Fiona Richardson was a brilliant Person - 29th August 2017

Fiona Richardson at the Grange Rd level crossing, Fairfield. Picture: Richard S

Fiona Richardson was a brilliant person who worked to improve lives

THEO THEOPHANOUS, Herald Sun

29^th August 2017

IN the rough and tumble of politics, you sometimes form special friendships with special people. They are the people who stand with you, hurt with you, and fight for you against the attacks you sometimes endure in public life. For me, Fiona Richardson was such a person.

Much will be said about the legacy Fiona left as Australia’s first minister for the prevention of family violence. Despite massive obstacles in her path, she steered the beginning of cultural change.

The accolades are much deserved, the more so because her passion to force us all to confront the issue, comes from her own family experiences with domestic violence which she made so public on Australian Story. Of equal importance for her was to embed gender equality for the truly disadvantaged. In one of her last speeches, she said: “Whether you’re Aboriginal, or a new arrival, or living in rural or regional Victoria, or have a disability, this strategy is for you.”

But the most striking thing about Fiona was that she was a consummate politician, one of that rare breed who understood politics as a complex interplay of strategy, motivation, loyalty and, yes, disloyalty which had to be considered on the path to worthwhile change. She became my friend and I was proud to be her mentor at a time when the Labor Party was trying to reposition itself after the “guilty party” era. She was the newly elected secretary of the biggest faction in the ALP, Labor Unity. When we met, I was taken by how even then she commanded respect through her intellect and understanding of power.

“Mate, this woman knows how to count and how to win,” one union leader once told me.

She was surrounded by blokes, hardened trade unionists and factional powerbrokers. We became close friends. I am not sure why. Perhaps for her as the solitary woman in the power structures of the faction she could relate to my struggle as an ethnic — or maybe we just liked the intellectual banter.

Whatever the reason, I am fortunate to have had her as a friend. She was devastated when I was locked out of the ministry in the first term of the Bracks government. In her straight talking way, she would tell me how stupid that decision was, not because it was unjust but because it was a bad government decision.

She made it one of her missions to get me back in and in this, too, she succeeded with the help of many other loyal colleagues. You don’t forget those things.

Premier Daniel Andrews places a small box next to yellow flowers on Fiona Richardson’s seat in parliament. Picture: AAP

For many years, the Labor Unity executive would meet each month to determine strategy. It included Bill Shorten, Stephen Conroy, myself and a select group of union and party heavies. Fiona and I would often meet afterwards and she would give me her steely look and say: “How are we going to get those boys to come across to our view?” — which was really her view. While other women were breaking glass ceilings in business, Fiona was crashing through in the hardest game of all: political factional power.

She was always coming up with breakthrough ideas. She first floated the concept of removing 50 level crossings before she became ill in 2013. It has been left to another strong woman, Jacinta Allen, to bring the idea to reality.

The last time I met Fiona in Parliament House, we spoke for almost two hours about her dream of being well enough, and being given enough authority, to see through to implementation the domestic violence and gender equality initiatives. She spoke of tactics, of obstacles and of her determination with such passion even though she knew she was dying. Now that heavy responsibility will fall to others.

Hours before Fiona died, my wife and I welcomed a granddaughter — our first. Fiona’s gift to her is the prospect that she will live in a safer and more equal world. It makes us smile.

For me, personally, perhaps the most amazing thing about Fiona is the loyalty and unswerving support she showed to me in my most difficult time. A time when others urged her to create distance between us. I remember her saying to me: “Theo, you know who you are and I know who you are. You are not who they say you are. Don’t let them redefine you.”

I will miss her terribly. To her husband, Stephen, and children, Marcus and Catherine, you had an amazing wife and mother who was smart enough and determined enough to make the world a better place. Cherish her memory.

Theo Theophanous is a former Labor minister and commentator