Giulia Jones’s decade-long career as a Canberra Liberal MLA ended last week with her resignation, due to family and health reasons.
“I gave it my best; I just needed a break,” Mrs Jones told Canberra Daily. “I didn’t resign lightly, because to get in there [the Legislative Assembly] took me 10 years. But there is life after politics.”
After a couple of arduous years, the former member for Murrumbidgee said she was feeling “a little bit burnt out”.
First, she had been Shadow Minister for Police and Emergency Services during the bushfires, speaking up for volunteer firefighters who felt they were unfairly treated, and calling for portaloos for women.
Then she was Shadow Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing at the height of the pandemic. During last year’s lockdown, she was the single point of contact for all the Opposition concerns about the lockdown regulations and the health restrictions, spending every day alone in her office, the only person on the Assembly’s first floor.
“We [the Liberals] did it gladly for people who were relying on us,” she said – like the family of a woman dying in Canberra Hospital whose family, living in NSW, needed two permissions to visit her. (Health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith, she says, worked constructively with her on these serious cases.)
But it took its toll.
“I did crisis, then I did crisis. It was very heavy; I worried a lot, and I wondered a lot whether we were doing the right thing. At the end of it, I was very happy to do it – but I was just getting to the end of my rope.”
All while being deputy leader of the Canberra Liberals in Australia’s first all-women leadership team, a position she stepped down from at the start of this year.
Mrs Jones begins a new job this week as CEO of Painaustralia, the peak body for living with chronic pain. It is, she says, another way to advocate for the needs of the public, and, despite the heavy burden of the lockdown, she enjoys working in health.
“I really wanted to stay in advocacy because I enjoy it, and it makes me feel like I have a meaningful life,” she said.
“It’s another career, but using a lot of the same skills – I’ll be talking to politicians a lot, I’m sure!”
Over the next six months, she will visit the state and Northern Territory parliaments.
“I’m getting to know more MPs, not less!”
‘A role model for working mothers’
Mrs Jones joined the ACT Assembly in 2012, as a mother of four in her early 30s – and leaves it as a mother of six.
“I wanted to get elected young because I was very motivated about things affecting mums having babies and women in pregnancy,” she explained. “I thought I’d like to do this while I’m still young – so I wasn’t seen as some old lady telling people what to do, but as one of them, saying: what can we do?”
In 2015, Mrs Jones became the first woman to breastfeed her baby (number five, Maximus) in the Legislative Assembly chamber.
“When you have your first child, you often feel embarrassed about feeding in public; it’s really confronting for a young mum. I thought most women in politics will get elected and then have a baby or two, so they’ll be stuck in this position with the first baby.
“I was doing it with my fifth – and I really didn’t care by then who saw what. Because I’d been through this for hundreds of hours already all over the shopping centres and in the public domain. But if I do this, then it’s over, and the next person could just do what they need to do without there being the big hoopla. So we got it done; it’s done; and hopefully now it’s just a part of work.”
Mrs Jones’s proudest achievement was also baby-related: having locks put on 25 breastfeeding rooms in ACT Government buildings. (And working with Michaelia Cash and Kelly O’Dwyer for similar measures in Commonwealth Government buildings.)
There was, she realised, “a big gap between getting the tick-off on breast-feeding rooms being mum-friendly and the realities of working women’s lives”.
“It wasn’t that many years ago we had articles in the paper about women breast-pumping in their cars or in the toilet. You wouldn’t eat your lunch in the toilet, so why should a kid’s lunch be prepared in the toilet?”
To make her point, she took a breast-pump – a big machine like a radio with tubes coming off and cups – into the Assembly debate, even though props were forbidden in parliament. Fellow Liberal MLA Mark Parton commented that, like a naughty schoolkid, she had it squirreled away under her desk, so she could pull it out at the right moment in the debate.
Mrs Jones also wanted the government to ensure playgrounds were fully fenced, so they were appropriate for autistic children (like two of hers).
She has been called a role model for working mothers – but what were the practicalities of juggling a large family and politics? Her husband Bernard and her children worked as a team to support her, taking care of much of the housework. The 10-year-old son, for instance, is responsible for the rubbish bins and the compost, while the eldest two sons load and unload the dishwasher as many times a day as necessary. A huge freezer full of food spares her having to run forwards and backwards to the shops all the time, while she buys 50 litres of UHT milk every fortnight.
“If the place is not perfectly clean, it is what it is,” Mrs Jones said. “Because you can choose: you can have a perfect house or you can have a full life. And I was definitely keen for the full life!”
Politics and faith
Mrs Jones said she was inspired to enter politics because she grew up in a family of people complaining about the outcomes of modern politics.
“I thought that’s a little bit like people watching the football, shouting from the couch at [the players] that they’re being lazy. I thought: well, if it really is such a big issue, people who have a view should have a go.”
She had what she describes as an epiphany one day on the way to university. “It just dawned on me that maybe politicians aren’t rocket scientists. Maybe they’re not people who always got the best marks in school. Maybe they’re just people with a lot of determination. And I knew I had a lot of that!”
In fact, Mrs Jones started on the left of politics, as a union organiser – but her Catholic faith was a problem. “It was made very clear to me that I would not be successful on the left because my views were no longer the fashion.” (Chris Steel MLA last week remarked that in another time or state, she could have found a home in Labor.)
“I didn’t want to be in a position where I couldn’t be me,” Mrs Jones said. Politicians and lobbyists advised her to join the Liberal party, whose respect for individualism and freedom of conscience, she said, would let her keep her own values.
“This was not a natural decision,” Mrs Jones said. “It was a head decision at the time.”
But the Liberals soon became her “beloved party of freedom and conscience”.
Mrs Jones describes herself as a modern, compassionate conservative. “Conservative not in the sense that nothing should ever change or improve. Conservative in the sense that I look to my grandparents as role models, not people I’m ashamed of. And I think sometimes we can find solutions in tradition, and not always in novelty.”
She opposed gay marriage in the 2017 plebiscite, arguing it was “a feminist or female-focused concept for the sake of women and the children who grow up in their wombs”, ensuring men took responsibility for women they made pregnant. She also, the Canberra Times reported, led an Indigenous same-sex marriage protest in Chief Minister Andrew Barr’s office.
But Mrs Jones said she was not dogmatic. “I have my own views; I want to be able to keep my own views; but I don’t expect other people to always share them. I don’t think myself better than everybody else.”
As she said at last year’s Politics in the Pub, she was asked if she would impose her views on voluntary assisted dying. “I’m OK with people having their own views on these topics,” she replied. “I know what I believe and what I have to do on this topic, but I’m really fine for you to have a say and for democracy to play out.
“I really do understand why people come to the conclusions that they do, even if they’re different to mine. My intention is to serve, and always has been.”
That, she said, comes from her religion. Christ’s example was to lay down one’s life for others: “to be willing to suffer for other people’s benefit, for no particular gain for yourself. Now, politics is not quite like that – because you’re paid, and you’re hopefully not dying – but it’s a microcosm of the same choices.”
While many people see faith as about big social issues, Mrs Jones said it also guides her interactions with people. She seeks to be of service to others, to know the truth about events rather than accept someone else’s version unquestioningly, and to improve herself.
“I’m often looking back at myself, and saying: Is that the right way to do things? Could I have done it better? Next time, what will I do?”
Multicultural affairs
After her valedictory speech last week, colleagues and erstwhile political opponents alike paid tribute to Mrs Jones’s thoughtfulness, her generosity, and her political passion. Greens leader Shane Rattenbury, for instance, remarked that she wanted to protect, care for, and create the best possible future for the next generation, while Ms Stephen-Smith said her passion was driven by a genuine concern for people.
That was evident in her longest-held position, that of Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs, since 2012. It was a gruelling, but ultimately joyful part of her life, she said. “It’s like being an ambassador, because you attend functions multiple times per week.”
At first, she said, it was daunting. “I have a lot of anxiety, and I found it really hard going to functions where I didn’t know anybody. But over time … the people at those functions became like extended family to me.”
Last year, Mrs Jones spoke to Canberra Daily about a spate in racism during the lockdown, and her determination to have a government inquiry into the causes. Ethnic communities were vilified for having COVID; Muslim women were verbally attacked at shopping centres for wearing hijab; a Chinese café owner in Dickson was attacked; and Indian families were targeted.
Racial abuse made the newer arrived immigrants and Muslim women in headscarves feel they would never belong. As the granddaughter of immigrants herself, Mrs Jones understood first-hand how xenophobia hurt new Australians; her Italian grandmother was bullied as a girl for eating non-Anglo food.
“We want to build them up, not break them down when they get here. I think that is the majority view in Australia. I don’t think Australia is a bad country. People make wrong choices, and some of those people could make better choices if they were challenged. This is a good country, and we as humans need to constantly question whether we’re doing things the best we can.”
From Canberra journalist Ginger Gorman’s Troll Hunting, Mrs Jones learnt the most important thing was to enforce polite social norms – “To point out that you’re not being socially appropriate. It takes other people to correct that situation; it’s very hard to correct it for yourself”.
“Humans have power to make the world around them function better for the people in it, or less so. Each of us individually has those choices to make every day. We can’t make choices for other people. We can challenge and put out the challenge out to say: Can you do it better? Most people will think about what you ask them.”
A decade in opposition
Being in opposition for 10 years was “psychologically gruelling,” Mrs Jones said, “because it has a lot to do with whether you’re accepted as a team by the community”.
In fact, Mrs Jones believes the Liberals are very good at helping on local issues, “a great bread-and-butter thing to be able to do”. People stop to chat to her about their lives every time she comes to her local shopping centre.
“I’ve worked with many of those people to resolve issues they deal with every day. Some of those have been the hardest battles I’ve fought because the government did not want to do anything about it. You have to wage a war of letters, and have to be utterly determined not to give up until there’s a solution, or they will just wear you down until you give up.”
Her first achievement was a fence at the end of Hindmarsh Drive, closing off a site where people used to do doughies and dump rubbish. After writing to Shane Rattenbury, the government built a simple fence – but it stopped the problem.
“We can do stuff with this job!” Mrs Jones remembered thinking. “We can get things done, and we don’t have to despair that, because we don’t run the departments, therefore we have nothing to do. That’s not true at all.”
She also believes the Liberals are very close to the community precisely because they have been in opposition for so long.
“We’re not up in the Assembly a lot. We are well connected in the community. We know what people are dealing with, and what they want, and we’re happy to act on their behalf. But the government don’t feel the need, because they feel like they’ll be there forever. What’s the urgency? Why spend all your time talking to community groups when you can just sit in your office, make decisions, sign them, go home, get paid? That is an outcome of the long-term government.”
In her valedictory speech, Mrs Jones claimed the ACT politicians were not serving the people of Canberra as well as they could. The ACT lagged behind the rest of Australia on every social measure – cost of living, health, education, housing prices, issues she had raised in her inaugural speech in 2012, were still problems in 2022 – because the public accepted the status quo. The government was too comfortable; they needed to strive harder rather than fatalistically accepting services were poor. A bureaucratic administration held too much power: the departments ran the ministers, who accepted too much what they were told, and clerks should be term-limited.
The government, Mrs Jones told Canberra Daily, was “more focused on fashionable issues than they are on the poor end of town getting ahead, or people being able to live within the borders of the ACT”.
“The danger in the ACT Parliament is people settling for less than they can get. If the [public] wants a sharper, faster, better-running city, they will have to vote for it.”
Does Mrs Jones believe Elizabeth Lee and the Canberra Liberals will win in 2024? “It is a hard ask, but she’s full of energy, drive, and determination, and she will give it everything she’s got.”
Mr Barr has suggested Mrs Jones resigned because she did not get on with Ms Lee.
“We have slightly different styles, and at times, that does create stress,” Mrs Jones said. “But disagreement isn’t bad… That would have been manageable if I didn’t need a break. It’s her choice how she manages the show. She’s the leader, and I don’t think anyone else would be a better leader.”
A message to Canberra
“Be assured that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get into politics. You just need a lot of tenacity; you need to be able to get up again when you’re kicked. That is the greatest skill. It’s not that things don’t hurt. You have to be a person who bounces back.
“It’s okay that I’ve done 10 years, and then I’m choosing to do something else, because that’s success. It’s success to have chosen to, and to choose not to.
“I’m very grateful to the Canberra Liberals for giving me a chance to do what I dreamed of. I’m grateful to the community for letting me do this service, because it’s what I really wanted to do. I’m grateful to my family, and I’m grateful to me for pursuing my aspiration and having had a say. Because I never wanted to be that couch armchair critic telling everyone else that they were wrong.
“I realised it is a tough business, but it’s worthwhile.”
