Incoming Labor president Kate Ellis warns political toxicity limits MPs' work, spills into community

The incoming Labor president, Kate Ellis, says toxicity in politics is spilling into the broader community and public debate, warning that threats against MPs’ safety are limiting how elected politicians do their jobs.

Due to succeed Wayne Swan as the leader of Labor’s organisational base at this week’s national conference, the former Rudd/Gillard government minister said fighting back against populists including Pauline Hanson was best achieved by demonstrating policies that improve voters’ lives.

“My sense is that people are angry and that people are hurting, and I think it’s really important to acknowledge that,” she told Guardian Australia.

“I don’t think there’s any value in denying that there are people out there who are doing it tough and who wish that life could just be a bit easier.

“I think the focus for Labor needs to be on showing that we’re the ones that actually deliver the reforms that make a real difference to people’s everyday reality.”

Beginning on Thursday, Ellis will chair three days of deliberations by thousands of party officials and rank-and-file members in Adelaide, with debates expected on policy positions on tax, AI, gambling advertising and Palestine.

A cross-party group of MPs, including the climate change assistant minister, Josh Wilson, and the former attorney general Mark Dreyfus, used a new video, produced by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, to call on Labor to sign and ratify the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.

Ellis represented the federal seat of Adelaide for 15 years, serving as a minister from 2007 until 2013.

Elevated to the ministry at just 30, she faced entrenched sexism, sexual advances from men and gossip in Canberra. She revealed after leaving politics that a Liberal staffer had aggressively challenged her to say how many men she had “fucked in order to get into parliament”.

After holding portfolios including sport, employment participation and early childhood education, Ellis quit politics in 2019 to be closer to her family. A former Adelaide Crows Football Club board member, she is the chief executive of the non-profit Raising Literacy Australia.

“There’s no doubt that the heat of political debate has been turned up since I left, and that’s horrifying to me because I think it was bad enough at times as it was,” she said.

“In terms of the threat to people’s safety and the way that people can go about doing their jobs, I think that that is really deeply concerning. It means that there is a responsibility on everyone in political discussions to try and remain focused on having legitimate policy debates, but also doing so in a respectful way.”

A former minister for the status of women, Ellis said gender diversity had greatly improved in politics since she retired, along with the treatment of female MPs, but there were areas of backsliding in society more broadly.

“With politics overall becoming more toxic, that then flows into a whole range of other areas in the public debate,” she said.

Expected to be elected to the presidency unopposed, Ellis rejected suggestions that the party’s 50th annual conference – which includes debates on changes to Labor’s platform set to guide policy up to the next election – was overly stage-managed to limit conflict.

“If there’s huge policy debates on a range of issues, commentators will say that the party is divided, and if not, they’ll say it’s all stage management,” she said.

“There’ll be policy debates, some of which probably will not even be anticipated.”

Ellis backed Albanese’s aspirations to take a policy of universal childcare access to the next election.

“We know that if we can get the settings right to support families in those years when they are juggling work and family commitments before school, then that’s incredibly important to the population,” she said.

“I’d argue that, even more importantly, we know that if we can deliver access to quality early childhood education, we can start making sure that there aren’t so many Australian children falling behind before they even reach school age.

“I think that is the ultimate goal of trying to increase equality and opportunity.”

Labor has commissioned consulting giant Deloitte to help design a universal childcare system in Australia, launching a two-year study of demand and costs, as Albanese chases a political legacy to rival Medicare. The report is due to be handed to the government by early 2027.

Labor’s chief campaign strategist, national secretary Paul Erickson, will be reappointed unopposed, confirming his partnership with Anthony Albanese as Labor seeks a third term at the 2028 poll.