Maxine McKew
Maxine Margaret McKew AM (born 22 July 1953[1]) is a former Australian Labor politician and journalist; she was the Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government in the First Rudd Ministry and the First Gillard Ministry.
Maxine McKew
Between 2007 and 2010, she was the member of the House of Representatives for the Division of Bennelong, New South Wales. Until 2007, the seat was held by the then Prime Minister John Howard, who had been the member for 33 years. She was only the second person to unseat a sitting Australian prime minister since Jack Holloway defeated Stanley Bruce in 1929;[2] and the third person to unseat the leader of a major party, after Neville Newell defeated Charles Blunt, leader of the National Party, in 1990. At the 2010 Federal election she lost her seat to the Liberal Party candidate, John Alexander.
Before entering politics, McKew was an award-winning broadcast journalist. She hosted a number of programs on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television and radio, most recently Lateline and The 7.30 Report.
Personal[edit]
McKew was born and grew up in Brisbane, Queensland where her father, Bryan McKew, was a boilermaker. When McKew was five, her mother Elaine died, and McKew was sent to live with her grandparents for three years. McKew and her sister Margo moved to Moorooka to live with their father after he remarried; later attending All Hallows' School in Brisbane.[3]
McKew currently lives in the Sydney suburb of Epping with her partner, former ALP National Secretary Bob Hogg. McKew is Roman Catholic and Hogg is divorced; consequently, they have chosen not to marry.[4]
McKew had previously indicated active plans to move into the electorate of Bennelong,[5] before doing so in March 2007.
On 3 March 2007, allegations of death threats against McKew were widely reported. There has been speculation that attempts to tamper with her car were by car thieves looking for spare parts rather than by politically motivated individuals.[6][7][8]
Media career[edit]
After graduating from high school, she briefly attended university before dropping out and living in London for two years. She supported herself with a variety of temporary jobs, including relief typing at a London BBC office. A letter requesting a job—written by McKew on BBC letterhead paper—was rewarded with a cadetship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane in 1974 following a brief stint as a news analyst at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In 1976 she moved on to host This Day Tonight, a local current affairs program.[3]
In the late 1980s, McKew worked for Ten News as a pollical reporter before returning to the ABC.
McKew appeared as herself in the eighth episode of the first series, and in the sixth episode of the second series of the Australia television series The Games.
In over 30 years working at the ABC, McKew worked as a presenter on the 7:30 Report and Lateline, and also worked on The Carleton-Walsh Report, AM, PM, and The Bottom Line. McKew was honoured for her broadcasting work with a Logie award, and for her journalism by a Walkley Award. In October 2006 she announced that she was leaving the ABC saying "This is more than likely the end of my broadcasting career".[9]
From 1999 to 2004 she wrote Lunch with Maxine McKew, a column for The Bulletin, a weekly magazine, based on her interviews with prominent Australians. McKew frequently elicited newsworthy revelations from her subjects, and was named by The Australian Financial Review as "one of the top ten exercisers of covert power in Australia".[10]
Following her election as the member for Bennelong in 2007, the Canberra Times had a photo of McKew in a Basic Instinct moment, referring to the scene where Sharon Stone was allegedly not wearing underwear.[11][12][13]