“For those who scoffed at her Glasgow trip as a mere gesture, it’s worth noting that as leader she insisted on also becoming shadow minister for climate change,” writes columnist ROBERT MACKLIN. 

ELIZABETH Lee deserves better.

First, she had to deny that she was tied up with Senator Zed Seselja’s sneaky push polling that linked the ACT government’s proposed fines for personal possession of small amounts of drugs instead of jail sentences with “violence and increased use of hard drugs like heroin and ice”.

Next, she copped a too-clever-by-half tease from Chief Minister Andrew Barr that she should use her trip to the climate conference in Glasgow to lobby PM Scott Morrison “for more ambitious action” to limit global heating. And then Morrison skedaddled from Glasgow even before she reached Scotland, let alone the conference centre.

Some will say the trip was a political gesture for Ms Lee and she should have organised it well in advance. 

However, it was an entirely appropriate journey for a territory opposition leader to make. In an electorate like the ACT, she couldn’t allow the Liberal brand to be sullied by the Scott Morrison-Angus Taylor plan for a plan. And the contacts she could make at a such a gathering would more than repay the cost of the trip should she ever occupy the Chief Minister’s seat.

It was a very natural move for someone who has been moving onwards and upwards ever since she arrived in Australia from her birthplace in Korea as a seven-year-old in 1986. 

Her parents, she says, “had the courage to reach out beyond what you know for the chance to create something better”.

They took “great care” she says, in preparing her and five-year-old sister Rosa for the move to Australia – “They decorated our bedroom with wallpaper containing the English alphabet”. 

On arrival, they moved in with an uncle who had migrated some years previously.

“It was a little fibro place at the back of a main house in Merrylands, western Sydney,” she says. 

“Looking back, I do not remember the days of not understanding what the teacher was saying or not being able to communicate with my classmates, although there must have been many moments like these.

“What I do remember is the kindness of our neighbours, inviting us to celebrate our first summer Christmas by the pool; taking us on fishing trips to Wollongong; lending Rosa a dress for her Holy Communion because mum and dad had not understood the school newsletter.”

Her father worked as an excavator in the construction industry while Elizabeth began a school career that would bring her to Canberra at 18 to take degrees in law and Asian studies at the ANU followed by a Master of Laws and rising to vice-president of the ACT Law Society. At the same time she became a fitness instructor; then a legal officer in the federal Attorney-General’s Department and a volunteer lawyer with the advice bureau of the ACT Law Society.

She was elected to the ACT Assembly in 2016, easily won her Kurrajong Seat in 2020 and was chosen by her colleagues to the opposition leadership soon afterwards. 

And for those who scoffed at her Glasgow trip as a mere gesture, it’s worth noting that as leader she insisted on also becoming shadow minister for climate change.

In other Australian electorates, her Korean background might well be seen as an impediment to political success. Happily, Canberra is perhaps the most enlightened community in the country with its proudly gay Chief Minister and an educational standard that leads the nation. Add to that the huge popularity of Netflix’s “Kim’s Convenience” – the adventures of a charming Korean family in a Toronto store – and Ms Elizabeth Lee seems to fit like a glove… and I’ll bet she hates that other Korean series just as much as I do.

www.robertmacklin.com