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Maxine McKew

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Maxine McKew
Incumbent
Assumed office
24 November 2007
Personal details
Born1953
Brisbane, Queensland
NationalityAustralian
Political partyAustralian Labor Party
Residence(s)Epping, New South Wales
ProfessionJournalist

Maxine McKew (born 1953) is a former award-winning journalist and a current Australian Labor parliamentary candidate. As a broadcaster, McKew hosted a number of programmes on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television and radio, most recently Lateline and The 7.30 Report. In February 2007, McKew announced her candidacy for the seat of Bennelong, the federal parliamentary seat in the northern Sydney suburbs held by Prime Minister John Howard. McKew performed strongly in the voting results for the 24 November, 2007 election, and many media outlets project that she will win, becoming only the second person to unseat a sitting prime minister in his own electorate. Howard himself acknowledged in his concession speech that this was a strong possibility [1], and McKew has expressed the belief that she has won the seat [2].

Personal

McKew was born and grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. Her father, Bryan McKew, was a boilermaker who at times struggled with alcoholism.[3] When Maxine was five, her mother Elaine died, and she was sent to live with her grandparents for three years. Maxine and her sister Margo moved to Moorooka to live with their father after he remarried. McKew attended All Hallows' School in Brisbane.[4] McKew currently lives in the Sydney suburb of Epping with her partner, former ALP National Secretary Bob Hogg (they have chosen not to marry as McKew is Roman Catholic and Hogg is divorced).[5] McKew had previously indicated active plans to move into the electorate of Bennelong,[6] before doing so in March 2007.

On March 3 2007, allegations of death threats against McKew were widely reported. There has been speculation that attempts to tamper with her car were by car thieves looking for spare parts rather than by politically motivated individuals.[7][8][9]

Media career

After matriculating, she briefly attended university before dropping out and living in London for two years. She supported herself with a variety of temporary jobs, including relief typing at a London BBC office. A letter requesting a job — written by McKew on BBC letterhead paper — was rewarded with a cadetship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane in 1974 following a brief stint as a news analyst at investment bank Goldman Sachs. In 1976 she moved on to host This Day Tonight, a local current affairs program.[4] In over 30 years working at the ABC, McKew worked as a presenter on the 7:30 Report and Lateline, and also worked on The Carleton-Walsh Report, AM, PM, and The Bottom Line. McKew was honoured for her broadcasting work with a Logie award, and for her journalism by a Walkley Award. In October 2006 she announced that she was leaving the ABC saying "This is more than likely the end of my broadcasting career".[10]

From 1999 to 2004 she wrote Lunch with Maxine McKew, a column for The Bulletin, a weekly magazine,[11] based on her interviews with prominent Australians. McKew frequently elicited newsworthy revelations from her subjects, and was named by The Australian Financial Review as "one of the top ten exercisers of covert power in Australia".[3]

Honours

Quotations

  • "People have a nervous collapse when I've actually broken through and got someone to say something honest. It is either regarded as a gaffe, or people say they must have been drunk, or publicly musing aloud, or they didn't realise the tape was running, or I must have had oral sex with them under the table. I find it absurd."[3]
  • "Women do give up something. It's biology..... Let me tell you what I gave up. I wanted my career. And so I never had children." (Quoted in Jack Welch's 2005 book, Winning[13])

Politics

McKew was reported to have been a possible Labor candidate for the safe federal seat of Fowler at both the 2001 and 2004 elections.[14] In 2004, it was the Labor leader Mark Latham who attempted to lure McKew with preselection to the Western Sydney seat. Latham recorded in his diary that his efforts failed because the broadcaster would not move from her home in Mosman to Labor's outer-suburban heartland, an area which he represented as the Member for Werriwa,[15] while McKew told ABC Radio that a big factor in her 2003 decision was that she regarded the party as being without direction at the time.[16] McKew had also been approached by John Hewson in the past to join the Liberal Party.[17]

After resigning from the ABC in December 2006, McKew joined the Australian Labor Party in January 2007 as a special adviser on strategy to Labor leader Kevin Rudd.[11] The Australian reported in early February that McKew was again in contention to gain preselection for the Division of Fowler, a safe Labor seat held by Julia Irwin who had supported Kim Beazley in the December leadership ballot. However the article also stated that a Labor source had suggested that a different seat was possible.[14]

On February 25, Rudd's office confirmed that McKew would run against Prime Minister John Howard in the Division of Bennelong at the election,[18] and McKew announced that she and Hogg were selling their Mosman home.[19][6] Following a redistribution in 2006, the already marginal Liberal seat had become slightly more so, with Labor needing a swing of 4% to win it. Much of the area is already represented by Labor at the state level.

A previous week's Morgan poll conducted for the website Crikey put Labor's two-party preferred vote in the seat at 55%.[20] On November 24, 2007, McKew polled very well and is considered likely to defeat Howard and enter Parliament; this would be only the second time since Federation that an incumbent Prime Minister has lost his own seat at an election (the only other case was that of Stanley Bruce in 1929). With 79.1 percent of the ballots counted, McKew has 51.7 percent of the two-party/two-candidate preferred vote to Howard's 48.3 percent--a 5.8 percent swing to Labor from 2004. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation and several other sources project that Howard has already lost,[21] and Howard himself said that it is "very likely" he has been unseated. However, McKew has not declared victory yet, saying that the seat is on a "knife edge."[22] She has since claimed that it very likely she will win the seat.

Other interests

McKew is a long-term participant in the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, a bipartisan bilateral civil diplomatic initiative founded by Melbourne businessman Phil Scanlan.[23] Additional activities include membership of the Women’s Advisory Group to the National Breast Cancer Centre, and membership of the University of Sydney’s Research Institute for Asia Pacific. She is also the Patron of Osteoporosis Australia and is a member of the Sydney Symphony Council. [24]

References

  1. ^ Walsh, Kerri-anne (2007-11-25). "Rudd triumphs as Howard cast aside". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-11-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Bibby, Paul (2007-11-26). "McKew claims PM's seat". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-11-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ a b c Simons, Margaret (2003-11-08). "Agent of influence". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-03-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ a b Fraser, Andrew (2007-02-27). "Hard start unites McKew and Rudd". The Australian. Retrieved 2007-03-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Overington, Caroline (2007-03-31). "Taking it to the Max". The Australian Magazine. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b Davis, Mark (2007-02-26). "Look who's taking on the PM in Bennelong". The Sydney Morning Herald. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Benson, Simon (2007-03-03). "McKew Death Threats". Herald Sun. Retrieved 2007-03-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Kirby, Simon (2007-03-03). "McKew to fight on despite scare". Herald Sun. Retrieved 2007-03-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Creagh, Sunanda (2007-03-05). "McKew car theft theory". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-03-05. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ AAP (2006-10-24). "Maxine McKew to quit ABC". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-03-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ a b Maiden, Samantha (2007-01-22). "McKew the latest Labor recruit". The Australian. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  12. ^ a b www.maxinemckew.com.au
  13. ^ Dasey, Daniel (2005-04-10). "Career, not children: McKew". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2007-03-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ a b Salusinszky, Imre (2007-02-02). "Ex-presenter McKew 'to fight for Labor seat'". The Australian. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ Latham, Mark (2005). The Latham Diaries. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing Limited. ISBN 0522852157.
  16. ^ "McKew turned down 'directionless' Labor". The Daily Telegraph. 2007-02-27. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ Overington, Caroline (2007-01-27). "McKew impressed to the max". The Australian. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ "Maxine McKew To Nominate For Bennelong" (Press release). Australian Labor Party. 2007-02-26. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ Maiden, Samantha (2007-02-26). "Howard steels himself for fight with McKew". The Australian. Retrieved 2007-09-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ Dunlevy, Sue (2007-02-25). "Man of steel faces down McKew". The Daily Telegraph. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/benn.htm
  22. ^ http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22817877-29277,00.html
  23. ^ [1]
  24. ^ Agent's website
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