From teacher to speaker, Roberts in box seat

TO say Michelle Roberts has Labor Party politics coursing through her veins would be an understatement.

Even she is acutely aware her name is not only synonymous with more than three decades of party history, but it’s been a fixture of the Western Australian political landscape for a generation.

“I live it, eat it, sleep it,” Mrs Roberts told Business News.

“If you don’t, you’re unlikely to stick around this long.”

From joining WA Young Labor in the 1980s, to being appointed the first woman speaker of parliament’s Legislative Assembly in 2021, Mrs Roberts has forged a political career that would be the envy of many in that realm.

Along the way, the 62-year-old mother of three has become a pioneer and role model for women wanting to follow in her footsteps.

When elected to the seat of Glendalough in 1994, Mrs Roberts became only the 18th woman to enter the lower house of the parliament across more than a century.

The politician she replaced in that seat, Carmen Lawrence, remains the first and only female premier in the state’s history.

“It’s all well and good saying that, theoretically, women can do all these things in politics, but until a woman does any one of them it doesn’t become a reality,” Mrs Roberts said.

It was June 6 1988 when the political trajectory of Michelle Hopkins Roberts was set.

Aged 28, and with five years’ teaching experience under her belt, Mrs Roberts was chosen as a delegate for her first ever Labor Party national conference.

Already a City of Perth councillor for two years, Mrs Roberts was clearly on the radar of party powerbrokers as Labor moved to enact policies of affirmative action.

But the young woman, who grew up in a Catholic family with strong Samaritan values, had no idea just how in demand she would be after touching down in Hobart for the 38th conference of the party she was becoming devoted to.

“On the Sunday night, before the conference began on the Monday, Kim Beazley said he had some people he wanted me to meet,” Mrs Roberts recalled.

“He introduced me to Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Robert Ray, Gareth Evans and Graham Richardson.”

The emergent WA Labor delegate, who was aligned to the party’s right faction, was shoulder to shoulder with the prime minister, treasurer, home affairs minister, soon-to-be foreign minister, and environment minister.

It would have been impossible to assemble a more potent gathering of Labor heavy-hitters at that point in the party’s history.

“It was a very daunting experience,” Mrs Roberts said.

“One of them, I think Robert Ray, said ‘Michelle, we hear you’d like to join the national executive’.

“I actually hadn’t gone to the conference aspiring to anything, so it was a surprise he said that. I barely knew there was a national executive at that point.”

This 1994 photo of Michelle Roberts and Carmen Lawrence hangs in the speaker’s office. Photos: Frances Andrijich

The representation of women in politics was a major agenda item of the national conference in 1988, with Margaret Reynolds leading the charge in a rousing speech to the party faithful.

“Nationally, if you’re looking at the role of women in terms of their political participation, you’re looking at eighty-eight women in federal and state parliaments out of a total of nine hundred and six,” she told delegates.

“So, there’s no doubt in my mind that while I’m very proud of the achievements that have been made by the Labor Party at federal level and at state level in putting status of women firmly on the political agenda, there’s still a great deal more work to be done.”

By the end of the conference, Mrs Roberts was one of just 10 people elected to the national executive, and from then on her standing and influence inside the party was all-but assured.

However, the party’s reputation was about to be hit by the WA Inc scandal, which ultimately resulted in jail terms for two former WA premiers and ensured two terms in the political wilderness for Labor.

Under considerable internal pressure to resist calls for an inquiry into the WA Inc deals, Carmen Lawrence made the decision to order a royal commission 10 months after taking over as premier from Peter Dowding in 1990.

She lost the 1993 election to Richard Court’s Liberals, but all things considered the size of the defeat was palatable. Dr Lawrence was wooed to a federal political career in Canberra and Mrs Roberts was preselected for a Glendalough by-election in 1994.

There was a slight swing to Labor, which left the margin at 2.6 per cent. But when the Electoral Commission announced Glendalough would be abolished at the 1996 state election, it meant Mrs Roberts would become an MP without a seat.

Before that quandary played out, Mrs Roberts and other female MPs in the patriarchal parliament were making their presence felt.

Led by Labor MP for Kenwick, Judyth Watson, the women defended the right of female Hansard reporters to wear long pants after their boss warned them only skirts were permitted.

“We all decided we would wear trousers on a particular day to get the message out,” Mrs Roberts said.

“We stood on the front steps of parliament and made an issue of it. I’m pretty sure that ruling was fairly swiftly overturned.”

Poll challenge

At the 1996 state election, Mrs Roberts had been preselected to contest the new seat of Midland. She won with a 4.3 per cent margin despite Labor going further backwards overall, conceding five seats to the Liberals and being reduced to 19 MPs in the 57-seat lower house.

Renewal and the right leader were desperately needed by a Labor Party still trying to exorcise the ghosts of WA Inc.

Geoff Gallop was seen as the solution ahead of the 2001 state election, and that would lead to the biggest internal political fight of Mrs Roberts’ career.

It was dubbed the battle for Ballajura, and by the time it was over the long-established factions of the WA Labor Party were ripped apart.

Defying her own right faction, Mrs Roberts, and others in the group, decided to back pharmacist and Bayswater mayor John D’Orazio for the marginally held Liberal seat.

“We’d done two terms in opposition, and no-one wanted to do a third term,” Mrs Roberts told Business News.

“To choose another candidate would have severely undermined Geoff and our chances of winning.

“It was about supporting Geoff and not getting derailed by some of the outside forces supporting someone else.”

Those outside forces were once the powerbrokers of her faction, and when asked what level of pressure Mrs Roberts had to endure during the Ballajura preselection war, the expression on her face said plenty.

“There were strained friendships because of it and quite a bit of animosity at the time,” she said.

“It was very heated and there was pressure on the people around me. I knew, and still believe, I made the right decision.”

Michelle Roberts, pictured at roadworks in Midvale, says political success requires hard work in the community.

Mr D’Orazio claimed the seat, Labor won the 2001 election, and seven years after becoming an MP Mrs Roberts was appointed the first female minister for police.

Later, D’Orazio would become enmeshed in a series of CCC probes that would eventually bring down the Carpenter government.

Meanwhile, police was a portfolio she oversaw for a total of nine years in the Gallop and McGowan governments, plus a further four years in opposition.

“I wasn’t overly interested in the opposition police portfolio when Geoff rang me in January 1997,” Mrs Roberts said.

“He said it would be the making of me and great for my profile … because he had decided he couldn’t have anyone from the left take the role. He wanted someone mainstream with mainstream views.”

Knowing she was a woman entering a giant boys’ club, Mrs Roberts made the WA Police Union her first port of call. At the time, the union office was right next door to Langtrees bordello in Burswood.

As minister, she and union president Mike Dean struck up a solid working relationship, but Mrs Roberts made a shrewd decision at the start of her tenure.

“One of the things I did early on was to invite the wives of the union board to come up and have lunch with me and became quite good friends with them,” she said.

Pressures

Sitting in the well-appointed speaker’s office in parliament, Mrs Roberts reflected on the unpredictable nature of being police minister in comparison with her current role.

“I remember getting a call in September 2001, when I was at a wedding, to say there had been an explosion in Lathlain,” Mrs Roberts said.

“Lou Lewis and Don Hancock had been murdered in a car bombing.”

A retired police commander, Mr Hancock ran the infamous 1980s gold swindle investigation against the Mickelberg brothers and was also a suspect in the shooting of Gypsy Joker bikie Billy Grierson at Ora Banda in the Goldfields.

More recently, Mrs Roberts will never forget the harrowing telephone call she received in 2018, when Peter Miles shot dead his wife, daughter and four grandchildren on their property at Osmington, near Margaret River.

Meeting the mother of murdered teenager Hayley Dodd “and hearing her cry” has also stayed with the former minister.

Mrs Roberts also discussed the hunt for the Claremont serial killer and concerns she had about the police investigation when she was minister.

“The ongoing issues of Macro [the investigation’s codename] were problematic to say the least,” she said.

“As minister you can’t question how an investigation is being run, but the focus on the one person, Lance Williams … they were expending a lot of resources surveilling him, and you can wonder whether that was warranted.”

Having gone out on a limb for Dr Gallop in 2001, Mrs Roberts was left shaken five years later when the premier revealed he would quit politics to deal with depression.

Dr Gallop was just one year into his second term.

“I remember at the end of 2005, before he went away with his wife Bev to spend Christmas with Tony Blair and his wife Cherie,” Mrs Roberts said.

“Before that, he took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes and told me he was just so exhausted and needed the holiday.

“It sounded so exciting. Having Christmas with the British prime minister and his wife at Chequers. Staying at Chequers. For a political wonk like Geoff, it was as exciting as it gets.”

On Dr Gallop’s return, the extent of his depression became apparent.

“He said he would resign and I was pleading with him to reconsider, saying he can get treatment, to take time out, people would understand. But the decision was made,” Mrs Roberts said.

“He’d got to Chequers knowing he should be bouncing off the ceiling in excitement, but he was still down there.

“I really knew then that I wasn’t aware of how badly he’d battled depression over the preceding years.”

Dr Gallop broke the news to his cabinet and called a press conference.

“Living with depression is a very debilitating experience, which affects different people in different ways,” the 55-year-old premier said.

“It has certainly affected many aspects of my life. So much so, that I sought expert help last week.”

Clear air

Since Dr Gallop’s departure, Mrs Roberts has served under two Labor premiers in Alan Carpenter and Mark McGowan.

She, like most Labor Party people, pinch themselves when asked about the successive election wipe-outs dished up to their Liberal enemies in 2017 and 2021.

From the 4.3 per cent margin Mrs Roberts earned in 1996, Midland is now a very safe Labor seat and one she could hold onto for years to come if that is her wish.

In another sign of the times, there are currently 28 female MPs sitting in the lower house chamber when Mrs Roberts is presiding.

“There are plenty of people who start in politics at my age or older,” she said.

“At every election you put yourself forward for a four-year contract. I’ve been doing that for a long time, and I didn’t anticipate having anything like this long a career when I started out.”

And when asked whether her ambitions extend to the 2025 election, Mrs Roberts is assuredly forthright.

“Absolutely,” she snapped back. “I love this job.”