free school holidays.” I went into the little shop and I said, “How’s it going?” She said, “Oh my God, Wendy, it is so good, I’ve decided to buy a house.” I burst into tears. I had a little cry. I just could not believe it—could not believe it!

But it just shows you—some of the strategy that we put together there partly benefited from my trip to Canada, because I’d spoken to the chief at the reservation in Canada about how he was dealing with some of these issues, and it’s all about working with, not for, Aboriginal people. The contrast with what we achieved in Laverton and what we didn’t achieve in Kalgoorlie is stark, and it’s all about people being willing to be engaged and take responsibility. Do you know, even to the whitefellas in town, I’d say to them, “Is this really ruining your life here?” They’re going, “Yes.” I said, “So, don’t you want to see it fixed?”, and they’d go, “Yes.” I said, “Well you need to get involved! YOU need to come 225

DUNCAN INTERVIEW down to the youth centre and play basketball with these kids. You need to take them out bush to shoot a roo. You actually need to engage with these children.” One of the most beautiful things was that the kids had all been playing basketball, face painting and stuff one day, and I was walking into the shire council offices for a meeting and the kids walked past me. If this had been 12 months earlier, they would have called me a white “c” and generally abused me if I’d crossed their paths as they were going across and I was going in. They walked past: “Hello, Mrs Duncan, we’ve just been playing basketball.” They’re all smiling and laughing and their faces painted. So it’s all about feeling valued, feeling wanted and feeling, you know, loved. Yes, it was really quite a heartwarming achievement.

Ms Anne Yardley: But not an easy thing to achieve. I mean this is —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, no; it took us 18 months.

Ms Anne Yardley: Well, even so, 18 months is probably not a long time when you look at the problems that exist around the state, and we will talk about Kalgoorlie later on probably, but I wanted to ask you about the threatened closure of Aboriginal communities. What were you able to do about that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, that was a tragedy really, because the federal government had decided—let’s go back a bit. The federal government established these communities in the 1970s under Bob Hawke and his son Stephen. It was all about returning to the homelands and so on. There weren’t permanent settlements out in those regions, really, up until then, but it was all about people going back to their roots and their culture. But they’re so distant from services and from government that it’s virtually impossible to make sure that they’re running smoothly as little societies. Then, of course, the federal government decided that it was getting all too expensive to look after their key issues like housing, sewerage, water and power, and gave the state government three years’ notice that “actually we’re pulling out of this”. I’ve learnt subsequently, since Colin Barnett retired from Parliament—he made a comment just the other day that he was so aghast with some of the situations in the remote communities that he decided they should be closed, and said as much, without any planning, without consultation, without any discussion with the people affected. It really just blew the heads up of Aboriginal people. It really became a very difficult issue. It just added to everybody’s despair and aggression and uncertainty.

Fortunately, and I did have a bit to do with this, I said to Brendon Grylls and Terry Redman, “You’ve just got to step in here; you cannot turn your back on these remote communities. 226

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You can’t switch the tap off. Yes, there’s serious entrenched issues here, but you really have to put the effort in (a) to understand them and (b) to come up with a solution. You can’t just say, ‘Sorry, closing your community.’” Terry Redman did take it on. He did a hell of a lot of work on that, understanding the remote communities: which ones really needed to stay, which ones were basically just little holiday camps, which ones were not lived in most of the years. There could’ve been great savings to government just by properly auditing what was out there, but, in the meantime, as my gorgeous Aboriginal friend Wendy Dimer says, the bongo drums were going bananas and so the talk amongst all the communities, that are very strongly linked through all the Central Desert, was that they were going to be closed. A lot of them started to move to Kalgoorlie, Laverton and Leonora in anticipation of this, even though there was no housing for them, so there were flow-on issues for the regional towns.

Once Terry and Brendon decided to seriously work on these issues and had a bit of a vision of where we were going to go, I set off on a trip out through the Ngaanyatjarra lands with my wonderful, wonderful friend Bruce Smith—an Aboriginal man—as my interpreter. We just went and sat in the dirt with the elders in every remote community in my electorate and just said, “Look, settle down. This is not going to happen overnight. We will come and talk to you about what your needs are, what you want, whether it’s worthwhile keeping your community open, how many kids are in your school, is it really worth trying to spend precious government money when it could be better centralised?” I think it did settle them all down a bit, but it was a very sad situation, and I am of the belief that a lot of those communities probably do need to close. There is an incredible amount of dysfunction that is out of sight and out of mind and a lot of terrible things happen that are under the guise of cultural activities. We need to decide as a nation whether protection of innocent children is something that’s paramount in our law or do we turn a blind eye when it’s a remote Indigenous community. There’s quite a lot of debate of course happening in the media about that as we speak.

One of the most telling moments was in Leonora. There was a meeting there talking about—there’d been some suicides with young Aboriginal girls. The story has it that they’d been sexually assaulted, but then their family were threatened that if they went to the police, then more damage would happen, so you’re stuck in this awful bind of just not wanting to live anymore. We had this sort of community meeting—a lot of Aboriginal people there—and one gentleman stood up. We were talking about the healthy welfare card and trying to make sure that more money was flowing through to the families and less into drugs, alcohol and gambling, and this man stood up and said, “This is my money. It’s 227

DUNCAN INTERVIEW my human rights, blah, blah, blah”, which is fine and I get that. But, then, wonderful Bruce Smith, who is a full-blood Aboriginal man, a highly regarded elder, stood up and said, “It’s all right for your human rights, but what about the human rights of our children?”, and I thought that is what we need to hear more of.

Ms Anne Yardley: What were the people in these communities saying to you, though? What did they want to happen—did they see that some of them ought to be closed, that some of them needed to be resourced better?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it’s a very difficult question. I had a very strong relationship with Daisy Ward, who lived in the Warakurna community, and Daisy was the sister of Mr Ward, who tragically passed away in the prison van being driven from out there into Laverton in 40-degree heat with no air conditioning—absolutely outrageous treatment of a human being. Daisy works in the education department, a very culturally embedded person; she’s so determined to see the children educated, alongside cultural learnings and language remaining strong. But she said to me one day, “A lot of these parents don’t want their children educated because it means they will leave. You know it means they will leave”, yet towards the end of my time there, I saw some educated young Aboriginal people coming back into places like Wingellina and Warakurna. Their request to me— these young people in their 30s, were suddenly overwhelmed with people saying, “Oh, you can do this, you can be on this board, you can go to that meeting, you can be a councillor”—they were just saying, “Help, we need training in governance and leadership.” So, to me, it’s a glimmer of hope.

The other thing that I saw happening in the Ngaanyatjarra lands, with the assistance of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, which is a brilliant organisation, is that they started a playgroup in Warburton where the young mothers and their three and unders would come together regularly. The little ones would be given a bath and a little something to eat and then they were being read out of storybooks like Where’s Spot, the normal kids’ books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but stuck on the book in a clear plastic vinyl sticker is the Aboriginal language words for what the English said. They would be reading these books in their own language, and I think that is critically important. The other thing I loved about it—Anne Shinkfield who is running it up there, God bless her, she’s an absolute saint— when they put out the playdough, the scissors and the coloured paper or the paints or whatever, they would put some out for the little child, but they always put some out for the mother as well because they’d probably never done that. What was happening is that the children and the mothers were being educated concurrently. When they got to primary 228

DUNCAN INTERVIEW school, the teachers would say they could pick these kids that had come through the playgroup.

Ms Anne Yardley: In December 2014, the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal Constitutional Recognition was set up. Why was it important? What was that about?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was really the result of what was a pretty upsetting political pointscoring exercise from my point of view, and that is that Josie Farrer, the Aboriginal member for Kimberley, introduced a private member’s bill to bring in recognition of the Aboriginal people in the WA Constitution, or in the preamble to the Constitution. That’s what the debate was about. The bill lay on the notice paper for quite some time. My understanding is that there really wasn’t a lot of communication between Labor and the government as to when or whether this bill would be dealt with. It always happens: right towards the end of the year when the government’s trying to get its legislative program finished and everyone wants to go home—they say when the jacarandas start flowering, everyone starts to get narky and agitated—the Labor Party decided to bring this bill on and debate it and put it. The government, basically, said, “Well, it’s a bill that alters the Constitution, should we have a referendum? Should it just be inserted in the preamble? We haven’t really considered all this. You’re deliberately putting the government on the spot on something that is a very important matter.” You could see that the intention of the opposition was to really wedge and embarrass Colin Barnett and the government. The government was stuck between a rock and a hard place. They either had to agree to the bill as tabled, in which case Labor would get all the kudos for bringing it into the house, which, of course, the government doesn’t like, or refuse to support it, in which case you get accused of not supporting Aboriginal constitutional recognition, which is not that good either.

We could see this awful situation developing. I said to Terry Redman, who was leader at the time, “Terry, what we should do is send this off to committee and at least get a bipartisan look at it, buy a bit of time and try to deal with this in a bipartisan and cooperative way because it’s too important an issue to take sides on; we need to have consensus on this.” Anyway, there was a bit of toing and froing and the Nationals’ position prevailed; that is, it was agreed to send this bill to committee. Then I saw this motion going up in the house that Terry had drafted saying that X from the Liberal Party and X from Labor—it was from both houses—the Attorney General to be the chair and Brendon Grylls the representative of the Nationals. This was not long after I’d failed to be appointed a minister for the second time. I said to Terry Redman, “Terry, you know this matter is so important 229

DUNCAN INTERVIEW to me. You know that I suggested to you that this was the way forward. Why can’t I be on this committee?” He said, “Well, you didn’t ask.” I thought: “There’s a lesson for girls, isn’t it?” It was a big lesson because I guess I should’ve made my views known. I thought it would have been obvious. Anyway, I spat the dummy, which I don’t do very often. I was quite angry about it. In the end, they changed the resolution and put me on the committee, which I was really pleased about.

I knew Josie from when I was member for Mining and Pastoral. She was way out of her depth in those early years, all the way down from the Kimberley, in Parliament, that we’d sort of given each other a bit of moral support. I think Josie was pleased that I was on that committee, and Sally Talbot, who I’ve got a lot of time for, and Ben Wyatt, Michael Mischin and Murray Cowper, who’d been a police officer in the remote regions, so all claiming an understanding and empathy with Aboriginal people. We were given a very short time to come up with a report because it was right as Parliament was rising and, basically, we had to table our report—this was Labor’s requirement: this is our bill; we want it dealt with. So they, basically, said it’s got to be brought into the house when Parliament resumes in the new year. We met all over summer, often with Josie on teleconference because she is way up in the back blocks of the Kimberley. I was so impressed with the bipartisanship and willingness to cooperate between the members of the committee. I really enjoyed working with Ben Wyatt and Sally Talbot, and Michael Mischin, who people often talk about as being a very straight-laced, not empathetic type of person. He was excellent. He was chair of the committee and he had a few conflicts inasmuch as he was Attorney General and chair of the committee and there were issues about his role in protecting the state and the Constitution, as opposed to his role of the chair of the committee to try to bring this bill forward.

It was a fascinating exercise. We sought opinions from all over Australia, like Professor Anne Twomey and Bret Walker. We looked at what the other states had done. I was really pleased that we came to the conclusion that the bill that Josie presented in the first place, basically, fit the bill. Of course, she was delighted and the other really great thing was that tradition has it that if a bill is brought into the house, the government normally moves it if it’s going to pass, but Josie and the Premier jointly put this bill through the house to make those changes. The speeches on that day were really very moving and a fine example of how Parliaments should operate—one of the days that I really enjoyed being there and seeing Josie Farrer so proud of what she’d achieved. I think we were the last state just about to recognise Aboriginal people in our preamble to our Constitution. I think that the solution we came up with was excellent. 230

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Ms Anne Yardley: Were Indigenous people happy with this? How aware were they that this was happening?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, that’s an interesting question because there was some complaint that there hadn’t been full consultation with Aboriginal people. But the thing is that the bill that Josie brought into the house in the first instance she had canvassed very widely with her people. That was the question I asked, “We’re just going too quickly here. How do we know that this is what Aboriginal people support?” But she was really able to put those concerns to rest for those of us on the committee. There’s always the odd one or two who say, “Nobody asked me.” A bit like the big settlement in the south west. Consultation went on for aeons with that and still there are those who say they’re not going to cooperate because they weren’t asked. There is always that—in whatever you do in politics, you never get unanimous approval; in fact, you’re pretty happy with 51 per cent. There are a couple of really big gatherings of Aboriginal people, like the one in the Kimberley Land Council annual gathering and then there’s—is it Rudall River?—the river one that happens in and around the Pilbara where Aboriginal people come from hundreds of miles around and they do chew the fat on issues like this. The fact that there was really no backlash and a whole heap of approval, I guess, proved to us that, yes, this is something that either wasn’t that important to Aboriginal people or met their requirements.

Ms Anne Yardley: Because you’re not going to get consensus; there are so many different Aboriginal groups. They don’t speak with one voice.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No; absolutely not.

Ms Anne Yardley: So, Josie had to be confident that she was as close as possible to speaking for everyone. Is that how it felt to you?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the things that I often say when people talk about, “I wish Aboriginal people would say what they want.” I’d say, “Right, look at Europe, look at Italy, look at Switzerland, look at France, look at the Netherlands, look at Germany; they all speak different languages, they all dislike each other on occasions, and Europe’s not much different in size from Western Australia.” In the fact, Western Australia is made up of a series of Aboriginal nations that do interact and they have quite strong ties when it comes to who marries who and how they interact as 231

DUNCAN INTERVIEW they interlink their songlines, but they are separate nations, separate languages. Some of the Aboriginal people in the Ngaanyatjarra lands cite English as their fifth language. Yes, it is just asking too much to say, “Why don’t Aboriginal people speak with one voice?” It’d be like saying, “Why doesn’t Europe speak with one voice?”, and we can see the challenge there, especially with Brexit and those sorts of things. It really is one way to make you stop and think about the fact that, yes, there aren’t, in the European way of thinking, borders, but they know which is their country and which is their neighbouring nation’s country. They seek permission to travel through it and they recognise when they’re on someone else’s country. They ask permission to be there. That is something that a lot of people don’t understand.

Ms Anne Yardley: But this was well received, you believe?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Yes, it was, and it was well received in Parliament. We were all signing each other’s little book, those of us who were involved in it and really felt that it was quite a historic occasion. In fact, the government and Colin Barnett, I think, were pretty pleased to have found a way through without it being a partisan issue, it was just so important. That sort of crass political manoeuvring that prefaced this whole thing is what really started to get under my skin.

We saw another episode of it just before Parliament rose at the end of 2016, and that was in relation to the statute of limitations for children who had suffered from sexual abuse. Graham Jacobs had brought in a bill to remove that statute of limitations, which had actually been brought in by the Labor Party in its previous term because they were scared of the cost implications. The Labor Party had imposed that statute of limitations, yet in the last week of Parliament before it rose, Labor decided to bring forward Graham Jacobs’ bill in their opposition business time and put it to the vote and for exactly the same reason: they just wanted to catch the government off guard and force them to deal with a bill when they were trying to finish their own legislative program. But that bill had been sitting in the house for 12 months. Labor could have done that long before then. The Liberals could have dealt with it long before then. Nobody did and then the victims of that child abuse were all in the gallery when they brought this bill onto the floor and the government’s arguing against it—same reasons—because it hadn’t really been properly researched or drawn up by their legal draftspeople. Poor Graham Jacobs, who’s a member of the government being forced to speak in support of the opposition, so he was being really badly wedged. I had also been lobbied by the young people who’d been sexually abused down in the Esperance area. I knew them; I knew they were in the gallery and I was just 232

DUNCAN INTERVIEW aghast at what was going on. I said as much in a speech in the house. I said, “This is one of the reasons I’m retiring; this is just blatant political pointscoring and you’re dealing with people’s lives here.” Anyway, it went to the vote and I crossed the floor and voted with Graham Jacobs and the opposition. The bill didn’t succeed and Labor promised it would be the first thing they brought in if they won government, and I don’t think they’ve done it yet, have they? Or only just very recently.

Ms Anne Yardley: We might check on that and talk about it next time27.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, because it was so cynical. When you’ve got people who are victims of this in the house every day to see what’s happening to their bill—I just wanted to cry for them. It was horrible. They didn’t understand what was going on. They didn’t know what was happening, that Labor was wedging Graham Jacobs and making the government look silly; they wouldn’t have understood any of that, but you could see that it was really a very sad day.

Ms Anne Yardley: Probably a good note to end. We’ll see if we can find something more cheerful for next time, shall we?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Okay [chuckles].

[End of Wendy Duncan_12_edited]

27 Royal Assent given 19 Apr 2018 as Act No. 3 of 2018

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WendyDuncan13

Ms Anne Yardley: This is an interview with Wendy Duncan. Today is Thursday, 8 March 2018, and we’re once again at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms.

In December 2014, you were overlooked for a ministerial position during a cabinet reshuffle. Why do you believe that was?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was the time when “Tuck” Waldron decided to retire from the ministry and I think it was really to do with the fact that Colin Barnett had basically said to his cabinet that anyone who didn’t intend to stand again should stand down as a minister to allow others in to get some experience. Even though “Tuck” was a member of the Nationals, I think there was really strong pressure in the Nationals for “Tuck” to stand down because there were plenty of aspirants for the position. In fact, in 2013 after the state election, there was an assumption that “Tuck” wouldn’t continue as a minister in the second term, and really Brendon had led me to believe that I would become the minister then. Obviously, when Brendon stood down, I didn’t really put my hand up for deputy leader. I felt that we needed to have someone in that position who was intending to go on to the leader’s position, but at the time of Mia’s appointment, several members of the Nationals said to me, “Don’t worry, Wendy, we’ll back you for the next job when ‘Tuck’ retires”, and, I guess, stupidly, I trusted everybody that that was the case. But as we came closer to the time, it became apparent that there was a fair bit of jostling for position happening. Of course, Terry Redman was the leader at that stage, but I think he was very strongly under the influence of Brendon Grylls as to who the next person would be. In fact, I said that to him at one stage towards the end, when it became obvious that he was going to lose his leadership back to Brendon. I said, “The trouble with you, Terry, is that you surrounded yourself with someone else’s henchmen. Nobody was watching your back.” I would have, if I’d been given the opportunity. I have a fair bit of respect for Terry and I think he’s a good politician. He’s committed to good policy and to a bit of deep thought about where we’re going.

Anyway, it soon became quite apparent that there were forces at work within the Nationals parliamentary team that meant that I wasn’t going to be successful. First of all, there was debate within the parliamentary team as to whether the next ministerial position should be by ballot or by captain’s pick, and that was something that was totally new to me because, really, most ministerial positions in the Nationals in the past have really been by captain’s pick, except when it’s a leadership position—deputy and leader. So, anyway, it was 234

DUNCAN INTERVIEW resolved that it would be a captain’s pick, and then all the lobbying and backstabbing began. I remember talking to Colin Barnett around that time and he said, “Hopefully we’ll get you into the ministry this time, Wendy.” I said, “You’re not going to get me, Colin, because I haven’t got the numbers or the support.”

I suppose, as I said, it was partly my fault. I took my eye off the ball. I was really resting on the fact that I had been promised that that was going to be what happened next. I didn’t think that I would have to continue—big mistake. Anybody coming on in politics further down the line: don’t do it the way I did. Actually, there’s this incredible book that Annabel Crabb wrote—I don’t know if you’ve read it—called The Wife Drought, and she quotes an author in there. I can’t remember her name28 but there is a book called Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers, and one of them was being a tiara princess; that is, you work your heart out, you achieve all your goals and more, and you place your tiara on your head and you wait patiently to be rewarded. That’s basically what I did, I think, and, of course, it’s not how it works.

But I suppose one of the most hurtful things that came back to me in that whole episode is that apparently part of the reason for the people who argued against me being a minister was that I wasn’t a team player. Of course we’ve discussed already the fact that I had been separated from the team by being Deputy Speaker; I was just never there, sort of not in the in-crowd, not really part of all the discussions that were going on. It’s very hard to be a team player when you’re not with the team all the time. But the other side of the coin is that I was the one who ran the party from my home for several years because it was broke, and I was the one who gave up the safest Nationals seat in the Agricultural Region to stop the fight between Max Trenorden and Brendon Grylls and stick my political neck on the chopping block to stand for the seat of Mining and Pastoral and win, and I was the one who then gave that very safe seat up to stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie, which we’d never won before. So I again put my whole political life on the line for what I saw as the greater good of the Nationals to be able to expand its footprint into the Mining and Pastoral areas. So to hear back that I’d been described as not a team player was a knife right to the heart, and I was very upset about that. In fact, when the announcement was made that the new minister would be Colin Holt, who was the member for South West Region, and that the new parliamentary secretary would be Shane Love, who was the member for Moore—a very rare occasion on my part—I let my guard down and went into

28 Lois P Frankel, first published 2004

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW the media and just said how upset I was. I said I felt like a lioness who’d pulled down a beast, and the cubs were all squabbling over the carcass. That’s what was quoted in the media [chuckles].

But the other thing I said at the time, and it came to pass I think, is that the Nationals had returned to their roots. They now had their entire ministerial positions filled by people from the wheatbelt or the south west, and I expressed concern that the Nationals’ focus would swing to the south west and that hard-earned ground in the Mining and Pastoral Region would be lost. That’s actually what happened in the end. We lost the seat of Pilbara, we lost the seat of Kalgoorlie, and we lost that Mining and Pastoral seat. It might sound like I’m up myself, but there were a lot of people in the Mining and Pastoral Region who were very, very angry and upset about the fact that I hadn’t been given a ministerial position. In fact, I was only just the day before yesterday speaking to someone from the Kimberley who said, “We’ll never forgive them for not putting you in a ministry.” I started to then, I guess, recover, and I had some very dear friends who basically said, “Wendy, don’t foul your nest; keep your head high.” There was some talk that I would leave the party and sit as an Independent, and basically I came out and said, “No, I would never do that.” I used another analogy. I said, “When you pull the limp baby from the bathwater and give it mouth- to-mouth and it starts to breathe, it’s a bit hard to turn your back on it”, and that’s how I felt about the Nationals. I’d really saved them and brought them back from the brink, so I couldn’t abandon them. But it really did make me start to question my position in Parliament and whether I could continue to make a positive contribution.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you believe that had you done that lobbying behind the scenes and gone looking for support—if you’d played that game—do you think you might have got into the ministry, or are there other forces at work? As you say, the dominance of the south west, what about other factors?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I think there were a couple of personality clashes. There were a couple in the parliamentary team who didn’t like me, and I think partly because I was never really a yes-person. I would always say what I thought was the right thing around the table, and I would always question whether what we were doing was right for our nation and for our state, and that some of the crass politicking was something that I didn’t really approve of. So there were a few people who I think I got offside with, and I don’t mince my words. My mum has told me that I have a very sharp tongue when I’m angry, so you can upset people. I acknowledge that. If I had done some lobbying, look, I think I probably could have made a difference. There were people there who were persuadable, Terry Redman 236

DUNCAN INTERVIEW probably being one of them. I didn’t point out to him enough that he was in danger of surrounding himself with people who probably wouldn’t be loyal to him if it came to the crunch. There were others who were really not that actively involved in some of the jockeying for position and were just going to front up to the meeting and cast their vote— well, it wasn’t a vote, but who were going to give their opinion to Terry. Terry went around and sought the opinion of everybody. When he spoke to me, I again said to him, “Yes, it would be a great honour, but if it’s not going to work, I’ve still got plenty to do in Kalgoorlie”, so maybe even I didn’t seem hungry enough. I don’t deny the fact that I probably didn’t push my case hard enough.

Looking back, I thoroughly enjoyed my time as the member for Kalgoorlie, and then I just threw myself into that job in great detail and really spent less and less time with my colleagues. I really savoured the support and the respect, and even, I guess, the love of my own constituents, who really were heartbroken that I didn’t get that promotion but in many ways were very pleased to have my undivided attention [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: But had you become a minister, would you have had more clout? Would you have been able to represent your electorate better, do you believe?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, I think I would. For instance, a classic example is that step-up, step-down mental health facility. If I’d been around the cabinet table, I would have been able to say, “No, this is just not acceptable; you need to take the money from somewhere else.” To identify priorities in places like the Ngaanyatjarra lands. In the Ngaanyatjarra lands, when they were rolling out the reform process for Aboriginal communities that was in response to Colin Barnett’s desire to close communities, they started in the Pilbara and Kimberley, when really, my communities, because I’d done so much work with them, talking to them and telling them what the strategy was going to be, were basically saying, “Pick me, pick me.” They really wanted the focus of government. If I’d had that place at the table, I might have been able to say, “Look, give the goldfields a go.” The goldfields is an interesting area in government, and I wonder whether it doesn’t stem back right to the time when we went into Federation and the goldfields was of a different opinion to most of Western Australia, and later when there were secessionist movements. They are very self-sufficient and proud. It’s only in the goldfields, really, where you see people stand up and say, “My family have been here for five generations.” They’re very, very proud, independent and self-sufficient, and I think it’s actually to their disadvantage because they don’t ask for much. They are not the squeaky wheel. So there’s a lot of attention that goes into the Kimberley and the Pilbara and the wheatbelt, 237

DUNCAN INTERVIEW because cockies are always complaining. I think really the goldfields didn’t get the focus that it could have done if I’d been a minister.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look at your electorate staff and acknowledge the work that they did with you and for you.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, yes. Well, they are the member of Parliament—absolutely. You just could not do the job without them. When I started down in Esperance with Victoria Young, who was the editor of The Esperance Express, and when I first was intending to go into Parliament, she said, “Wendy, if you get the job, can I come too?” I said, “Yes, absolutely!” We started down there, Victoria and I, with nothing—no office, no equipment, no car, no nothing. We were working out of a secretarial service. She just deserved a medal. We were both learning as you go. One of the things is that you get a bit of an induction into what happens in and around Parliament, but even then, because I came in on a by-election situation, I didn’t get the same induction that most members of Parliament get. But as far as running your office and how to deal with your expense claims and how to make contact into the public service and what resources are available to you, it’s just the blind leading the blind. Victoria did a brilliant job. Alongside her came Sarah Downe, whose husband was working at the port as an environmental officer. She was a teacher, but her grandfather [Hon Ian Medcalf] had been a member of Parliament, so she gave us a bit of an insight.

But what happened once I’d finished as member for Agricultural Region and looked like I was going to be standing for the Mining and Pastoral Region—I think I might have mentioned in a previous interview that I was pretty good friends with Shelley Archer in the Parliament. Shelley Archer in her valedictory speech basically made a comment about, “I’m passing the pearl of the Mining and Pastoral Region to Wendy Duncan.” Included in that was her electorate officer in Broome. Shelley said, “This young woman is the most amazing person and you will never look back if you have her on your staff.” But, of course, she’s in Broome and I was in Esperance. Anyway, she took her redundancy, so she had to take the mandatory whatever it was—six months or so. Then I went up and met with her and discovered that she had five children—two profoundly deaf and two autistic, and the oldest one was, I guess —

Ms Anne Yardley: Able-bodied.

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Able-bodied, but still a bit challenging on occasion. Gorgeous kids—gorgeous kids! She wanted to work from home so that she could manage all this. I’m thinking, “My goodness me. How is she going to do this?” But she impressed me. A mother of four children, I knew what it takes to run a household. She seemed to have that all together. She was signing [in sign language] and tutoring in that, and so on. So I said, “Okay, fine; you can work from home. I’ll set you up with your computer and I’ll get the internet and separate stuff into your office and let’s see how it goes.” I put her on probation. Well, I have never seen such capacity for work in my life. She was unbelievably good.

The other thing is, she’s incredibly smart. She started off just helping me with my travel arrangements and my finances, and then I started to teach her to write media statements and correspondence and that. All of my staff laugh about the fact that I’m just so deadly on grammar and spelling; they just cannot get anything past me. I would give it back to them and say, “Look, I’m really sorry. It’s great, but it can’t go out with these errors in it. You need to try and proofread before you give it to me.” They would laugh amongst themselves. But Frances, she’d write something which just wasn’t how I wanted it and I’d rewrite it and I’d put it back to her, and then the next time she wrote something for me, you could see that she just really wrote how I wanted it. She would put quotes into media statements that sounded like me speaking. She’d get together these huge databases. The interesting thing is that because she’d been with a member for Mining and Pastoral with Shelley, she already had excellent contacts out into the Ngaanyatjarra lands and into the Pilbara and Kimberley—right through—so she already had all those schools and local governments and health authorities and councillors. We formed an incredibly strong bond. I just could not survive without her. The thing is because she was working from home, we’d be talking to each other at six o’clock in the morning and then she’d go off and take the kids to school or do the sport after school and then we’d be talking to each other at 10 o’clock at night, because, as we’ve mentioned before, I was often at Parliament until midnight.

The other thing is we both have strange brains. We are both blessed with quite good brains. So we’d sit down for a diary discussion, I wouldn’t even need to have my diary up in front of me and I’d say, “Oh, that’s a Wednesday and I’m doing such and such the day after”, and she’d go, “Yes, you are!” She would be blown away, but then she would remember a lot of stuff as well. A lot of the things that we did together were often unsaid; we just knew how each other thought. In fact, sometimes I’d ring her and say, “I want to do X and Y, and then we’ll go to there and I’ll do this.” I’d give her a big list of things that I’d decided I wanted to do, and then a couple of days later, I’d say, “So, how did you go 239

DUNCAN INTERVIEW with organising those meetings?”, and she’d say, “I didn’t do it.” I’d go, “Oh, why?” She said, “Because you’ve taken too much on that week.” Bless her, she was probably right. There were times where she’d hear me running off at the mouth and decide, “Wendy’s just thinking out loud; I’m not going to do anything about this until I know for absolutely certain what was going on.”

The other thing that was so funny was managing Ian, my husband, who was always fairly reticent to get dragged into things. She’d say, “Now, Ian really needs to come to that”, and I’d go, “Oh, gosh; okay. I’ll put it to him.” A little while later she’d say, “So what’s Ian say?” I said, “I haven’t got an answer from him yet.” Then a day or so later she’d say, “I’ve spoken to Ian and he’s coming [laughs].” She’d sort him out, once he’d extended the period where he could prevaricate for no longer! She was excellent and really, probably, was my main— in the end, I made her my office manager, so she really ran everything for me that wasn’t front of house, wasn’t people coming through the front door.

Down in Esperance I had two wonderful officers job-sharing once Victoria moved on—she moved to Perth—who were highly intellectual, lovely people. Dorothy Henderson and Margie Thomas-Close were just so good at dealing with the people who’d come through the door, doing the research, contacting the departments, writing the letters for me to sign, and Frances just organised all my travel and my media and my contacts and Parliament— the questions and committees and all that sort of thing.

But when I was elected to the seat of Kalgoorlie, of course Broome wasn’t in my electorate anymore. I decided that I just could not live without Frances [laughs]. That’s how dependent I was on her. So we thought, “Okay, she’s been working remotely anyway.” When I moved to Kalgoorlie, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet said, “Right. So what are you doing about staff?” I said, “Well, Frances, I want to keep her on—she works remotely—and I’ll put an officer on in Kalgoorlie.” They sent the contract up to Frances and she duly signed it. Because Frances had the most incredible relationship with all the staff here at Parliament, because she’d been working with them forever, she managed to get the contract back, signed by everybody, which normally you don’t—it’s within your rights; it’s your employment contract. Probably about 12 months passed, and suddenly the Department of the Premier and Cabinet realised that she was in Broome. The election was in March. So the following January we get a letter from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet to say, “Your electorate officer needs to either resign or move to Kalgoorlie.” I said, “But she’s been working with me for 12 months and on her contract you could see that she’s located in Broome and working offsite.” “No, them’s the rules”, basically. 240

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Anyway, I said to Frances, “Well, I’m going to fight this to the top.” Because she was so good at her job, she had all the email trails and the contracts. We did; we went right up to the director general level. I’m sitting around the table there with them, and in the end I said, “So she’s not going to resign and she’s not going to move to Kalgoorlie, so what are you going to do about it? Are you going to dismiss her for bad behaviour? What are you going to do?” Anyway, time passed and they came back and said, “We’ll allow her to stay for the term of your time as a member of Parliament, but we’re not going to let anybody else do it.” So that was a big relief to us all.

Ms Anne Yardley: But, seriously, was there not a disadvantage in the fact that she wasn’t in Kal, particularly in a place like Kalgoorlie?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, no, because you see I had my electorate officer in Kalgoorlie, who we’ll talk about in a minute—an amazing lady. The thing is that my electorate wasn’t just Kalgoorlie; my electorate was Leonora, Laverton, Leinster, Cosmo Newberry, Warburton, Warakurna, Ngaanyatjarra. Those people wouldn’t be coming through the door in Kalgoorlie either, but they all knew Frances. In fact, there were times that I would fly Frances down from Broome and she would come with me out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands and to Leonora and Laverton, and they would greet her as if she was a long-lost friend. She was just so good at making that personal contact. Her responsibilities were dealing with the remote communities and those remote towns—Leonora, Laverton and the lands—and dealing with all the parliamentary side of my commitments and my finances and media. None of those you actually needed to be present in the electorate office for. The only drawback, I think, is that it meant because you’re only allowed two electorate officers, it meant that my officer that was in Kalgoorlie was in the office alone a lot of the time. But there is what they call a large electorate allowance. If you’ve got a really big electorate, you’re allowed to have two offices but only two employees—officers. It’s not unusual for an electorate officer to be alone in the office. In fact, there’s a whole heap of security, unfortunately, that are in the offices. The other thing, of course, is that she developed an incredibly close relationship with my electorate officer in Kalgoorlie, to the point that they are still dear friends today. I think that worked. The only drawback was that there wasn’t that second physical presence in the office.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did your electorate officer manage, cope, on her own in Kalgoorlie?

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I was an electorate officer before I went into local government. Back then, members of Parliament were only allowed one officer. You really just have to deal with the workload and make sure that you manage your own personal safety—make sure that the doors are closed and so on. It’s certainly not a lonely job, because, unbelievably—and this is something I found amazing when I worked in an electorate office— there’s always someone coming through the door and the phone ringing. They’re very busy places.

The electorate officer that I employed in Kalgoorlie was Mandy Reidy. Mandy is also an amazing girl. The thing is that a lot of electorate officers people employ are, you know, with masters degrees and can write research papers and speeches and so on, but what I really liked were the people who had great education in life. Mandy had been a chef, she’d been a life coach, she’d worked in disability services, she’d worked in tourism, she’d worked in the prison, with Aboriginal people in the education and training side of things, and her husband was a fifth generation goldfielder. She knew the community inside out. Of course, a fair proportion of the people who come through the door in an electorate office in a place like Kalgoorlie are Aboriginal. She knew them all. They knew her; they respected her. They didn’t really make her feel unsafe. Mandy, she was an amazing person. She would go out and visit people in their homes if she was worried about them. She went above and beyond. She was a city councillor and chair of the tourism organisation in her own right. They’re the sort of people you need in your electorate office, who know how the community ticks. She’s very, very smart as well and just able to pick up the other stuff you don’t learn at university; you learn it by doing it.

So, Mandy Reidy was there. She had two kids when she first started with me that were school age and so she was job-sharing with another lovely girl, Beth Richardson, who became unwell. She did a great job, but she had to leave. Then we put on this young girl who had fallen foul of the law, as a young single mother desperate to try and get herself out a very difficult situation. She was only 26 and had a criminal record. She came to my office and she was quite up-front about it. She said, “I just made a really big mistake.” She’d embezzled a bit of money. I said, “Well, I’m willing to give you a chance here. We can turn your life around.” And that’s exactly what happened. Under the guidance and support of Mandy in the office and Frances up in Broome, she settled down and she worked really hard. She proved herself that what she’d done was a one-off thing. She went on from my office to a level of work that meant that she was going to be able to be a good parent to her two little children. The father was not a nice type and basically missing in action. I could tell that. I think we probably turned her life around for her. I really like to do 242

DUNCAN INTERVIEW things like that. That’s really what we did, even when we were up on the pastoral station. My husband and I would take in young people who were perhaps going off the rails and needed a bit of discipline and a bit of somebody to believe in them. Yes, so that was good.

Ms Anne Yardley: In, I think it was, 2016—something that you weren’t able to do anything about was when young Elijah Doughty was knocked off his motorbike. It resulted in riots— all sorts of things happened. What were you aware of? What was your perspective on what had happened and your understanding of how Kalgoorlie people behaved?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was how the media behaved, really, which was the biggest part of the problem. Even you saying that it resulted in riots—it was one incident of behaviour in front of the courthouse that lasted about 20 minutes. It was all over the paper for weeks that there’s riots in Kalgoorlie, and so it was really trying to manage that. I was not in Kalgoorlie at the time. The interesting thing is that we’d been having a terrible time in Kalgoorlie with juvenile justice issues and with young people coming before the law and not being properly dealt with and ending up back out on the streets and reoffending. You could tell the community was getting more and more angry. Of course, my understanding of a lot of this is that a lot of those young people were coming from very dysfunctional families, a lot of them have underlying problems like foetal alcohol syndrome or hearing difficulties or things that really make it hard for them to understand. In fact, it had been brought to my attention in Leonora that everyone was just so dissatisfied with how the magistrates and the justice system were dealing with these young people, saying, “Really, they are only looking at two options, which is jail or bail”, when in fact there were a lot of programs in between that these children could’ve been referred to by the magistrates that would help to divert them and help them back to a better path, or to at least find out what it is that was going on in their lives.

In fact, that was one of the things that we did in Laverton with these young kids. Instead of saying, “Why did you do that?”, say to these kids, “So, what is going on in your life? How are things with you?” There was this undercurrent that we all could feel was going on in Kalgoorlie, because there was a lot of theft, a lot of antisocial behaviour, a lot of damage to property, and really not much attention to: how do we deal with this? In fact, I’d tried to meet with the magistrates to say, “Listen, I can recommend to you these programs that will make a difference.” They refused to meet with me because of the old separation of powers issue, of course. So, then I tried to get the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder or someone else to meet with the magistrates, but they didn’t really see it as a high priority. In the end, I came to Perth to meet with Chief Justice Wayne Martin. I just said to him, “Look, this is 243

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the problem as I see it. I can’t talk to your magistrates but somebody needs to, to say that they really need to be a little bit more imaginative with how they are dealing with these issues, because sooner or later there’s going to be a vigilante response.”

Anyway, I’d flown down to Esperance to meet with the CEO of the Goldfields–Esperance Development Commission, and the night before, Mandy, my gorgeous electorate officer in Kalgoorlie, had rung me, and she said, “I’m hearing on the grapevine that things are not going to be good tomorrow.” This is at the courthouse. She said, “I’m hearing that it’s going to get really ugly.” So I rang the officer in charge, the superintendent of police in Kalgoorlie, because I had his mobile number, and I said to him, “Things are going to go pear-shaped tomorrow, we have it on pretty good authority.” “No, no; we’ve got it all under control—no worries. We’ve spoken to the family; everything’s fine.” I said, “Well, that’s not my understanding.” Anyway, I flew to Esperance. The minute I landed my phone ran hot. It was the media saying, “There’s riots in Kalgoorlie.” So, I actually chartered a light aircraft and flew straight to Kalgoorlie and got together with the mayor of the city and the head of police and Elijah’s grandfather. We all stood there together and just said, “We need to just calm down. This is not what we need. This is going to damage you as much as anybody.” Elijah’s grandfather was saying that. The biggest thing to deal with was the media; they were just horrible and trying to find somebody angry to talk to. We were just trying to get everybody to calm down.

Ms Anne Yardley: Because it did start off as a peaceful protest, didn’t it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it did. Interestingly, the reason that we heard that it was going to become out of control is that people came in from out of town. People came— from the wheatbelt and further up. There was some conjecture that they were the ones that started to stir things up. You will see that incredible photo of that young girl, with her arms out, standing in front of a police officer, saying, “Don’t throw things at the police. We don’t want this; this is supposed to be peaceful.” She was a relative of young Elijah. She’s an 18-year-old standing there in front of this crowd trying to settle everybody down. It happened, as I said, within 20 minutes, but a lot of damage was done.

The thing that really upset me about the whole thing is that we were working hard to try and pull the community together and settle everybody down. Unbeknown to us at the time, but the Minister for Child Protection, Andrea Mitchell, had flown into Kalgoorlie. She was sitting in her aircraft out at the airport because it had some mechanical issue. She didn’t even come into town to talk to anybody. We didn’t even hear from any government 244

DUNCAN INTERVIEW ministers about, “How can we help?” or “What’s happening?” In the end, I sent a text message to Colin Barnett and said, “Would you like a report on the Kalgoorlie situation for cabinet on Monday?” Eventually, I get a message from his office saying, “Colin Barnett would like to speak to you at seven o’clock” or whatever. So I gave him a briefing. I said, “The thing that is glaringly obvious here is that you guys are missing in action—nothing from Peter Collier, nothing from the minister for family and children’s services.” Then we get wind that Michael Mischin, the Attorney General, was flying into town to have a look at the broken windows in the courthouse. I sent a message to his office. I said, “For goodness sake, don’t you dare come into this town without speaking to myself and Dave Grills first, because you need to have a briefing. If you walk into that situation up there at the courthouse, where all the media are camped, you will be fried.” Fortunately, they made five minutes to see us before he went up there. I said to him, “Now, these are the issues that you need to understand and some of the questions”, in particular about some of the racist stuff that was being said on Facebook. I said, “Really, we need to put a stop to this. We’ve been told by the police that they can’t do anything about it.” Michael Mischin said, “Yes, they can, Criminal Code”, blah, blah, blah. We got it up on the computer and he found the section. I said, “Well, read that out to your police officers and to your court officers”, and the Facebook stuff stopped overnight. The person who had this Kalgoorlie name-and-shame Facebook page took the page down. There was terrible stuff on there about, “Let’s run over another one”, and all this sort of thing. Just terrible, terrible comments that were inflaming the situation.

But I stayed there, and Ian and I went to where they had a vigil where young Elijah was knocked over, and all the Aboriginal people were there. Ian and I went down there and they were just sitting around a campfire singing hymns and just talking to everybody. We stayed there for quite some time. The City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder set up what they call a sorry camp. They brought in portable toilets and shelters and water and food. Coles and Woolworths donated sausages. Nobody heard about that in the media. The whole town gathered around to support these grieving families. The gentleman who committed the crime was whisked out of town and his family were as well. The rest is history as to whether or not he got a just sentence, but —

Ms Anne Yardley: I think it was only three years; wasn’t it?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, and he is due out on parole now. But it was a sort of his word against theirs and —

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Ms Anne Yardley: In the end it was just a dangerous driving causing death, rather than anything more serious.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: The thing is that Aboriginal people were calling for a murder charge and —

Ms Anne Yardley: Or manslaughter?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, or manslaughter. I’m no lawyer, but there really had to be demonstrated a more serious level of intent, I think. But the fact that it happened at all is heartbreaking.

The thing that I guess is even more heartbreaking is that I think the response in the city of Kalgoorlie–Boulder from all the agencies and the police and the city was very bureaucratic and very slow. I talked to the mayor and the CEO and the superintendent of police about the strategies that we put in place in Laverton and the difference we’d made. But I think because I’d already announced my retirement and because I had a very, very sick grandchild that I was spending time with, I wasn’t able to really put the usual sort of pressure on that I had in the past as the local member of Parliament; for instance, in Laverton, where I just demanded that ministers come, or with that doctor shortage where I could really take a lead role and start to bang some heads together. I just wasn’t capable at that time; I just had too much going on on another front. I think that the city of Kalgoorlie– Boulder—and that’s not the local government organisation but the actual city itself—was probably the poorer. I don’t think they have really pushed forward on dealing with that issue. There was all this shock, horror and, yes, we need a youth justice centre and we need an audit of all the work that’s been done with the various agencies, and, yes, perhaps we need some one-on-one focus on particular dysfunctional families—all great stuff—but I don’t think any of it happened. So lots of talk and no action. That’s when people just become very cynical and disillusioned.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you believe the strategies that you did put in place in Laverton, which is a much smaller place —

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you believe that would have been feasible in Kalgoorlie–Boulder, and would it have made the difference? 246

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: You’re absolutely right; it would have been far more difficult. But the most important thing about what we did in Laverton is that it was led by the Aboriginal people, and that’s not what’s happening in Kalgoorlie. There’s a couple of Aboriginal leaders, but the thing is that they’ve been chosen by whitefellas as the Aboriginal leaders because they’re eloquent or they’re very good at their public image. But are they the people that the Aboriginal people turn to and listen to? Do they really have that connection back into their community? It takes an incredible amount of trust and courage to say, “Okay, over to you. Who are you going to put forward for me to talk to about this issue? Who is going to tell me what the solution is? Over to you”, that takes a great leap of faith, instead of to say, “Fred Nerk, he’s a good bloke. I can talk easily to him and he’s an Aboriginal man. We’ll have him.” There’s that difference. In fact, the selection of Aboriginal leaders by the whitefellas is what gets up the nose of Aboriginal people more than anything. They ended up, really, starting behind the eight ball, because they just didn’t really start in the right place.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s go back to you and your decision to retire, which probably happened over a little period of time. What was that process? You’d had a couple of disappointments. When did you decide “this is it: I’m not going to contest the next election”?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think it was very early in 2015. So after I missed out on the ministry at the end of 2014, I decided that I wasn’t going to go on, but I didn’t tell anybody. Nobody knew. I just really threw my heart and soul into my electorate and my work there, and became more and more sort of distant from my parliamentary colleagues. I was enjoying my work as Deputy Speaker and just really doing that, but spending most of my time in my electorate. That’s when I did that fabulous trip out to the Ngaanyatjarra lands. I really took a lot of time to work with my constituents and get their issues sorted.

I think, too, it was an interesting episode in that I was not terribly well for some of that time, because we discovered—and it took a very long time to discover—that the electorate office in Kalgoorlie had a terrible problem with damp and mould. In fact, it had been something that had been troubling the previous member of Parliament, but nobody was going to fess up about it. Slowly but surely we all became unwell with sinus and headaches and tiredness after you’d been in the office for a while. I ended up having to have an operation on my sinuses, and I’d never had sinus trouble before in my life. Eventually, I was copied into an email trail, which I think was accidentally on purpose, by a building management 247

DUNCAN INTERVIEW person in Kalgoorlie, which highlighted to me that there was a problem in our office and it had been ongoing for some time. So I just decided to stop talking to Building Management and Works about this issue and talked to HR and said, “We’re just not working in here anymore.” So we closed the office and moved out for a couple of months while they repainted and recarpeted, and put new air conditioners in and an air-cleaning system. We moved back in with great hope, but in fact it still wasn’t that good. It really turned out, I think, that there wasn’t proper footings in the building and there was a lot of damp coming up through the crumbling concrete floor.

So I wasn’t firing on all cylinders, and really then started to think, “Well, I don’t think I’m ever going to be a minister and so really I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career here.” My colleagues in the National Party weren’t respecting the things I had to say anymore, so I wasn’t going to have any further strong influence in policy. I thought: “Well, that is really my strength and the area I get the greatest enjoyment from.” People were saying to me, “Oh, Wendy, if you win next time round you might be the first female Speaker of the Parliament.” I would look them straight in the face and say, “I actually couldn’t think of anything worse.” It’s all very well to aim for some high office, but if it’s not what you’re interested in doing—I’d been the first female president of the Nationals and the first female Leader of the Legislative Council of the Nationals. I’d been there, done the whole first female bit, so it wasn’t something that made me strive to achieve that.

Also, we really had found ourselves in a difficult situation on the domestic front, because my husband, God bless him, had worked really hard to put together sort of a consortium to harvest all the stranded Tasmanian blue gums in Esperance. They’d been relinquished by Elders and all these farmers were left with these valueless Tasmanian blue gums on their properties and the huge expense of clearing them to bring the property back to production. In fact, they started bulldozing and burning them, which broke my husband’s heart because he’d been managing the planting of those. He ended up project manager of this harvest of the Tasmanian blue gums, which meant that he was in Esperance most of the time and I was in Kalgoorlie most of the time, and we were seeing less and less of each other and we really couldn’t see how that was going to change. So, eventually we decided that we had had enough of being apart; 14 years of living separate lives. I mean, we talked to each other three or four times a day on the phone, but we just really couldn’t see how we were going to put this marriage back together with him working in Esperance and me working in Kalgoorlie. So we jointly agreed, fairly early in the piece of 2015, that I would announce my retirement at the end of that year to enable whoever was going to stand in 2017 plenty of time to campaign, so, yes. 248

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Ms Anne Yardley: How difficult is it to find the right time to do that so that you are fair to someone who might come in, but that you’re also not marginalised by your party anyway, who think: “There’s no point; she’s retiring. She’s not going to be there.” How do you find the right time to do that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, look, that’s a very good question. It’s a very good question. I was so determined that my constituency would know first. They’re the people who I know and love and respect, and they welcomed me so magnificently as their member for Kalgoorlie. I suppose I was already feeling marginalised anyway, but that is a very good question because, yes, that is what happens. I had in mind who was going to probably put their hand up to stand, and that’s Tony Crook, who was previously member for O’Connor and was toying with the idea of standing for O’Connor again. Of course, we had a federal election due in mid-2016, and I thought: “Well, if Tony’s going to put his hand up to stand for O’Connor, he needs to know.” What he really preferred, what he was always aiming for, was to be the member for Kalgoorlie. He won O’Connor quite by accident; it was all part of our name-recognition strategy. So I thought: “Well, I have to let Tony know in good time so he isn’t already committed to O’Connor.”

Frances was in on the secret of course; we just shared everything. We booked the chamber of commerce annual Christmas party business after hours. What happens is that once a month a business will host all the chamber of commerce members —

Ms Anne Yardley: This is in Perth or in Kalgoorlie?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: In Kalgoorlie. Once a month, at their place of work, everyone gets together and socialises, and then that person at that place of work gets to say a bit about their business and how it all works. So we booked the Christmas party, which was 6 December. I said, “Right, that’s where I’m going to do it, because I’ll be with all the key people of Kalgoorlie–Boulder. The journalists will be there. I’ll make sure that my key supporters and branch people will be there. They will know before anybody else, really.” So that’s what we did.

I had my two gorgeous friends, who have been absolute bricks of supporters for me— Jane Coole, who I mentioned before with Curtin University, and Louise Paterson. She was a shire councillor at the Shire of Esperance and very good at media and PR. Those two have often guided me when I had difficult times. So we decided that what we would do is 249

DUNCAN INTERVIEW just issue a media statement and only do interviews with the local media, not any Perth, nobody else.

I met together with Tony Crook and Dave Grills, who was my upper house member, that afternoon to let them know what I was going to announce. At five to six or something, I sent a text message to all my parliamentary colleagues to say, “I’m about to announce my retirement.” Then, as tradition has it, I got on the back of a ute and made a speech to all the gathered people at the chamber of commerce and industry function and said that I was announcing my intention not to stand again. I was gobsmacked. There were gasps from around the room. People burst into tears. I’m thinking: “Oh my goodness me! Perhaps I’ll change my mind [chuckles]!” Then there was all this contact from the media: “Is it because you’re not a minister?” I’m just saying, “You’ve got my media statement and I’ve done an interview.” I did a fabulous interview with ABC Kalgoorlie, and I said, “Refer to that”, really.

The other thing that I really regret, I suppose, is that I made the commitment on the back of the ute at the end of 2015 that that doesn’t mean that Wendy Duncan’s taking her foot off the accelerator; in 2016, I’ll keep working my heart out. As it turned out, 2016 was my annus horribilis; I had the worst year. I had a couple of health dramas, which meant I ended up in an ambulance off to the hospital. I had my granddaughter born with serious health issues. Then I got pneumonia and then I broke my leg! Then we found ourselves at the end of 2016 and I had done hardly anything [laughs], so I felt quite disappointed about that.

Ms Anne Yardley: What were the things that you wanted to achieve [chuckles] in that year, but didn’t do it? Might I just say that some of those health issues do go back to that office, don’t they?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Well, the chest issues—I’ve really still got them. Each year that I was working out of that office, in winter I’d get these dreadful coughs—a cold with awful chest infections—and eventually went down with pneumonia in 2016. Yes, I absolutely think it’s to do with the office. I’m feeling so much healthier now, but still recovering. And, you know, you sort of think about that. I don’t think members of Parliament get workers’ compensation; I’ve never really investigated it. But certainly it did, I think, affect my ability.

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But what didn’t I do? I probably could have fought harder over the step-up, step-down thing. I feel I could have done more in relation to Elijah Doughty and the needs of Kalgoorlie–Boulder in that issue. I think Leonora was suffering just so badly with youth suicide and so on, and I really didn’t come to grips as well with that as I did with the Laverton thing. I was inaugural chair of Headspace in Kalgoorlie—an area that I really had a great deal of interest in, to try and deal with youth mental health issues and bullying and so on—and really just couldn’t give that the time that it needed. In the end, I resigned as chair and just said, “Look, really, you need somebody who can give you the time that this job will take.” So, yes, I still did my job but I was away a lot and my staff were on their own in the office. I probably just didn’t do the over and above that I had been used to in the past.

Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s have a look at how you reflect on being a woman in Parliament, because you’ve said that you believe it’s more difficult for a woman to be elected to the lower house because of the bias of voters. What do you mean by that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think maybe things are changing. That comment I made was back when I first put my name on the Agricultural Region ticket. The thing is that you get elected for your party, rather than as a person. The upper house ticket is really made up of how many quotas of votes you get, and then each person down the ticket gets a seat if you’ve got extra quotas. With the Legislative Assembly it’s all about the individual, and I found it incredibly different campaigning as a Legislative Assembly candidate compared to the Legislative Council, because in the Legislative Council it’s all about what your party stands for, what your policies are, and what as a team we can achieve. When you’re standing in the lower house, well, in Kalgoorlie it’s about who I am, where was I born, how many kids I had, was I a greenie, was I anti–uranium mining, and where was I going to live? That was the funny thing. Did I tell you this? I moved to Kalgoorlie in 2012 as a demonstration of my commitment to the seat, and I said at every opportunity, “I will be living here. You know if I’m elected, I’ll live here.” So I moved to Kalgoorlie in 2012. My husband didn’t; he had his day job in Esperance. Anyway, I won and I still was living in Kalgoorlie in 2013 and my husband still had his day job in Esperance and was coming up a lot—four-hour drive—for all the functions and events, and traipsing up to Laverton with me and so on in his downtime. Then, eventually, it all got too difficult and he—it’s complicated with his work situation, but he had a hiatus in his work down in Esperance, so he moved to Kalgoorlie in 2015, and everyone said, “How wonderful. You’ve moved to Kalgoorlie.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, it’s great, Ian’s here.” I said, “Well, I’ve always been here.” “Oh, yes, but now Ian’s here.” You think: Would people have said that 251

DUNCAN INTERVIEW if it was a male? Why is it that I didn’t officially move to Kalgoorlie until my husband was actually living with me there? That’s one example.

But the other thing is I think that you do have to present yourself; you do have to be judged as an individual, particularly in the regions. And maybe in the blokey goldfields, if you’re a girl, you really have to work a whole lot harder. One of the incredible things is that I was 59 when I was preselected to stand for the seat of Kalgoorlie, and the Liberal booth workers were told to say, “Don’t vote for Granny Duncan. Don’t vote for Granny Duncan!” Yet they have just preselected a 59-year-old in Cottesloe to replace Colin Barnett, who happens to be a male, and nobody is saying, “Don’t vote for Poppy Honey”, are they? So there’s this issue of the fact that I was female and, apparently, old. I was shocked. I had never thought of myself as anywhere near being a granny. People were saying, “Well, how are you going to cope? How are you going to drive on those outback roads?” I said, “For goodness sake, I was brought up out here. I can change a tyre!” In fact, it was so funny. We were driving out to Cosmo Newbery and it was at the time when I wasn’t a member of Parliament anymore; I had resigned from Mining and Pastoral and wasn’t yet elected as member for Kalgoorlie. I was in my own vehicle, which was a Prado just the same, and we got a puncture halfway between Laverton and Cosmo Newbery, and I had John Bowler on board. He’s standing there and he’s going, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” I said, “Well, we change the tyre, John!” And he goes, “Oh, right.” I’m saying, “So, you don’t know how to change a tyre?”, and he goes, “No.” “Oh, okay.” I had white pants on and a nice top, and I managed—I put down a chaff bag—to change that tyre without getting dirty. John’s going, “Whoa, Wendy!” People were saying, “Oh, gosh, how’s she going to cope on those gravel roads and changing tyres and won’t she be frightened at night?” So you have to just deal with all those questions that people don’t ask blokes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you think it’s harder, then, for a woman to be elected to a regional area?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Yes, it is, because there is a huge amount of travel, and I think about Mia Davies. She found herself broken down on the side of the road out in the back of the wheatbelt somewhere and no mobile phone connection. In fact, she does say that at that time she was quite frightened. She wasn’t quite sure who the next vehicle was that would be coming along.

I think, too, the fact that you’re away from home so much more, and so it really does disrupt the family life. I can quite honestly say that for that 14 years that I was involved in politics, 252

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I just stopped cooking and stopped entertaining because you just don’t have time to know what’s in your fridge and whether it’s time-expired. Even though Ian really magnificently rose to the occasion, I’d get text messages. I’d be sitting in the house at Parliament and get a message saying, “Now, tell me how you did that roast chook”, or, “I want the spag bol recipe.” It was so funny, because he started off—and my son was still at home, and they would joke about how many different ways to cook sausages. By the time we finished, Ian still takes his turn every second night to cook, and it’ll be a stir-fry, a spag bol, a roast chicken or crispy-skinned fish. But it really was very disruptive, and I think for men that’s not quite so bad. In just keeping the home running, it’s the sorts of things that perhaps men don’t really keep their finger on the pulse of.

Ms Anne Yardley: I want to come back to that point, but I was actually thinking more about being elected. Are you as a woman taken seriously in the bush, in the regional and rural areas, or is it a blokey culture that wants to vote in—they want a bloke?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Look, I think they do want a bloke. One of the things I did very early in the piece was make it quite clear that I wasn’t going to be pushed around. Unless you do that, I think you probably start off and fall further behind. That example that I think I mentioned to you about me sitting at the table with all the people talking about the doctor shortage and they’re all just saying, “Great idea, not my responsibility.” Well, I drew myself to my full height and just gave it to these people very seriously and very strongly, and they sat back and took notice.

I’ll tell you where I really noticed it is that every year the chamber of commerce and industry does a budget breakfast. So, after the budget, the member of Parliament flies back and gets grilled about the budget. Strangely, I actually quite enjoyed budget time. I don’t have any difficulty getting my head around some of those stats, particularly some of the economic statistics about the state of the economy. I remember going to one of these budget presentations where Ljiljanna Ravlich came, and they just gave her hell. They just went up one side of her and down the other, and she was, poor darling, out of her depth. So I was terrified about this appearance in front of the chamber of commerce and industry and all the business leaders of Kalgoorlie, 90 per cent of whom were men. It’s usually the next morning after budget. You get the budget at two o’clock in the afternoon. You frantically try and read it, and I put together a PowerPoint. So I’m up until about one or two in the morning preparing it, but then the flight to Kalgoorlie leaves at six o’clock, so you have to be at the airport by five, you have to get out of bed at four. There I am; I’ve done all that and I’ve got my PowerPoint, and I get to the chamber of commerce and going away 253

DUNCAN INTERVIEW with my presentation. The mayor, Ron Yuryevich at that point in time, said, “Well, Kalgoorlie–Boulder misses out again!” I said, “Actually, they don’t.” I went back at him and I said, “That is a very unhelpful comment that you’ve made, and tell me anyway what have you missed out on, and by the way where’s your strategic plan?” I threw it back on him and everyone is going, “Whoa!” The front page of the paper the next day was sort of, “Duncan gets stuck into the mayor”. From there on, the chamber of commerce post-budget breakfast—sometimes it was lunch—was a sold-out event. Everybody loved it and the questions and answers were deep and sensible, and the CEO Hugh Gallagher would say, “Oh, fabulous event again, Wendy”, but it was just because I’d taken the time. This is the thing, you’ve got to know your stuff; don’t go into something unprepared. So I’d taken the time to prepare myself and I wasn’t going to be bullied.

Ms Anne Yardley: And you gained their respect.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. But they are bullies, and you really just have to pick it early. Even if you let the first one go through, you’re back on the back foot.

Ms Anne Yardley: I think what you’re saying is that it’s harder for a woman.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I think so. I look now at some of the media that the current member of Parliament is doing in Kalgoorlie—because we still tune into ABC Goldfields– Esperance through the Listen app—and some of the interviews are very shallow and not that researched and not that full of understanding, and yet there’s no howls of dismay from anywhere, whereas I always felt that if I didn’t know my stuff, you’d be really pounced on good and early. So, yes, I think they do get away with more. He’s such a great bloke, everybody loves him, he’s a footy coach —

Ms Anne Yardley: So the bar is set higher for a woman?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: He’s a copper; he went and dragged off the guy who broke into my house!

Yes, I think the bar is set higher for women—absolutely it is; and in Parliament as well. I saw it particularly with Mia Davies when she was a minister and they were really going after her for a while. Her opposite number was Dave Kelly, who is very good at cross- examining and making people feel uncomfortable. She did a brilliant job. She’s only got a quiet voice, but she stood her ground and she didn’t get upset. When it all got too raucous, 254

DUNCAN INTERVIEW she just stopped and didn’t say anything. People thought, “Oh, okay; we need to let her speak.” Interestingly, because what happens in Parliament if the shadow is not managing to land blows, is they start to be dropped off the list as to be posing questions to that minister. Nobody ever questioned Brendon Grylls in the Parliament because he was just too vicious; it would just come back at you in spades. You’d always come out looking stupid. He’s so clever as an orator. Well, Dave Kelly actually stopped. The number of questions coming to Mia Davies started to stop because she was just so good at holding her own. It wasn’t in a blokey way. It wasn’t in a Brendon Grylls way, where he just went back on the attack and tore strips off them; she was just calm and factual and not getting upset. So, yes, they really do test you.

Ms Anne Yardley: What about ageism? Do you think this has anything to do with, say, the “Granny Duncan”?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: But with your parliamentary colleagues and with missing out on ministries, was there a sense that, well, of course, you’d retire because you were of a certain age?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. I guess I am 20 years older than Brendon Grylls and he took over the leadership in his early 30s, so it really made the contrast in our ages even more stark. It was interesting, when he retired as leader, the comment was that, “Oh, we need a new, younger leadership team.” He was only in his early 40s, so there was just no way that I was going to get a look in. The thing is that there are male members of that party that nobody thought were too old. I don’t know; it’s interesting.

Ms Anne Yardley: Do you think there’s a kind of a meshing, a linking, between ageism and sexism? It’s a sort of a double whammy in a way if you’re female and of a certain age?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, yes, I think so; in fact, there’s research now that’s starting to talk about that, that really there’s a great risk of women in their 50s finding themselves financially worse off and vulnerable because they can’t seem to find a niche in the workforce and because they’ve taken time out during their life to rear a family, so they don’t have the superannuation or the assets that perhaps a male of a similar age would have, and it really does make it very difficult. But I certainly was surprised to discover that really once I turned 60, it seemed to be a huge milestone for people. Even though I was 255

DUNCAN INTERVIEW fit and I could, like I said, change a tyre and climb onto the roof rack of my car and throw something down if I needed it, and all those things—and still can—it seemed to be an unwritten thread that you were past it. It’s interesting because I could have stood again for the seat of Kalgoorlie and gone through to be, I guess, 67 at retirement. Now, there’s plenty of male members of Parliament that are operating and respected and expected to stand again at that age, but there really was—nobody said it as much, but you could just get the feeling that people stopped listening to you. It was very interesting—and I think I mentioned it at some stage, didn’t I?—that Professor Lenore Layman who co-edited the history book of the Nationals said to me very early in the piece, “Wendy, don’t let your hair go grey while you’re a member of Parliament.” I thought she was joking and I laughed, and she said, “No, no; I’m serious.” She said, “If you’re in Parliament as a woman, you actually have to keep colouring your hair.”

Ms Anne Yardley: I think that’s a good place to stop for today.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, it’s horrifying, isn’t it?

Ms Anne Yardley: It is.

[End of WendyDuncan13]

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WendyDuncan_FINAL

Ms Anne Yardley: This is the final interview with Wendy Duncan, who’s a former National Party MLC and MLA. Today is Thursday, 7 February 2019, and we are at the Legislative Assembly committee rooms. The interview is for the parliamentary history project and I’m Anne Yardley.

You know, last time we spoke, Wendy, you lamented being told by Lenore Layman not to ever let your hair grow grey while you were in Parliament. Now it’s quite a few months since we last met and I notice your hair is a different colour!

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: [Laughs] Yes. I stopped colouring it when I retired. Yes, I’m going grey gracefully. It’s interesting how people have commented, “Oh, Wendy, I love your hair.” I’m wondering whether they’re really saying, “Well, you’ve let your hair go grey”, or whether they really do love my hair, but I certainly love not having to keep it coloured.

Ms Anne Yardley: But you took that advice seriously.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, I did, because at the time I laughed when Lenore suggested that. She said, “No, I’m quite serious, Wendy; you’ll find that in politics, women suffer from ageism far more than men.” I think in our last interview I commented about the fact that they’d preselected David Honey for Cottesloe, who was pushing 60, I think, and that when I stood for Kalgoorlie at 59, they were saying, “Don’t vote for granny Duncan.” I have spoken to you in our chats offline about my wonderful friend that I went to university with and studied politics and history and, in fact, through whom I met Lenore Layman. She gave me a book when I first started in politics, which is called media tarts, how the Australian media treat female —

Ms Anne Yardley: Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians, and it’s by Julia Baird29.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Julia Baird—that’s right, How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians. She gave it to me and she said, “Read this before you open your mouth.” I’m

29 Baird, Julia 2006. Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians. Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Melbourne. 257

DUNCAN INTERVIEW forever grateful to her because I did. Julia Baird, she wrote her book before Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, but she talked about how people like Flo Bjelke-Petersen, Maggie Thatcher, Janine Haines, Natasha Stott Despoja were treated by the media. There was a bit of an underlying theme of how they were beguiled into doing the spread in the Women’s Weekly, getting themselves all dressed up or allowing themselves to be photographed in their kitchen. Then at some later stage, they would be criticised about their dress or their behaviour or their sexual relations, when things were pretty free and easy for the male politicians back then, not so much in this day and age. So, really, the message from that book was to never let your guard down. I took that on board. I had a great relationship with the media. I worked really well with them but I didn’t ever trust them and I didn’t ever let my guard down.

Ms Anne Yardley: There’s a lot going on in the federal sphere at the moment with a lot of women in government complaining about bullying. One of the solutions by one of these women has been to have more women in the Parliament. What do you see as a solution, or at least a bit of a remedy towards the culture of bullying and inappropriate behaviour?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I think more women in the Parliament would help. But women really do need to—and this is something they have to learn from a very early age—stand up for themselves and nip those things in the bud and maybe even publicly. I have had occasion at a table where I have felt bullied or some sort of undercurrent of sexism was going on in the meeting or the room. I called it out quite bluntly. You could see people saying, “Oh, Wendy’s being a pain.” But it didn’t happen again, so you have to be prepared for that negative initial response but know that they won’t try it on again.

This whole Me Too movement—I’m very torn about it, I must say, Anne. I understand how women, when they are sexually harassed or bullied, take it on the chin; they worry about their career, they don’t say anything, battle on and then at some later date come out. The most obvious question is: why didn’t you say something at the time? The biggest, I guess, risk and difficulty that I have with what’s happening with this Me Too movement is that women are coming out in public and accusing men of these behaviours in a way where they are really guilty until they can prove their innocence. To me, that is bypassing the normal channels. It can be very damaging to the careers and reputations of these men. Is that really what we want to achieve? Do we want that bitterness, resentment and anger, when perhaps it would be far better for women to learn assertiveness early and stand up for themselves? It’s a big ask but that’s where we need to go.

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Ms Anne Yardley: Yes, because not all women feel confident to stand up for themselves.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: No; they don’t. I think probably my upbringing in a very male- dominated physical world gave me the strength to stand up for myself. The thing is that when I sort of got tired towards the end of my political career and didn’t stand up for myself was when I got walked over. So, not only do you have to stand up for yourself from the beginning, but you have to continue to do so the whole way through. It is a big challenge for women and I absolutely agree that men’s behaviour needs to change, but I’m just not sure you’re going to achieve that by making them feel angry and resentful and picked on, really. I just don’t think that that’s going to work; it’s making the whole situation worse.

Ms Anne Yardley: Are there particular attributes that women bring to the political sphere, do you think—qualities that are particularly useful in that environment?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, absolutely. I think about some of those cartoons of poor Edith Cowan when she got into Parliament and she’s there dusting around the male members of Parliament and they’ve all got their feet up on the chairs while she’s dusting around them and telling them off for having soup down their jackets and things, and Flo Bjelke- Petersen and her scones. But, actually, it is that understanding about a whole additional dimension of life out there in suburbia and in the regions that men often overlook. I used to say that you’d particularly see it in local government, before I got into Parliament, and that saying where “local government councillors are often pale, male and stale” is quite right, so you find that your local governments are not thinking about supporting childcare centres, about making sure footpaths aren’t bumpy so that the child doesn’t get bounced out of the pram as you’re going down the street. Those sorts of things are not front of mind. It’s not deliberate; it’s just not in their realm of understanding. In local government and often in Parliament, the focus is on sport and stadiums and economic activity. It’s when you have a better female representation that you start to see focus on women and children’s needs, on family services, disability, health and social welfare. There are plenty of men that also have that focus but, certainly, the women do bring that dimension to look at the social aspect of things. I know that that’s one thing when I was the member for Kalgoorlie that I think I really made a difference, because to be campaigning about drug rehabilitation and about step-up, step-down mental health and about childcare centres and about women’s refuges and so on was something that really hadn’t had much focus before. So, yes, is the short answer [chuckles].

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Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look at the National Party. If you were writing another chapter now for Blood Nose Politics, what would you be saying about your party?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: That is an interesting question because having written that book, there’s a really strong theme that runs through it of the cyclical nature of the National Party in that it goes through periods of strength, usually at a time when people in the regions are feeling the pressure either through drought or difficult times or neglect from government and then everybody gets up in arms and the Nationals realise that they’ve got to be a bit more vocal and more forceful, a leader comes to the fore, like Hendy Cowan, like Brendon Grylls, and they actually hear what the people are asking and go for it.

The thing about minor parties is that you really do have to do a lot of work to even gain attention. The main focus of the media and people in general is on the two major political parties, so you really have to be able to hear what people want and to articulate that and to grab their support.

What happened with the Nationals, and probably disappoints me more than anything, is that during the time that I was active and in leadership roles, I identified the need that our party really wouldn’t have a future, unless it expanded to represent all regional Western Australia. It had very much been a farmers’ party up until then, and by all regional Western Australia, I particularly focused on the mining and pastoral industry and on Indigenous Western Australians. We did a really great job of that. I was thrilled and, in fact, that’s why we ended up with that big number of upper house members in the Mining and Pastoral Region and, in fact, Brendon Grylls winning Pilbara and me winning Kalgoorlie.

What happened was that new trust and support from the Mining and Pastoral Region was fragile, and not enough work was done to cement it and not enough work was done to, I guess, build that trust and that base of support in the Mining and Pastoral Region. It started I think when Colin Holt got the ministerial position—the member for South West Region, instead of me, the member for Kalgoorlie. Of course, Brendon was not in the ministry any more, and so they had no ministers or parliamentary secretaries from the Mining and— Vince Catania was a parliamentary secretary, that’s right. But really the focus of the party turned to the south west. I can understand that because they really felt, “Right, we’ve got the wheatbelt. We’ve got the Mining and Pastoral Region on our belt. While we are ahead, we’ll shore up our support in the south west, which has also been not that strong.” But the people who live in the Mining and Pastoral Region, just by their very nature that they want to live there, are strong, independent, cynical sort of people and they didn’t take to that 260

DUNCAN INTERVIEW kindly. I’d worked very hard in the Mining and Pastoral Region and was well known throughout, right up into the Kimberley. I’m still getting people commenting to me, “We were so disgusted, Wendy, that you weren’t made a minister.”

I think more than that was the decision by Brendon Grylls, really on his own, to come out and say that BHP and Rio should pay $5 a tonne for their lease rental. In fact, the idea of reviewing state agreements came to me from a person in Kalgoorlie who had given us the original idea of royalties for regions. They said, “Really, we need to review those state agreements. They are very old and Rio and BHP are getting off lightly.” I brought that to the party and said, “For our next election, we should start to talk about state agreements and how they need reviewing.” What happened was that the party took that up and started to do a bit of work, and decided that they were going to go even further and say, “Look here, they’ve got this agreement from the 1960s that says you pay 25¢ a tonne. There’s a whole heap of clauses in these state agreements that the major mining companies haven’t been complying with, and so they’re not holding up their side of the deal, so we should up this fee.” Unfortunately, Brendon—I wasn’t in the inner circle, so I don’t know how he came up with the figure of $5—went to the media with it first, before he even came (a) to the parliamentary party or (b) to the lay party.

One of the things about the Nationals is the party organisation really get upset if the members of Parliament go off with their hair on fire. I was horrified by that. In fact, this is something that we haven’t talked about previously. When Brendon came to the party room table with this plan—we had all heard it in the media and we demanded a meeting—he said, “I’ve got this plan and I’m the only one who can implement it, so I want to be leader again.” The party was called together and we met for two days, which is an indication to everybody that there was a great deal of disagreement within the party room as to how we go forward from here. In fact, the party room was pretty evenly divided and it was down to me really to decide what happened. At the time I was sickening with pneumonia, and I got myself along to that meeting because it was so important to me, and after everyone had spoken, they said, “So, Wendy, where do you stand?” I said, “I think that this policy will destroy the trust that we have gained in the Mining and Pastoral Region, and that if you proceed with it, I intend to leave the party and stand as an Independent.” I said that I’ve served under Brendon Grylls’ leadership and I don’t particularly feel like doing it again, and so then the room was divided.

What happened was that the meeting adjourned and Terry and Brendon came to an agreement as to what was going to happen, and we were really presented with a fait 261

DUNCAN INTERVIEW accompli the next day, where Brendon took over the leadership but Terry Redman retained the Minister for Regional Development portfolio and Colin Holt dropped out of the ministry. I said, “Look, I’ve already announced I’m retiring; I don’t want to rock the boat. I will continue to publicly support this policy but I’m not going to attend anymore party room meetings.” From then on, I really decided that I just didn’t want to still be there, I was so upset about it. In fact, I said at the time that we’d lose three seats, and we did. We lost Pilbara and Kalgoorlie, and the second member in Mining and Pastoral. You’ll have to pardon my language, but this was really captured by one of my staunch supporters in Kalgoorlie who came to my campaign committee from the Labor Party. He said to me, “Wendy, I should’ve known it with you Nationals—once a sheep shagger, always a sheep shagger!” That’s how people in the mining regions were feeling: the Nationals, like the spider and fly, they have enticed us into the web and now they’re going to eat us.

Ms Anne Yardley: This would’ve been 2016?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was.

Ms Anne Yardley: Your position was a very strong position. Would you have supported it had it not been $5?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What would you have thought was reasonable?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I would’ve supported identifying this fee at 25¢ and saying, “Should the Nationals be elected, we would like to review state agreements.” Just to say we need to make sure this system is fair and that big mining companies—it is really only the big mining companies that are under state agreements—are fulfilling their obligations. I said at the time at the table, “You are planning to take on BHP and Rio. Kevin Rudd did that and didn’t survive. We are a small political party; they will smash us.” We just didn’t need that sort of grief. In fact, all the screensavers of the BHP workers up in the Pilbara had messages about “Don’t vote for Brendon Grylls” and there were, I think, 3 000 new enrolments into the seat of Pilbara. Goodness knows where they came from, but I suspect they were FIFO workers who were encouraged to change their place of address. There was some questionable stuff going on in the Pilbara to make sure that Brendon didn’t win his seat. I don’t think he saw it coming. I wasn’t surprised.

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Ms Anne Yardley: For an experienced politician, though, that’s unusual to make that statement before an election—to actually have that figure; to say the $5. Do you believe, had he not stated that as an actual figure?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes. Well, I don’t know what happened. It’s really interesting, because at the campaign launch down in Bunbury, the penny was starting to drop that we’d got the tiger by the tail. Colin Holt made a speech saying, “We should think about Greek mythology. We should think about Hydra the serpent. If you cut off its head, hundreds more snakeheads would come out. If you do that to the Nationals, this is what will happen.” So there was already an undercurrent saying, “Whoops, we’re going to lose our leader over this.” I remember saying to someone at the time, “It’s more like Icarus”, who was the wonderful warrior in Greek mythology who discovered that if he could put wings on himself glued on with wax, he could fly up over the troops and be all-powerful. Of course, Icarus was so pleased with himself that he flew too close to the sun, and the wax melted and he crashed to earth. That is the analogy that is probably more appropriate.

Ms Anne Yardley: How did you feel then going into—well, you knew you were resigning, but what was that election like in 2017?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It was heartbreaking, yes. Apart from the fact that, as I said before, it was my annus horribilis. I had my unwell granddaughter, then I ended up with pneumonia not long after that meeting where the leadership was changed, and then, of course, I broke my leg. In some ways that was a blessing, because I wasn’t out on the campaign trail. I remember a key Liberal person in Kalgoorlie coming up to me towards the end of the year and saying, “We’re just so glad you’ve been sick, Wendy, because we think we’re going to win this seat.” I did have a reputation of being a formidable campaigner; I loved political campaigning. I did it well—I covered all the bases—and I wasn’t there. Whenever I was there, and I was in meetings alongside Brendon and alongside Tony Crook, I didn’t ever disagree with them. I didn’t ever publicly say that I disagreed with what was going on. There was no point; I was retiring. They were the new generation; they thought they had the answer to the world’s problems. But, yes, I wasn’t surprised that we lost those seats. I was very sad about it—heartbroken, in fact. That is probably why I was in such a bad mental and physical state that year, because it really did upset me greatly. But there wasn’t a lot I could do. I didn’t really want to muddy the waters or make things more difficult for everybody, when I knew they were up against it, by me coming out and saying, “Well, you’re actually on the wrong course here.”

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Ms Anne Yardley: Let’s look back at your career, though, personally. When you reflect on it, what are you most proud of?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I’m really proud of the fact that we did extend ourselves up into the Pilbara and the Kimberley, which the Nationals had been trying to do since their formation, really. I think it’s because I was of that ilk of that region, I understood how they thought and behaved. But the other thing is it’s very rare that someone can totally devote their time to something. It’s a real challenge for people who are, say, the state president of the party to actually commit the sort of time that I did. I couldn’t have done that without the support of my family, of Ian, but I did; I really took the job on full-time. I drove around the state in my car at my expense. And Brendon—Brendon did the same, but he was a member of Parliament; he was on a salary. So that I’m really proud of, because I can recall many meetings where I’d made an appointment to go and meet with these people and they’d think, “Ah.”

I remember—just as an aside, but it’ll explain it to you—meeting with Elsia Archer in the Shire of Derby–West Kimberley at some time afterwards, and she said, “Wendy, we have a rule in the Shire of Derby–West Kimberley that no matter which member of Parliament wants to come and meet with us, we open our doors to them.” She said, “You weren’t even a member of Parliament when we first met you, but we thought, ‘Oh well, she’s got influence, and you never know, she might be important at some stage in the future.’” So she met with me and we struck up a great friendship. But it’s those local governments that said, “Yep, we’ll give you a hearing”, that really made the difference.

So going back to where I started on this long-winded sentence, sitting in a room full of mostly male local government councillors, telling the story about balance of power and royalties for regions, challenging them as the local leadership to take a stand, and seeing the penny drop, was probably one of my greatest achievements. Obviously out of that, royalties for regions was implemented. I had someone come up to me just at the breakfast in Nannup. She said, “You’re Wendy Duncan, aren’t you?” I said yes. She said, “I just want to say thank you for all you did for regional Western Australia.” I said, “Whoa, really?” She said, “Yes, we know Brendon Grylls was there, but we know you did so much and I just want you to know that we know who you are.” I was quite moved. I mean, that’s nearly two years after I’d retired, so that was lovely, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: What about disappointments? Is there anything that you would really like to have achieved or done that you weren’t able to? 264

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Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Do you know, one of my disappointments was that when we had the balance of power in both houses, we were so focused on rolling out royalties for regions that we really didn’t take the opportunity to make other changes that would’ve made a difference for the future. And so —

Ms Anne Yardley: Such as?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes, well, in particular Alison Xamon, who I’ve got a great deal of time for, was a member of the Greens at the time, and between the two of us, the Greens and the Nationals, we had the balance of power. Well, the Nats had the balance of power in the Assembly. Alison came to me and said—I was the leader of the Nats in the Legislative Council—“We really need to sort out the resources for minor parties. If they have X number of members, they really should be allowed to have extra resources and extra staff to help them do their work.” I think I’ve talked to you before about the huge workload that I saw people like Giz Watson undertake. The thing about the Greens is they’ve got a fabulous backing of volunteers doing a lot of their work. I absolutely agreed with Alison, and between the two of us we drafted a bill that would achieve this. I brought it to the National Party table. It was just—you know, the boys there, they’re more interested in drought funding and multi-peril crop insurance and who was getting more royalties for regions money, which region, and not looking enough to the future, so that this bill didn’t ever really get the attention it deserved. Brendon tentatively put it to Colin Barnett and he brushed it aside, but we had the power in the Parliament; we could have forced that through and we didn’t.

The other thing, too, is the really adverse effect of one vote, one value. I have said to you in the past that I said as state president, and I still say, that you can’t argue against one vote, one value. But we really probably should’ve worked harder to maybe get more seats altogether, because it’s really just about trying to make those seats in the regions manageable. Mine was over 600 000 square kilometres. It’s just impossible. Even though there’s not many people there, they’ve got diverse needs and it’s physically impossible for a member of Parliament to properly represent them. The most difficult one, actually, is Mia Davies’ electorate, Central Wheatbelt, which has got hundreds of little towns and schools and local governments, and just the physically impossible task to manage. Those opportunities were missed, where we really didn’t look up from our main game, which, of course, was taking a huge amount of time—I think we’ll talk about that in a little while— trying to make sure that there was due diligence and that money was being rolled out 265

DUNCAN INTERVIEW properly, because there was a lot of it. But it meant we really didn’t focus on some other things that we could’ve seized the moment on.

Ms Anne Yardley: And in fact having more staff, for example, would’ve lessened the workload, possibly, of some of the politicians, although it wouldn’t have solved the problem of distance.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: It would’ve lessened the workload, but, more importantly, it would’ve enabled more in-depth policy analysis, and that really is what the Nationals do struggle with. We saw it with that $5 a tonne policy. We really needed, as the Nationals, to move on from royalties for regions. You could go out into the electorate and crow, “Vote for us; we brought in royalties for regions”, but that was only going to cut it for so long. We really need to go out. People were saying it to me, by the time we got to the 2017 election, “So what do you really stand for? What are your policies apart from defending royalties for regions?” If you want to be a separate, independent, standalone political party, you do have to have that policy depth, and we just didn’t. Interestingly, one of the things about the Nationals is that they are goody-two-shoes to a certain extent as well, because they were quite fastidious about not really using the parliamentary staff and the electorate staff for party political activities—not like the red shirts for the Labor Party in Victoria. In fact, I remember John Bowler saying to me when I was first standing for the seat of Kalgoorlie, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you Nats. You should have all your electorate officers out campaigning and doing campaign work in your office. That’s what we always did in the Labor Party.” I said, “Well, we don’t. It’s actually against the law.” My staff were really quite fastidious about not doing that. That meant that we didn’t really have that policy depth that you need if you’re going to expand your footprint into areas that you’re not familiar with and capture the imagination of the voters into the future.

Ms Anne Yardley: What would you say today to someone about what the Nats stand for? Why should someone vote for the National Party now?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, it’s a really interesting question, because a lot of people have said to me, “I lived in the city and it wasn’t until I moved to the regions that I understood why you need to vote for the Nationals.” I think that the answer still is that they solely focus on the issues of people in regional Australia. That’s why often people would argue when the Nationals were in ascendency, “We wished you’d stand in the city.” But it really undermines your raison d’être—your reason for being. I think that the key strength of the Nationals is that we represent the regions. We needed to, prior to the 2017 election, get 266

DUNCAN INTERVIEW that message out and say, “It’s not only about money. It’s not only about royalties for regions, but it’s about a fair go in the health system. It’s about getting a step-up, step-down mental health facility alongside Kalgoorlie hospital. It’s about being able to have your baby in somewhere like Karratha or Port Hedland or Newman.” The Nationals will always have a place, but they got themselves a bit too focused on their brand, on their marketing. Mia Davies, the current leader, has a degree in marketing and that was a fabulous strength of hers when we were campaigning to bring in the balance of power and royalties for regions, but you need more than marketing.

I do think that people in the regions still have a good reason to vote for the Nationals. It’s interesting, you know; I had someone come up to me quite recently and say, “When the Nationals brought in a particular policy”—something to do with the Regional Forest Agreement, I think—“I decided I’d never vote Nationals again.” I said, “People really need to actually look above more than the person that you might have preselected or an individual policy and look at the whole package.” The map that we had, which we were distributing when we were talking about the balance of power;—so we had red around the metropolitan area and the rest of the state yellow and saying 11 seats here, 48 there— someone came up and said, “I’m not voting for you because you didn’t put my town on your map.” And you think: well, if that’s the electorate we’re dealing with, we’re up against it really [chuckles].

Ms Anne Yardley: Some things you just can’t win—you just can’t win!

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely.

Ms Anne Yardley: Royalties for regions, which has been such a centrepiece, has come up for criticism recently. In the Langoulant report, he said, for example, that it had “operated in an ‘ad-hoc’, ‘knee-jerk’ way, with poor planning, a lack of accountability and sometimes a rush to get money out the door.” How do you respond to that?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: He had a point in some areas, but I know the money that was being rolled out, particularly through the Department of Regional Development and under the stewardship of Paul Rosair who was the director general at the time, we were absolutely fastidious to make sure that each of the regional development commissions had strategic plans in place, that they’d worked with their local government and their federal Regional Development Australia organisation to produce a plan which had a list of priorities, and only then could you put a business plan to government to say, “These are 267

DUNCAN INTERVIEW the priorities that have been identified.” In fact, one of the reasons that I stood for the seat of Kalgoorlie is because I was so concerned that the Goldfields–Esperance Development Commission’s strategic planning processes were really not reaching fruition, and if they didn’t get their act together, they were going to miss out. One of the reasons that the Pilbara was first with the rollout is that they’d done some brilliant strategic planning and their work was all ready. Similarly with the Kimberley, the Ord stage 2 and Broome North was all really strategically planned, even under Labor, in readiness for the Browse development and so on. As far as that was concerned, the hoops and difficulties that people had to go through to get their funding through the regional development commissions was very fastidious and quite challenging.

What really annoyed me more than anything was the criticism of the plastic cows down at Margaret River, which was an art project that was of international importance. There were these decorated cows happening all over the world. A bit of government funding went towards that. Nobody complained about government funding supporting Sculpture by the Sea, and that just gets me so annoyed. The other one was, of course, the singing toilet in Bunbury, which is just those self-cleaning toilets that play music, of which there are hundreds in the metropolitan area. I take my granddaughter to one in Como. She likes to go there just to listen to the music, and we do it several times every playground visit. But that sort of hypocrisy. The media all picked up on it and rolled it out every time. Geoff Hutchison in particular, every time there was some criticism of royalties of regions, it was very annoying. The thing is that it got greatly up the nose of regional people. We were always quite delighted when the media got stuck into royalties for regions because the response from the regions was huge—all the text messages and people phoning in and saying, “How dare you? This has made a huge difference.”

But getting back to Langoulant’s comments, one tranche of royalties for regions funding was the country local government fund. Now that was set up in response to a report—a very substantial and well-validated report—that the WA Local Government Association had put out regarding local governments. It was called the SSS report, regarding sustainability in local government. It really noted that there was—I’m not sure if I’ve got the figures right—over a billion dollars of backlog of infrastructure maintenance and construction in regional WA that was the responsibility of local governments and they didn’t have the money. Being regional people, we were well aware of that—of the school halls and the sporting facilities and the roads and the footpaths that were in dire need of upgrade, and local governments didn’t have the funding. So, we established the country local government fund, which sent funding directly to local governments. Two advantages 268

DUNCAN INTERVIEW were that it was the local government’s responsibility to identify their priorities and spend the money, so that was good. I made a speech in Parliament about subsidiarity; that is, the decision-making about what happens in a community happening as close as possible to where the money is being spent. We believed in that. We’d espoused that during our time campaigning. The other advantage, of course, of the country local government fund is that it did allow us to get the money out quickly.

One of the biggest issues with royalties for regions is that the money was accumulating in the fund, and if it got over a billion dollars, it would spill back into consolidated revenue and it would be lost to royalties for regions. But, unfortunately, some local governments were better than others at spending that money. There were projects that were funded through the country local government fund that were probably not the highest of priorities, not well thought through, and probably one of the biggest issues was that there was insufficient consideration given to the operational funding following the construction of this capital works project. Of course, royalties for regions was never for operational funding; it was always for capital works, project-oriented. So, some local governments found themselves in trouble, because they’d decided on these magnificent projects without really doing the forward planning. Towards the end of the country local government fund, we were demanding that you had a forward operational plan to demonstrate that you could support this infrastructure that you were building or maintaining or upgrading.

The thing is when you think about the 7 000 projects—the $3 billion that was rolled out through royalties for regions—it was inevitable that some wouldn’t be perfect. On the whole, it was a hugely successful plan. I still hear today people saying that it’s really set up the regions for the next 50 years. And you know—we know—that it’s probably going to take 50 years for the regions to get that sort of focus again. To have all the hospitals upgraded, a lot of schools upgraded, a lot of public infrastructure—sporting facilities, parks, gardens—that has made a big difference to our regions. Sure, we then went into the end of the mining construction boom and a flattening of demand for accommodation and so on, but, in the long run, what we did do in the regions will be of value and be of long-term benefit.

Ms Anne Yardley: So you’re very happy to defend royalties for regions.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Absolutely. The whole thing, the story that was given to us in the beginning and that really made the light bulbs go on in our heads, was that we were talking to people who were saying, “We live out here. We are generating the vast majority of the 269

DUNCAN INTERVIEW wealth for this nation and this state, and yet we’re not seeing any of it back. We can’t have our kids in the local hospital; the school’s falling down around our ears; the roads are falling to bits; our town hall, which is historic and beautiful, is falling down.” I think that they are very valid arguments. Twenty-five per cent of the population live in the regions; 25 per cent of the royalties should go there. As I think I’ve said to you before, probably the biggest flaw in this whole argument was that we didn’t really factor in the GST effect, so because the state was losing so much of its royalties to the eastern states because of the dreaded GST—the fiscal equalisation that was going on—that left the government short of discretionary spending. That’s really why I think that the budget ended up in such a difficult state towards the end—the GST, not the royalties for regions [laughs]!

Ms Anne Yardley: I’m glad we’ve clarified that.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: Now, look, two of the people of that 25 per cent who lived in the regions for a very long time that I know you would like to acknowledge and who’ve been so important in your life are your parents, who both have received Orders of Australia.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: So, tell me about Maxine and John Tonkin.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, they are the most amazing people, and I’m so blessed to have them as my parents. Dad’s now 92, mum’s 90, and they are still demanding in-depth conversations at the dinner table on politics and finance and economics to the point that— we had them staying with us last week—my husband and I were exhausted, just trying to keep up with the conversation.

They both have an underlying dedication to community. I think I said to you that my father’s family were Anglican priests right back to the fourteenth century, and that sort of service to the community runs pretty deeply in our veins. Same with my mother’s side of the family—all very much involved in local government and serving their community. They did that from a very isolated situation. They were 120 kilometres from the nearest town. At the time that they married, they didn’t have good communications, and they took over a property that was deeply in debt. My father’s father passed away when he was only nine,

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DUNCAN INTERVIEW and in fact he was on his own with his young sister there when that happened and they had to send a young man on a bicycle 70 kilometres to get help. He died of pneumonia.

In fact, dad was only saying to me yesterday as we drove back from Nannup, he said, “My father passed away, the property was deeply in debt, the Elders”—that was, I guess, the mortgagor—“put the property up for sale and nobody bid on it because nobody wanted it and times were tough.” So they gave it back to them at double the debt and the interest rate and said, “You need to keep going.” Dad said from that time forth—he said some people used to wear their financial difficulty and their debt on their sleeve almost as a badge of honour—he said, “I made a resolution at that point that I would never be poor.” Do you know, he was so determined to get that property up and running, he would take a few risks, buy extra sheep, buy an extra property, and then when the drought was on and wool prices were low, he taught himself geology. He bought books at the time of the nickel boom in the 1970s and went out and pegged mineral claims. In fact, we were just talking about the fact that—my son is a chemical engineer working up on the Murrin Murrin nickel smelter, and dad said, “I pegged all that country.” He said, “I knew it was good nickel country”, and he said, “But back in the time, they didn’t have that process refined to be able to develop that ore body.” He said, “I was getting into trouble from the mines department for not spending enough money on those leases, and so I sold them off.” That’s what he did. He pegged mineral claims, and then he’d sell them to a mining company and they would work them for a bit and then they’d relinquish them back to him, and then he would sell them to another mining company. He in fact found some quite good mineral deposits, and it was through that that during those times of drought he managed to put us through boarding school and make sure that he and mum are able to be self- funded retirees.

But in amongst all that, he stood for the Shire of Menzies in 1961, and was on the shire for 40 years, so really almost a record for a local government councillor serving on the shire—many of those years as president. He and mum used to not only go through all the usual, I guess, administration that local governments do, but they would run gymkhanas and dad fought hard to save the Menzies railway station. He actually drove to Perth to argue with the minister not to demolish it, and it’s now a historic tourist attraction there. Then, having saved the station, they organised a “back to Menzies”, so a train came up from Perth with all the old Menzies residents and had a whole weekend of celebrations there. Dad decided that as a centenary gift to the Menzies shire, he and the council would organise the placement of a clock into the Menzies clock tower. The Menzies Town Hall was built very early in the century, and I should know the date, but I don’t. The story is— 271

DUNCAN INTERVIEW there’s some conjecture—that apparently the clock to go into the clock tower was on a ship that sank on the way out to Australia, so the Menzies Town Hall clock tower didn’t ever have a clock in it. Dad had got to know some clockmakers in Perth because they have a bit of an interest in antiques. He said to these fellows, “Do you reckon you could organise a clock for the Menzies clock tower?” These highly regarded horologists—I think is the name—worked with him to get the clock put into the tower at Menzies. They had a big celebration on New Year’s Eve of 1999–2000 to celebrate the clock tower which is there today.

He also was involved with the Pastoralists and Graziers Association in the roles of secretary and president. Mum was also involved with them locally in the goldfields and out on the Nullarbor. At the time, they used to have displays at the Kalgoorlie fair, where there’d be demonstrations of shearing and wool and fashion parades and competitions for the kids. We’d all be there as kids ourselves, day in, day out, at the Kalgoorlie fair talking to people. That’s why I was so good at campaigning, I think. He then became involved higher up. He ended up as senior vice president of the Pastoralists and Graziers in Western Australia, but also a strong advocate of trying to unify the two organisations—the WA Farmers Federation and the Pastoralists and Graziers—but that was not successful. So that’s dad. In amongst that, he had board positions on mining companies; he was just always busy and highly intelligent. He left school at 15. He went to Guildford, thanks to some relatives in England who were in the church and scrimped and saved and sent money out for him to go to Guildford for a few years. It wasn’t long—maybe year 7 through to junior. That was his education.

Mum, on the other hand, also, she was a nurse, and I think you’ve had the pleasure of interviewing her. Her mother passed away when she was only six. There were four girls and two boys in the family. The girls all took turns to sort of be the home carer of their dad, and mum was one of those. But she then went to Northam high until she was 15 and on to Royal Perth Hospital as a nurse, reached the status of sister, but having met and decided to marry my dad in a fairly short time, then of course had to leave—if you get married, you can’t keep working—and went up to the station totally foreign to her and just made such a wonderful home and life for us all. She was always very keen that isolation wasn’t going to be an impediment for us, so there were always tennis parties and entertainment—the bishop would visit and the Governor. Mum was always entertaining and arranging people to be visiting and enjoying themselves—socialising, I guess. She insisted that a tennis court be built on the place. In fact, I think I mentioned to you that’s how I met my husband, on that tennis court. 272

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In addition to that, she and dad campaigned to get the School of the Air established in Kalgoorlie. Then having done that, mum decided to try and help some of these mothers— this was in the day when there was no assistance for a governess or anything—to try and give the mothers, who were mostly the ones who were teaching, some moral support, she set up the CWA of the air, the first totally radio-managed branch of the CWA, and also the P&C of the air, and she was one of the early members of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association. In her campaign to get better education for isolated children, she was a member of the education committee of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, and the first female chair of a P&G committee, which the pastoralists and graziers had difficulty coping with. I think—I might not have this story right, and she’s probably told you—even when she was chair of the committee, the president of the PGA used to call her “Mr Chairman”. Yes, it was something like that. I know that she really was incredible.

Like I said, she finished school at 15, but she was—to this day—avid at learning new things, so she did her leaving by correspondence. The other amazing thing is that she went off to Perth to do this sort of farm bookkeeping course. I was a kid full of myself— done well at school, off to university. About that time, she came home and she said, “Do you know, they’ve got this machine where you can put a bit of paper in it here in Kalgoorlie and it will come out in Perth.” I said, “Mum’s lost her marbles, totally—silly old thing.” But, of course, she was talking about a fax machine. She was right up with it.

Then when they retired and moved to Perth, both of them were at a loose end. They came to Perth to be close to all the kids that were coming to boarding school, so to support the family, but they really had lost their links to the isolated community. So they then became the Perth branch of the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. They were foundation members of the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, and they used to have stalls at the Perth Royal Show, making cups of tea and talking to people about the pastoral industry.

Then mum decided that she was interested in oral history, so then she went off and did lessons in that and started interviewing people in the pastoral industry. Eventually, she was invited by the Pastoralists and Graziers Association to interview people in the pastoral industry in preparation for the Native Title Act, really just trying to establish who was who— who had memories of people who lived in various regions, just in readiness for verification of various claims. Her works are still in the hands of the Pastoralists and Graziers. She does worry that they are safe, but they belong to the PGA.

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That is why she got her Order of Australia, and dad got his for his service to local government and to the Pastoralists and Graziers. But hers was for her oral history, so people think that they both got Orders of Australia for things that they’ve done together, but it was actually for their individual achievements.

Ms Anne Yardley: They are amazing people; they really are.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Oh, yes.

Ms Anne Yardley: We can see where you got your drive from.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: [Chuckles]

Ms Anne Yardley: What about you, Wendy, post-politics. What’s happening in your life now? What plans do you have?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: I’m in a period of reflection, really, and have spent a lot of time on making a nice home for my husband, who had really not much of that in 14 years. I’m thoroughly enjoying my new granddaughter and in spending time with mum and dad. They both are so precious and I’m so lucky to still have them, so I’ve spent a lot of the time with them. I was very fortunate last year to have been selected by Senator Bridget McKenzie to be the Western Australian representative on the independent regional telecommunications review, which happens every three years and is a federal exercise, and I loved it. We spent from May through till the end of September travelling around the whole of Australia. We went to 22 different locations in every state of Australia, travelling just about every week, talking to people about their telecommunications and NBN. That was right up my alley; I thoroughly enjoyed it but I also, I think, did it well [chuckles]. That sort of thing is hard to come by.

I’ve got a couple of board positions, both of them unpaid, but I’ve found it really difficult to find paid employment at my age, 64, allowing my hair to go grey, but still sharp and thoroughly enjoying the stimulation of things like that telecommunications review and maybe feeling that my talents at this point are a little wasted, but just not quite sure where to from here.

One of the things that, I guess, I’ve been a bit spoilt with over my life is that most of the things I’ve done in my life, I’ve been headhunted for, I’ve been invited to do: state president 274

DUNCAN INTERVIEW of the Nationals, standing for Parliament, the regional telecommunications review, even my job with Ross Ainsworth. People say, “Wendy, here’s a job, would you like it?”, so I’ve never really had to put myself out there, so it’s quite a new experience. The time is coming where I do have to make a bit more of an effort.

Ms Anne Yardley: What advice would you give a young person thinking about entering politics?

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Well, I suppose we do need young people in politics, but it is very, very difficult. You look at the likes of Kate Ellis and Kelly O’Dwyer, with young families, and even here in Western Australia. Young men, yes, it’s easier, but even Tim Hammond found it difficult.

There are the rare young people that go into politics and do really well in their late 20s and early 30s, Brendon Grylls being one. But, really, politics is for people who have got a little bit more life experience. I would recommend that you leave it a bit later until you are in your 30s. I was 49. I often say this when I’m asked to speak to women and to leadership forums, that life is longer than you think and that life experience is so valuable when you go into politics. I sometimes feel concerned when I see people that have done their degree in politics and then they do their bit of work in a member of Parliament’s office and then they stand in an unwinnable seat to demonstrate their commitment to the party and then, eventually, get into a winnable seat and become a member of Parliament without ever really having experienced some of the challenges that ordinary Australians are facing. That’s why we see the birth of parties like One Nation—we’ve had that discussion. Life experience, maybe having your children a little bit older, is what’s needed, so that.

Then I think, too, that you do need to understand that politics is not only the cut and thrust of Parliament. People often think, “I’m going to go into Parliament and I’m going to say this and that’ll change everything” and they get there and discover that backbenchers don’t make a lot of difference in Parliament. Where you make the difference is out around the traps in your electorate where you identify issues and you fight them individually. To be a good member of Parliament, you really have to have that ability to empathise and to move with all types.

That’s one of the things that I love about my mum and dad; they could sit in the back of the ute with the roo shooters and the carcasses and have a Christmas beer at the same time as entertaining the Governor, and so can I. That is such an important skill to be able 275

DUNCAN INTERVIEW to just understand that every Australian is a precious Australian and that we shouldn’t judge and that they all have a place in our society. I often worry about the predominance of members of Parliament from Sydney and Melbourne who judge those that live in remote areas and who pooh-pooh or laugh at Barnaby Joyce because he wears an akubra or Bridget McKenzie because she knows how to shoot. That is just totally being out of touch with reality. I know how to shoot. A lot of people in the regions know how to shoot. They do it for sport. That means that people in Animals Australia are aghast, but these are Australians, just like everybody else and you aren’t going to erase them off the face of our nation and we do need to make sure that they are represented, because if they’re not, they will not be happy. This is what happened in the United States with what Hillary Clinton called the deplorables. Nobody is deplorable; everybody has a place. Everybody has a reason for being like they are. I think I told you the story of how when I first went away to boarding school and I couldn’t skip and I couldn’t play hopscotch and I was ridiculed, that was hurtful and, really, it’s from there that my desire to represent those people who weren’t understood came from.

Ms Anne Yardley: Wendy, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you over all these weeks and months and that was a wonderful place to stop and you’ve agreed that that was a great place to stop, too, so thank you very much.

Ms WENDY DUNCAN: Anne, can I thank you. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this. I’d like to thank the parliamentary history department for thinking of me. It was quite a surprise but a real honour. I particularly would like to thank Hansard, because of all my colloquialisms and my sentences that start in the beginning and then race off somewhere else. It’s been an absolute pleasure and I’m really very honoured to have had this opportunity.

[End of WendyDuncan_FINAL]

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