Voters in Australia have turned against failed Labor candidate Kristina Keneally, who has been dubbed “totally insane,” “ignorant,” and “shameless” for refusing to accept responsibility for her humiliating election loss.
The former NSW Premier has broken her silence a week after losing the federal seat of Fowler in Sydney’s south-west to independent Dai Le following a 28 percent Labor majority in the 2019 election.
Ms Keneally claims that being airlifted to Fowler, 56 kilometers from her home on Sydney’s northern beaches, had nothing to do with her losing the seat that might cost Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a majority government.
She instead blamed Covid lockdowns, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and anything else but herself in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
Her comments have sparked an outpouring of online backlash against her with many slamming her for being out of touch.
Many slammed her claims the loss was the result of Covid lockdowns last year, pointing out that several Labor MPs in neighbouring electorates, which also had strict lockdown measures enforced, were re-elected – including Chris Bowen, Michelle Rowland and Ed Husic.
Ms Keneally’s claims sparked a scathing attack from former federal Labor leader turned NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham.
‘Kristina Keneally blaming the NSW Liberal Govt lockdowns and the UAP for her loss in Fowler,’ he tweeted.
‘Yet in neighbouring McMahon, also in lockdown LGAs, the Labor primary vote increased by 1.5%. Keneally’s primary crashed by 18.6%. Completely delusional. Narcissistic on steroids.’
Refugee advocate Shane Bazzi was just as scathing.
‘Keneally has learnt absolutely nothing, blaming lockdowns for her loss in Fowler, rather than accepting that it’s because she was a rich white woman from Scotland Island parachuted in. She is shameless,’ he wrote.
The massive outrage on Ms Keneally’s Twitter was just as brutal after she retweeted a link to her interview.
‘I reside in an LGA that was also under the tighter lockdown rules last year. My ALP member has been returned with no swing against him. Might want to try and think of another excuse,’ one voter wrote.
Another added: ‘This is just wrong. You lost because you expected a community that your not from to back you, stepping over a local candidate who was well liked & part of that community. The time of parachuting politics is over. Voters want real, local representation.’
A third wrote: ‘Oh Kristina! At least own this! Your loss had less than zero to do with Covid lockdowns!’
Other were stunned Ms Keneally didn’t believe being parachuted into the seat was a factor.
‘If she thinks that ‘parachuting’ wasn’t the reason for her loss. Tell her she’s dreamin,’ one man wrote.
Another added: It’s good that you failed and the seat went to a passionate local That’s how it should be.’
The overwhelming online backlash forced some supporters to jump to Ms Keneally’s defence.
‘You had the most exemplary parliamentary career – too often taking the fall for the machine men’s faults. I hope you resurface soon in another public role. We need your humane & witty presence. Go well,’ one woman wrote.
Another wrote: ‘Thank you Kristina for all your hard work these last few years. I am a huge fan and my husband and I will miss you and your great passion for all that you do. Come back as soon as it is made possible. Normally don’t twitter replies but just felt I had to write this one.’
It was the first time Labor has lost the seat of Fowler since it was created almost four decades ago.
Ms Keneally was the NSW premier who in 2011 led Labor into one of its biggest ever losses at a state election before history repeated itself 11 years later.
Ms Keneally refused to take any blame for her humiliating loss, despite Prime Minister Albanese admitting in Sunday ‘the community sent a message’.
Despite claiming she would always live in the battler seat she was parachuted into, Ms Keneally days later left apartment she rented in Liverpool in south-west Sydney during the campaign and moved back to her lush mansion on the northern beaches.
Ms Keneally blamed her loss on lockdowns and vaccine mandates, despite Labor having nothing to do with them, not being in state or federal government at the time.
‘There was an understandable sense of anger at both major parties, with people reacting with ‘a pox on both your houses’,’ she said in a Q&A with the Sydney Morning Herald after calling the newspaper to explain her loss.
However, Labor or the Liberals won every other western Sydney seat with no others falling to independents – unlike the inner-city where ‘teal’ independents triumphed.
The former senator also tried to blame billionaire businessman Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the $100 million he spent on advertising.
When pre-polling started, the number of people who only took the UAP how-to-vote cards seemed unnaturally high to me,’ she said.
UAP got only 1,193 more first preference votes in Fowler in 2022 than it did in 2019 – nowhere near enough to overturn Labor’s previous 23,416 vote majority.
The American born, raised, and educated Ms Keneally also blamed being up against ‘a strong independent candidate’, Ms Le.
She was selected to run by Labor’s top brass, including Mr Albanese, over another local Vietnamese-Australian, lawyer Tu Le, who was the the choice of local ALP members.
More than 15 per cent of the population of Fowler was born in Vietnam, and another 45 per cent were also born overseas, including Iraq, Cambodia, China and India.
Ms Keneally also blamed an ‘understandable sense of parochialism that the community had’, for her loss.
Fowler is one of Australia’s most multicultural communities, with 81.8 per cent of the population having one or both parents born overseas.
But Labor’s candidate was a wealthy, American-born white woman who lived an hour away before being parachuted in to run for the seat.
‘A lot of Labor voters were so angry with the fact that the Labor Party was arrogant enough to think that they can parachute somebody from the northern beaches … to represent us,’ Fowler’s new MP Dai Le, who is not related to Tu Le, said.
Former Labor senator Graham Richardson said on election night that Ms Keneally was ‘like an alien walking around the Fairfield shops in a $2,000 dress’.
Mr Albanese on Sunday admitted Labor had to accept the outcome in Fowler, but also ‘have to learn from’ it.
‘Of course, you have to learn lessons from an outcome like that. And I think the lessons are very clear that the community sent a message,’ he told Sky News.
‘Kristina Keneally is a big loss to our team. She was a valued friend. She was the deputy Senate leader and it is a loss, but you have to accept outcomes in democratic processes, but you also have to learn from them.’
Ms Keneally said on election night, her ‘major fear… was that I would lose Fowler and that would be responsible for the ALP not winning government, so when that didn’t materialise, it helped’.
Her loss didn’t lose Labor the election, but with 75 seats and still needing one more for a majority of 76, she may have cost it the chance to rule without needing Greens or independent votes in the lower house.
Ms Keneally said though the loss of the safe Labor seat hurt, it didn’t come close to the loss of a child.
‘The greatest loss in my life was when my daughter Caroline was still-born in 1999, the single most defining moment in my life. That’s when I felt searing pain, not this…’ she said.
‘If you can survive giving birth to your dead child and burying her, you can pretty much survive anything.’
She said the day after the election, she and her husband went to the cemetery to Caroline’s grave.
The couple normally goes every month on the 18th because she was born on June 18, but she was unable to go for the past few months because of the campaign.
She also denied being mean to the late Labor senator, Kimberley Kitching, who died suddenly in March, aged 52.
Ms Keneally and fellow Labor senators Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher were branded as ‘mean girls’, with claims their treatment of Ms Kitching contributed to her death.
But Ms Keneally said she shed tears for Ms Kitching, who she sat next to for 18 months in the Senate.
‘I always described her as ‘good bad company’. It means she was great fun to be with but you always knew you were flirting with a bit of danger and intrigue… She was incredibly smart, and a wickedly clever political operator. I respected her.’
Ms Keneally was also unable to admit her loss in a stinging tweet last Sunday, instead declaring it was Labor that couldn’t claim the seat, before she congratulated Ms Le on her victory.
‘At the end of today, it seems that Labor will not claim victory in Fowler,’ she wrote.
‘I congratulate Dai Le and wish her well. Thank you to the people who voted Labor & the volunteers on our campaign.’
Ms Keneally quickly moved back to her mansion on Scotland Island after the election, a luxury enclave only accessible by boat on Sydney’s northern beaches.
She looked sombre when spotted collecting groceries from a boat on Saturday and doing some weekend cleaning on the exclusive island she calls home.
Ms Keneally was alone as she picked up a cardboard box and two full plastic shopping bags – including one from Aldi – at a jetty on Scotland Island at Pittwater on Saturday.
Dressed in a dark jacket and trousers with an orange t-shirt, Ms Keneally carried her haul of groceries back to her house, a three-storey, waterfront property surrounded by dense foliage.
Later Ms Keneally was seen chatting to an unidentified man and cleaning her front balcony in the orange shirt, having removed her jacket.