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'I’ve made peace with bowing to authority'
How Rose Jackson became Rose Jackson
Alex McKinnon
November 26, 2024
Until a couple of weeks ago, very few people had heard of NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson.
Sadly for Jackson, that is no longer true. Following a disastrous November 11 interview with Hamish Macdonald on ABC Radio Sydney, in which she said that "a couple of hundred bucks" was a reasonable rate at which to rent a two-bedroom flat in Sydney, Jackson has become a figure of derision online.
Jackson’s response has not helped. Rather than issue a stock-standard apology and go to ground, Jackson has been posting through it, claiming she didn’t say what she said (she did; you can hear the original exchange with Macdonald in full here, starting at 6:20), leaving lengthy comments on posts criticising her, and recording videos about how “it's important that we're just all a bit kind to each other”.
As a young woman in NSW Labor’s historically old, white, male caucus, she’s occasionally made headlines for things like supporting marijuana decriminalisation, campaigning against private prisons, describing her own party as "too white, sexist [and] homophobic” and reading the phrase "sashay away" into Hansard.
But this isn't the first time Jackson's self-styled progressive image has clashed with her record. As Shadow Housing and Homelessness Minister, Jackson voted against temporarily banning the eviction of tenants across the 2021-22 holiday season during the COVID crisis. In 2022, Jackson championed the Minns Government's laws bringing in harsher sentences for protests.
During debate on that bill, Jackson described the climate activists who blockaded the Spit Bridge as “rogue individuals who are going out there and doing things that are so unbelievably destructive not only to our society generally, obviously, and our economic productivity, but also to the causes that we believe in”.
That attitude was on display again on Sunday, when the Daily Telegraph published a long and excruciating puff piece with Jackson as part of its 'High Steaks' series, where Sunday Telegraph reporters take their interview subjects out for steak (I know).
Talking about how she has "become less of a leftie over the years" (the reporter's words) since her days as a student activist at the University of Sydney, Jackson urged the campus Palestine solidarity movement to “hate less”.
“The Gaza stuff is really hot on campus and part of me is understanding and it’s familiar and I’m not knocking these kids, I get it, but part of me is like, the world in which you live is not the world,” she said. “I hope they have a chance to get a bit of perspective.”
Putting the obvious offensiveness of that statement to one side, Jackson's particular circumstances make this a very revealing thing to say.
Like many politicians, Jackson's political career started on a university campus. In 2005 she was elected as president of the University of Sydney's Student Representative Council, a position from which dozens of politicians have started their professional lives. In 2006 she became president of the National Union of Students (NUS), the nationwide student advocacy body.
Notably, she was one of the few officeholders of either position not to accept an invitation from the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council to participate in its annual Rambam Fellowship program, a longtime initiative providing Australia's "student leaders" with free or heavily subsidised trips to Israel.
In late 2007, Jackson was working as a campaign manager for lawyer George Newhouse, who had been preselected as Labor's candidate to challenge Malcolm Turnbull for the seat of Wentworth at the upcoming federal election. Three days before the election on November 24, The Australian ran a front-page article "revealing his campaign manager has espoused anti-Zionism".
"I oppose Zionism because it calls for the creation of a Jewish state, and I think all government should be secular," Jackson had written in an email while she was NUS president the year prior. "No Jewish, Islamic, Christian states anywhere in the world, just good, robust, secular democracies. By speaking out on behalf of the Palestinians and Lebanese people, we can give voice to those that some governments and media would wish to silence.”
Jackson made the comments at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War, during which the IDF killed between 1,109 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians.
When Jackson saw The Australian's article, "I went straight into the bathroom and vomited," she said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald a year later. "I knew I had been misrepresented in such a fundamental way … it not only made me question why I was in politics, it made me feel like my career was over."
The story snowballed. The ABC and The Herald quickly published follow-up articles, as did the international Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The Australian Jewish News (AJN) ran quotes criticising Jackson from NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff and representatives of the Australian Union of Jewish Students, as well as seeking comment from Turnbull.
Newhouse himself threw her under the bus, telling the AJN that, if he won election, Jackson would not be employed with him. Newhouse, whose father Arnold was president of the Zionist Council of NSW, now runs human rights organisation the National Justice Project.
Jackson was 22 at the time.
The Australian's story also carried a statement from Jackson, written in response to their request for comment.
“Last year, when I wrote the email, I did not understand the definition of Zionism,” it said. "Since then, I have discovered that Zionism is about a homeland for the Jewish people."
"I support Israel. I support Israel's right to exist."
Her newfound support for Zionism now a matter of public record, Jackson’s rise through Labor politics continued. A year after the George Newhouse incident, she was elected to Waverley Council, going on to serve in various campaign and political coordinating roles for NSW Labor and trade union United Voice. As secretary of NSW Labor Left, Jackson travelled to Israel as part of an ALP delegation courtesy of the Australia Israel Labor Dialogue, an organisation focused on "building links between unions in Israel and Australia".
Jackson was appointed to the NSW Legislative Council in 2019, and began taking on shadow ministerial portfolios in 2021. Hansard finds no mention of Israel, Palestine, Gaza or Lebanon in her Parliamentary speeches.
That’s how, seventeen years after becoming the target of a vicious smear campaign due to her criticism of Zionism, Jackson sat down for a steak lunch with the media company that orchestrated it.
"The activist and feisty feminist is not entirely gone," finishes Sunday's 'High Steaks' interview, recounting how Jackson opted to bow, rather than curtsy, before King Charles on his recent visit.
“They recommended the women curtsy, but they allowed or acknowledged that some women preferred to bow and I chose to bow," Jackson said.
“Bowing is something I’m familiar with because when you enter and exit the chamber you give a little bow.
“So I’ve made peace with bowing to authority.”
If you’ve got anything to spare, please consider giving some money to this fundraiser I’m running for Noor Hammad, a young mum in Gaza, and her baby daughter Hoor. Any money raised will be sent to Noor's brother Abdallah Abdalrahim, who lives in Sweden and can send her money directly.
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