Sara-Jane Oakeshott, wife of independent MP Rob Oakeshott with children in Port Maquarie yesterday. Picture: Jane Dempster Source: The Australian
IF the Coalition fails to persuade Rob Oakeshott to support an Abbott government, the independent's resistance may have less to do with the past two weeks of frantic negotiations and more to do with racist sentiments he encountered inside the Nationals as a 26-year-old newcomer.
Oakeshott's bubbly wife, Sara-Jane, who works part-time for the Birpai Land Council in their home town of Port Macquarie, was his partner and "best friend" when he was elected in 1996 as a Nationals MP to NSW parliament.
At a party to celebrate his success, Oakeshott was stung by a racist remark that seemed to be a pointed reference to his girlfriend's proud Aboriginal and South Sea Islander heritage.
An older Nationals stalwart was heard telling a group of people that he despaired for the future of the party now that "blacks" were joining its ranks. None of the cronies listening spoke up or challenged his view.
Speaking to The Australian this week, Sara-Jane said she learned of the comment only later.
What stands out in her memory is the gap, both in age and attitudes, that separated them from the party he had been elected to represent.
"I didn't hear it myself," she said of the offending remark. "I heard it a long time after."
She insists that she never encountered any overt racism at Nationals functions.
"Nothing was ever said to me directly . . . Obviously a few things were said to Rob in my absence," she said.
But she remembers being struck by the generational divide when she began accompanying him to party events.
"I was in my early 20s -- by far the youngest person even in the room," Sara-Jane said.
"That was a noticeable difference to me. Rob was quite young too, and to have a younger Aboriginal South Sea Islander girlfriend as part of the group was probably difficult for them."
Sara-Jane's mother is a descendant of the Yow Yeh people, one of whom married a Pacific Islander shipped from Vanuatu to provide cheap labour in Queensland's sugarcane fields. Oakeshott saluted his wife's extended family in his maiden speech to federal parliament in 2008.
"It is a story of struggle and inspiration, where the family patriarch earned his break in Jimmy Sharman's boxing tents" he said.
Oakeshott represented the Nationals in NSW parliament from 1996 until 2002, when he became an independent. Mrs Oakeshott, a communications graduate from Queensland University of Technology, worked during this period for a Sydney public relations firm before returning home to Port Macquarie in 2003. The couple married in 2004.
Oakeshott yesterday declined to comment on what exactly was said at the 1996 function.
It was not the reason he quit the Nationals six years later, but close colleagues suspect the unsavoury incident stayed with him as he gradually became disenchanted with the party and its values.
Explaining his defection in 2002, Oakeshott has said he grew frustrated by the increasingly corrosive influence of developers. He expressed concern at the party's declining membership base and warned that the conservatives were cultivating "a fear-based mindset" that sat uncomfortably with his "logical" approach to policy issues.
Mrs Oakeshott said her husband felt his principles were being undermined. An enthusiast who thrives on involvement with local community groups, she said discrimination had not hindered her progress through life.
"I grew up in a tight-knit family where the colour of skin was never an issue," she said. "Everybody was treated equally. Things like that don't bother me. You roll with it; that was the way my mother and father brought us up." Her resilience was tested last weekend when she answered her husband's mobile phone to hear the gruff voice of Liberal MP Bill Heffernan identifying himself as "the devil". Her husband was busy at the wheel, driving to Lismore for the unveiling of the Sandakan Death Marches Memorial.
Oakeshott's grandfather Captain John Oakeshott served in WWII as a military doctor in East Malaysia and was shot dead two weeks after peace was declared.
The phone call was a rude hiccup on their journey.
"I didn't have any idea who it was," Mrs Oakeshott recalled."It was pretty weird." Heffernan later explained that his prank "was supposed to be a light-hearted, well-intended phone call"and that he had mistaken Mrs Oakeshott, 34, for one of her three children, Sophie, 6, Olivia, 4, and Angus, 2. An addition to this lively brood is due in four weeks.
Mrs Oakeshott shrugged off The senator's phone call as "an indication of these crazy times" with her husband at the centre of an intense tug of war to determine which major party gets the spoils of government.
She's more concerned right now on preparing for the arrival of the newest member of their clan.
