Leftist women are utterly devoted to gender quotas mostly, it seems because so many of them would struggle on merit. Australian Labor’s Kristina Kenneally is the perfect example of the Quota Queen elevated far beyond her abilities.
Kristina Keneally’s political career has been a running saga of gender politics triumphing over merit. But her elevation to Albanese’s shadow home affairs portfolio only raises more doubts about whether Labor has learned a damned thing from the election.
Labor’s commitment to strong border protection policy has been undermined by the appointment of Kristina Keneally to the home affairs portfolio in shadow cabinet — forcing her to repudiate her former opposition to boat turnbacks.
Her elevation prompted a stinging attack from her government counterpart, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who declared Mr Albanese had chosen the “least qualified” candidate to fill the shadow portfolio following warnings last week that more illegal boats were headed to Australia.
Keneally became NSW premier by knifing Nathan Rees in yet another Labor leadership challenge. At the very next election, she was summarily tossed out of office in the biggest swing in Australia since WWII. After failing to win a seat as a federal candidate, she was subsequently parachuted into the senate when Sam Dastyari quit in disgrace. 2019 being a half-senate election, Keneally has so far avoided facing voters, but she has won the gender quota raffle again, with two men shoved aside in her favour.
Senator Keneally, the first female NSW premier, was catapulted into shadow cabinet after factional colleagues Ed Husic, also from NSW, and Don Farrell, from South Australia, were made to stand aside so she could join the frontbench and take on a leadership position.
But her past words, just like Albanese’s, are coming back to haunt Labor’s supposed epiphany on border protection.
Mr Albanese was quick to dismiss Senator Keneally’s previous call for a royal commission into offshore detention but has also been uncomfortable with the Coalition’s hardline border protection policies.
He voted against boat turnbacks at the ALP’s 2015 conference, saying he personally would be unable to turn around a boat of asylum-seekers, but has since accepted it as policy. Senator Keneally, who filled the casual vacancy left by Sam Dastyari in February last year, told The Australian her opinions about border security had changed significantly in recent years.
In July 2015, she wrote an opinion piece against boat turnbacks, saying it was cruel to tow boats away from Australia when people were attempting a perilous journey to seek asylum. “Such action dishonours our past commitments to compassionate welcome and violates our international treaty obligations,” she wrote in Guardian Australia…In another column, from February 2015…Senator Keneally outlined why she believed there was cause for a royal commission into asylum-seekers and offshore detention.
Albanese and Keneally aren’t the only senior Labor figures who have made their stance on border protection crystal-clear in the past.
Senator Keneally will be joined by Victorian Left MP Andrew Giles as the opposition’s assistant immigration and citizenship spokesman.
Mr Giles has also attacked key pillars of the Coalition’s border protection policies, including moving a motion to reject boat turnbacks at Labor’s 2015 national conference…
theaustralian
We’re supposed to seriously believe that Labor are suddenly devout believers in strong borders? I’d as soon believe that Kristina Keneally was promoted on merit.