Everyone asks me the same question now I’ve quit politics. Here’s my honest answer

October 19, 2026 — 10:30am

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Politics is a club. When you join you learn the rules. Like football. Or the boardroom. Or the dog show committee.

The rules of being a leader haven’t changed much in 80 years. Look like a leader. Sound like a leader. Know the answer to every question. If you don’t, answer a different one, convincingly. Be distinctive but not unsettling.

For me, the performance came with its own costume and choreography: pastel pantsuits, crisp collared shirts and that practised tread across the marble foyer of Parliament House.

Beneath it all, a louder, less obedient tune was playing.

In my rebel teenage years, I was drawn to punk’s venomous attacks on hypocrisy, on people who acted grand while living shallow, and to its refusal to shrink the self to fit the room. What punk offered me then, and still offers us all, is not a manifesto but a test: how much of yourself survives once your words have been filtered and shaped to meet the moment?

In politics, authenticity matters enormously. But reveal too much, and it can quickly become evidence against you. I’m bemused by reactions to the post-political me, as though leaving the role made me somehow different. And better. Now you seem like a person........

© Brisbane Times