Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
 
Tuesday was my first full day of 'not being leader' and I spent a few therapeutic hours in my office in the Valley in Brisbane clearing out large amounts of documents and paperwork which have accumulated over the past 7 years. I managed to fill a full sized wheelie bin without really trying and there's plenty more I haven't looked at yet.

I got a few emails from people who obviously assume I'm now out of the Parliament, which is a bit disconcerting. Of course, I'm now Deputy Leader and also party Whip in the Senate, which gave the Advertiser in Adelaide a chance to manufacture an insulting story about whether or not the Government Senate Whip, Jeannie Ferris, had anything to fear now that she (gasp) has to regularly be in meetings with me.

Tuesday was also my 8th wedding anniversary. I got into the Senate in Oct 1997 (quite unexpectedly due to Cheryl Kernot’s resignation) the year after I was married, so I've spent nearly the whole 8 years travelling backwards and forwards to Canberra. There are some parallels with my daughter Lillith, who was born in October 2001. I became Leader the year after her birth (quite unexpectedly due to Natasha Stott Despoja’s resignation) and I've spent the majority of her life travelling backwards and forwards to Canberra - and around the whole country.

Lilith was born during the 2001 election campaign, and I didn't even know if I'd be out of a job before she was one month old. It was an interesting time. When she was one hour old I was cradling her in one arm outside the hospital ward whilst I was talking preference decisions on my mobile phone with the other arm. I remember the paper taking some photos of her with me when she was one day old - something I can be grateful to the media for, as it provided me with a couple of very nice photos.

I guess it was because the photos were nice that they decided not to bother running them in the paper, unlike the photos of Lillith when she was seven days old taken with Natasha Stott Despoja. They managed to get one photo (out of what would have easily been 15 minutes worth of photo-taking) of Natasha inadvertently pulling a face while holding Lillith. That was the one they ran on the front page the next day and re-ran it about 10 more times during the campaign. I've seen it reproduced in two recent political books as well. Natasha was the first person I told when Lillith was born (it was a bit early in the morning to ring my mother), so I guess there's some sort of synergy in the two of them being tied together in some way through that photo.

Natasha gave birth to her own child on Tuesday - a baby boy named Conrad - and I imagine the media will be keen to run photos of him and his mum soon enough.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, December 15, 2004
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