It was Wednesday morning when the ALP bean-counters made their call. With a 655 vote lead in the Hindmarsh count, they’d worked out Steve Georganas couldn’t be beaten, and despite Liberal incumbent Matt Williams’ reticence to concede, the game was up.
People don’t want any meddling with Medicare and this is an issue I’ll be very vocal on.
Three years after losing the western Adelaide seat to Williams in an eight per cent swing, as the Rudd government plummeted to defeat (with Labor recording its lowest primary vote since 1931), Georganas, one of the most respected and well-liked lower house MPs of his generation, is heading back to Canberra.
As the Twittersphere spread the news like wildfire and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten headed to South Australia to appear with him at a press briefing, one couldn’t help but feel that his victory meant something more than most; a coming home.
With an election that was marked by Australians expressing a distinct pessimism with the major parties, Georganas represents perhaps any major party’s best face; someone who’s track-record speaks of not just passion for his party’s values, but also modesty, graciousness and humility.
His return to the House of Representatives will be welcomed beyond Labor’s closed-ranks, and rightly so.
Born in Mile End in 1959, within the Hindmarsh electorate, Georganas contested the seat of Hindmarsh first at the 1998 and 2001 elections, before winning it by just 108 votes in 2004.
In 2007 he retained it, picking up a five per cent two-party swing. Three years later he achieved a six per cent margin over the Liberals – a margin of some 5,000 votes. For Australia’s most marginal seat it was probably as emphatic a victory as you’re ever likely to get.
For Georganas, the Labor movement is in his blood and his Greek Australian identity was a key factor in his early political education.
Witnessing his father’s experience as an employee of General Motors Holden, and then as a worker on the railways, it was Labor’s views, and particularly the Whitlam government’s actions on social justice, that made an indelible impression on the young Georganas.
He’s often spoken about where he gets his motivation.
“Both my parents were working-class, blue collar workers. They came out here with very few English skills, and worked in the lowest paid jobs and the hardest industries,” he told me in the run up to the 2013 election.
“The Labor movement ensured that my parents had a fair go and were able to make a success of their lives here. I want to be able to offer that to other people.”
In the ongoing debate around the ALP’s position on immigration policy and asylum seekers, Georganas has been unwavering in his view that Labor must take a more humane, progressive approach.
Speaking just an hour after the declaration this week, Georganas told me he felt “very privileged” to have been elected for his fourth stint in the House of Representatives and “to participate in our democracy”.
So often words are cheap in political discourse and the ‘media-bites’ that are part and parcel of a politician’s PR, but there’s an authenticity to Georganas’ tone when he makes such statements that is undeniable.
Asked what has changed since he first went to Capital Hill as an MP, he says the fundamentals remain, despite the revolution of social media ensuring a politician’s messages are mediated and conveyed in a way that was unimaginable 20 years ago.
In Australia’s 45th parliament he’ll focus on what he’s always focused on: the well-being, prosperity and living-standards of his electorate.
“The Australian public never gets it wrong,” he says. “We may whinge and carry on about the make-up of the parliament, but it’s my duty now as the member for Hindmarsh to do all that I can to be a good representative for Hindmarsh, and be worthy of their vote.”
As he’s done in the past, he’ll be arguing the case for interventions on jobs, health, pensions and aged care, all of which he says have been hard hit by the Coalition’s policies.
“We’ve had a very good state government who have taken it up to the federal government. I’ll now be an extra voice to make sure the Coalition doesn’t renege on its promises, and to do all we can to secure Arrium steelworks and to put things in place to make sure the GMH Holden shutdown has as minimal an effect as possible.”
Arguably Georganas’ most passionate agenda item is Medicare. He’s adamant that his party’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign in the run-up to the election was not disingenuous, despite accusations that Labor had raised baseless fears over the issue.
“The groundwork for the Liberals to lose this seat was set in that nasty budget in 2014 when they made $500m worth of cuts to health,” he says.
“People don’t want any meddling with Medicare and this is an issue I’ll be very vocal on. Hindmarsh has one of the oldest electorates in the country, with 20 per cent over 65, and I’ve heard them loud and clear.”
Beyond the cut and thrust of the central policy issues, Georganas says he’s looking forward to once again playing an active role on the federal stage for issues that affect Greek Australians nationwide, as well as cultural diversity issues. The Parliamentary Friends of Greece group and the recently-established Parliamentary Friends of the Parthenon group will find him a staunch ally.
Perhaps above all, Steve Georganas’ return as an MP is welcome at a time when the world, not just Australia, is experiencing a deficit in people’s respect for political representatives; a world where distrust stalks traditional political processes and positions, and in that vacuum, extreme views emerge and are taking root.
At a time when One Nation is on the rise in Australia, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in November’s US presidential election, and the right-wing of one political party in the UK has delivered Britain’s future isolation from the EU – carried on a wave of whipped-up xenophobia and misanthropy – there’s never been a better time for an Australian parliament to shine as a beacon of stable, collectively-responsible and compassionate unity.
“It’s us politicians who have to make that connect to the public,” says Georganas. “It’s up to us to show where the new economies are, to not brush people aside. Things are getting out of hand and we have to somehow rope this stuff in. That’s the job of a politician: to make things better.”
Steve Georganas is back where he belongs.