Penny Wong

After starting at Coromandel Valley Primary School, Wong gained a scholarship to Scotch College, Adelaide where she studied chemistry, physics and mathematics, and was accepted into the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Adelaide.[15] After spending a year on exchange in Brazil,[16] Wong found she had an aversion to blood. She then studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours at the University of Adelaide, and completed a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice at the University of South Australia.[15][17][18]

While at university, she became involved with the leadership of the Adelaide University Labor Club in 1988,[19] and has been a delegate to the South Australian Labor Party State Convention every year since 1989, (with the exception of 1995).[20] She also worked part-time for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), and won a position on the National Executive of the National Union of Students. A number of her contemporaries at university went on to become Australian politicians. Former senator for South Australia, Natasha Stott Despoja, was a contemporary, along with former Premier of South Australia Jay Weatherill (with whom she had a relationship)[16] and Mark Butler, Labor MP for Port Adelaide.[15][16][19]

Wong ran for pre-selection for the Senate in 2001, and was selected for the top position on the Labor Party's South Australian ticket. She was elected at the 2001 election, her term commencing on 1 July 2002. Wong is a member of EMILY's List Australia,[26] the support network for Labor women, and sat on a number of Senate committees, primarily those related to economics.[27]

Wong in 2007

In June 2005, Wong was appointed Shadow Minister for Employment and Workforce Participation,[28] and Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility. Following the reshuffle in December 2006, she became responsible for the portfolios of Public Administration and Accountability, Corporate Governance and Responsibility, and Workforce Participation.

Wong in 2012

In December 2007, in the wake of the Labor Party victory in the 2007 election, Wong was appointed to the Cabinet of Australia in the First Rudd Government as the Minister for Climate Change and Water[29] and later, for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water in early 2010.[30] She later remarked that her own father was most proud, not so much at her becoming the first Asian-born person to serve in an Australian Cabinet, but because she was subsequently given "a fleeting mention"[31] in a book by Lee Kuan Yew. She accompanied then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Bali for the international climate change talks. Wong led final negotiations as Chair of the United Nations Working Group in the closing days of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2007,[32] shortly after her appointment as minister. She was said to be one of the "Rudd gang of four", who made "the key decisions."[33]

Shortly after the commencement of the Gillard Government in June 2010, Julia Gillard promoted Wong to succeed Lindsay Tanner as Minister for Finance and Deregulation.[34][35] At this time, Wong said she agreed with the Labor Party policy on marriage[36] because there was a, "cultural, religious and historical view of marriage being between a man and a woman".[37][38]

Penny Wong stands by Kevin Rudd at a press conference at Balmain Town Hall in July 2013.

In February 2013, Wong was elected as the ALP's deputy Senate leader following the resignation of Chris Evans, thus becoming Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate.[39] Wong retained the position of Minister for Finance after Kevin Rudd's successful leadership spill in June 2013. Following Stephen Conroy's resignation and the beginning of the Second Rudd Government, she also became the Leader of the Government in the Senate. She was the first woman to be elected as ALP Senate leader, and the first woman to serve as Leader of the Government in the Senate.[40]

Wong held these roles until Labor's defeat at the 2013 federal election.[41] Strikingly, "she emerges well from the memoirs of both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, despite the poison between the two."[3]

Following Labor's defeat at the 2013 Australian federal election, Wong was elected Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, becoming the first woman to hold the position.[42] She was also appointed Labor's foreign affairs spokesperson. In this role, she helped negotiate Australia's interests in the Trans-Pacific Partnership which was ratified in late 2018.[43] When a journalist noted that this was unexpected, given she is a member of her party's Labor Left faction, she replied, "I know, it's odd isn't it."[44] In March 2019, Wong was named the 2018 McKinnon Political Leader of the Year.[45]

Following the 2019 Labor leadership contest, Wong retained her positions as Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs in the new cabinet of Anthony Albanese.[46] At this point she was named part of Albanese's four-person ALP leadership team, along with Richard Marles and Kristina Keneally. In this role, Wong has delivered "forthright"[44] views on Australia–United States relations. While she believed the election of Donald Trump meant there should be a "global rethink"[47] on working with the US, she maintains a very high view of the alliance, which has been a feature of Australian Labor Party thinking since it began under wartime leader, John Curtin, saying, "I think America has been the key guarantor in an international system which has enabled more peace and prosperity than probably any period in the world’s history."[44] Similarly, she strongly believes in both Australian and US engagement with South East Asia through ASEAN. During a speech to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in January 2018, Wong said: "it is in the interests of all South-East Asian nations that the US remains strategically engaged with the region."[31] She sets both the US alliance and the need for engagement with Asia in historical terms:

The calamity that was WW2 in the Pacific provided the setting for one of the most interesting, stable and enduring alliances of the 20th century – the ANZUS alliance between the US, Australia and New Zealand. While it was forged in war, it has matured in peace. What began as a response to a threat to the security of both the US and Australia has evolved into a relationship built around shared strategic objectives underpinned by shared fundamental values. Our alliance with the US has stood strong for 70 years. But of course, our history, our friendship and our co-operation are even greater. The 100 years of mateship we honour this year is a celebration of shared values as much as of military co-operation.[48]

At times, Wong and her party have been accused of being "soft" in its response to the "bullying" behaviour of communist China.[49] However, Wong has been firm that Australians, and Australian political leaders, need to speak freely about Australian values and where they differ from those of our neighbours: "We're a democracy so freedom of speech, open dialogue and the exchange of ideas is part of who we are and I would hope that all countries would expect that when dealing with Australia."[50] As leader in foreign affairs, she has come under pressure from ALP elders, such as Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, for Australia to "cut the tag" with the United States. However, Wong has remained resolved that the alliance would remain, "deep, long-standing and institutional."[51]

In early December 2020, Wong joined her Labor and Coalition colleagues including Opposition Leader Albanese and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in condemning a Twitter post by Chinese Foreign Ministry official Zhao Lijian which shared a falsified image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the neck of an Afghan child in response to recent Sino–Australian tensions and the Brereton Report. Penny stated that the community was "united" in condemnation of the post, but argued that Australia needed "to respond calmly and strategically, and not be emotional in what is obviously a deliberate — in relation to what was a deliberate — provocation."[52][53]