Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has criticised “the Liberal party sisterhood” for lacking the “gumption” to speak out against toxic parliamentary culture, while also suggesting factional in-fighting contributed to Labor senator Kimberley Kitching’s sudden death.
Fierravanti-Wells, who has recently been relegated to an unwinnable spot on the Liberal party’s New South Wales Senate ticket, shared an emotional tribute in parliament to Kitching – who died suddenly earlier this month aged 52 – while unleashing a barrage of criticism about her own colleagues.
In a condolence session paying tribute to Kitching’s life and service on Monday, Fierravanti-Wells told parliament she believed bitter factional in-fighting contributed to the senator’s death.
She said she had established a friendship with Kitching, a Victorian Labor rightwinger, because of their shared concern about “the challenging issue posed by the communist regime in China” and over challenges to their respective preselections.
The Liberal senator said that she and Kitching were outspoken and unconstrained by the “prevalent group think within our political parties”, and that they had commiserated with one another about the “slings and arrows” of pitched internal battles.
Emotions brimming, Fierravanti-Wells declared both had internal enemies who “desperately wanted to see us defeated and they worked very hard at it”. She said both the major parties were now facing court actions as a consequence of internal rancour about preselection processes.
“I’m sorry Kimberley that you were not able to withstand the pressure,” Fierravanti-Wells on Monday. “I have no doubts that the stress of fighting for your political career took its toll and led to your death.
“Your death put much into context for me. It made me realise that all the stress associated with factional warfare is not worth the toll it takes on health and family.”
As well as battling internal dramas, the Liberal senator alleged she and Kitching had also been treated poorly by their female colleagues. Fierravanti-Wells said: “The concept of mean girls is not confined to one political party.”
“Much has been written about the treatment Kimberley received by what the media has described as the mean girls,” she said. “Like Kimberley, I too had experienced the Liberal party sisterhood.”
Fierravanti-Wells noted that after she gave an interview to the Four Corner’s Inside the Canberra Bubble program in November 2020, supplying “fair, neutral and appropriate comments” none of her female colleagues supported her.
She said her female Coalition colleagues – whom she did not name – would “privately whinge and complain” about political culture, but people ultimately lacked the “gumption”, “fortitude” or “appetite” to speak out.
“I suspect they were concerned about being summoned for a fireside chat with the threat of demotion for breaching group think,” Fierravanti-Wells said. “I shared my own experiences with Kimberley, so I understood how Kimberley felt having been treated the way she was.”
The Liberal senator’s reference to “mean girls” is a reference to a news story in the Australian in the mid-March headlined: “How Labor’s ‘mean girls’ ostracised Kimberley Kitching.” That article suggested Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong, Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher had isolated Kitching after a series of disagreements.
In his eulogy for Kitching at her memorial service in Melbourne, the late senator’s husband, Andrew Landeryou, told mourners “the unpleasantness” Kitching experienced from a “cantankerous cabal” inside the parliamentary party and outside it “did baffle and hurt her”. Wong, Keneally and Gallagher have flatly denied bullying Kitching.
Kitching and Fierravanti-Wells, both rightwingers in their respective political movements, have been significant factional operators during their parliamentary careers.
Keneally told the Senate on Monday that Kitching was a formidable colleague, plain-speaking and comfortable with the use of power. “She was never to be underestimated,” Keneally said. “She made her decisions. She was not manipulated by others in her career, beliefs or passions.
“I would never have described her as a shrinking violet. She was never backwards about coming forward. If she had a view, she put it. In many ways I found this refreshing.”
Implicitly referencing some of the score-settling and in-fighting that has erupted after Kitching’s death, Keneally told the Senate: “Those who use the grief caused by her death for purposes other than honouring her life and her work will find no friend in me.”
Wong, Labor’s Senate leader, noted that much had been “said and written in the days since Senator Kitching’s passing”.
“Many are hurting and many are grieving,” Wong told the chamber. “I understand that grief and loss can be so profound that it can provoke anger and blame.
“I have made my views very clear outside this place about some of that misplaced anger and blame.
“I will not return anger with anger, or blame with blame.”
