WA’s trailblazing Federal MP Madeleine King set to win back the resources sector for Labor

Hundreds of metres below the surface of the earth, Madeleine King’s booming laugh echoes around the cavernous chambers of the gold mine. It’s dark, wet and humid. It doesn’t seem to bother King. A city-slicker who spends half the year walking the halls of Federal Parliament and has never been underground, she is still comfortable at the coal face. The Federal shadow resources minister seems perfectly comfortable sloshing through the ankle-high puddles in dusty gumboots through Northern Star’s gold mine at Kalgoorlie, climbing up on to gigantic machinery and asking a barrage of questions of the engineers and geologists. But when asked if she could ever do the job of the men and women in high-vis she is cross-examining, King doesn’t hesitate. “I’ve got lawyer’s hands,” she laughs. “I can’t imagine being able to do 12 hours down here, but it really gives you the greatest respect for the people who do it. It’s very isolated and dangerous. They mean a lot to the country.” Federal Labor has been fighting hard to change its image with the resources sector, with leader Anthony Albanese appearing in a hard hat as often as in can over the past two years. The party heralded 2019 as “the climate election” and focused its policy and its messaging on reducing emissions, much to the apprehension of resource-reliant communities. To win back voters after their shock loss, Labor has strived to change its tune and proudly declare its support of mining and the importance of the sector to Australia. But schisms in the party remain, which came to a head with the departure of Joel Fitzgibbon from the frontbench over his disagreement with how Mr Albanese — who is from the Left of the party— prioritised climate action over job creation. Enter Ms King. The Member for Brand, the seat in which she was born and raised south of Perth, graduated with a law degree from the University of WA. She then worked there for a decade as a research contracts lawyer, chief of staff and finally the founding executive of the Perth USAsia Centre. Three years after being first elected in 2016, Ms King was appointed to the shadow trade portfolio. As a West Australian, Ms King knew the importance of the export sector, with half a million jobs in the State reliant on trade. Taking over the resources portfolio from her predecessor Mr Fitzgibbon was a natural next step. Except for one thing — no woman had ever held the position on either side of politics. But just as she was instantly comfortable under umpteen tonnes of rock, so too was she in breaking new ground. “You don’t have to be a bloke to understand the economy or the importance of the resources industry,” she said. “I can understand that and not be a man.” Ms King says her natural understanding of the resources sector is in part due to her being a Sandgroper. “As a West Australian, you kind of have an innate knowledge of the mining and resources sector because it plays such a big part of the community and everyone knows someone who works in either oil or gas or mining,” she said. “You all have a connection to it.” But she admits many of her colleagues don’t, and therein lies the problem. “There’s a diversity in geography or geology so you know not everyone is going to have the resources function in their electorate,” she said. “I really think more Federal parliamentarians should try to make effort to go to WA to see the other side of the coin like the vastness of some of the operations and the nature of how high-tech it has to be and the innovation that goes on to make it safe and productive and a major export industry.” Ms King herself plans on visiting “a mine a month” across the country. And — with many of her colleagues likely to never visit WA’s mining towns — she plans on bringing mining to them. “What I’m trying to do in that respect is ... have a few briefings from some of the industry groups or companies themselves about what they do to caucus groups and encourage people that might not have had that interaction with these big mining companies,” she said. “I’m just hopeful it creates a better understanding and with better understanding comes a bit of reconciliation on that point.” The pandemic has limited the ability of the Government to travel overseas and push Australia’s interests. Ms King says advancing Australia’s place globally as a hub for critical minerals including lithium, which is used to make batteries, was crucial Ms King also said the Prime Minister needed to take his cues from the business community when it came to China. “I think we need to stop delegitimising the voice of business, and accepting their vast know-how and their vast relationships of 20 to 30 years relationships with Chinese people and Chinese companies,” she said. “I would talk to them. None of them would dictate to a Government what we do. But, they should participate. “Those voices that are doing this business, they employ a lot of people. And if they stop employing people that’s a big problem for our country.”