Jason Clare and Louise Tran on their wedding day in Decmeber 2012 Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
Watch our sneak preview of Federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare and his ?lethal weapon? wife Louise Tran on Viet Face TV.
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BOB Hawke was mobbed at a Labor Party function for Vietnamese supporters at Canley Heights a few weeks ago. One young woman in particular wanted to meet him.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Louise Tran's father, then 21 and her mother, 18, had fled on separate boats. Her father was shot at in the mayhem. They met as refugee migrants in Australia and had their first date on Bondi Beach.
Tran's mother would never see her own father again, as he soon died. But surviving grandparents on both sides have since moved to western Sydney after the Hawke government implemented laws allowing family reunion as grounds for migration.
"It was a humbling experience for me to meet Bob Hawke, having had half my family arrive by boat," Tran tells Agenda. "Without this legislation my grandparents would not be here. I can't imagine what it would have been like for mum, leaving her own mother at 18, and having the chance to be reunited with her."
Tran, 25, says politics was not often discussed at home through her youth. Yet politics has become a big part of Tran's life after she wed Kevin Rudd's justice and border protection minister, Jason Clare, two days after Christmas last year.
As if Clare's job protecting Australia's borders were not tricky enough, on top of this "wretchedly difficult area of policy" he also has deeply human complexities to consider. Were it not for this nation's humanitarian acceptance of Tran's family, he might never have met his wife. Were his in-laws to come under the Rudd Government's latest policy of sending arrivals to be settled in Papua New Guinea, they might never have settled here.
"It's very upsetting when you have to go to work and tell Australia that a 2 month old boy has drowned in the middle of the ocean," Clare says.
Jason Clare at Yagoona Public School sports day. Picture: Kelly Rohan Source: News Limited
He doesn't talk to his in-laws about the solutions, the "poisonous politics" and the ruthless business of people smuggling. "The family says you've just got to stop this. Pretty simple to say, really hard to do," says Clare. And he stands by the PNG solution as the type of tough incentive required to stop the boats and stop people from drowning.
"For every people smuggler you arrest, there's another one that puts their head up. It's a bit like putting your thumb on the end of a hose, if you want to fix this, you've got to turn the tap off, remove the incentive for people to pay the money to get on the boat in the first place. People want to come and live in Australia so you need to make it very clear that if you come by boat you won't be settled in Australia."
Around the Canberra press gallery he's been dubbed the "minister for hotness". Liberal Party staffers prefer the more derisory "Ken doll of the Labor Party ". The 41-year-old is known by ex-colleagues as a neat freak with the tidiest desk in the office.
Like the electorate of Blaxland's most famous MP, Paul Keating, this is where Clare grew up. On a drive through Bankstown and Bass Hill, Clare points out the housing development that replaced the drive-in where he watched movies as a teenager in the back of his mate's ute and the sites of his first jobs at Sizzler and collecting trolleys.
His school photo was "pretty multicultural". I felt I was so lucky because I was one of the few kids as school who had a mum and dad who were still married and mum and dad had a job, I got breakfast before I went to school. There were kids who were really poor and not looked after."
Minister for Justice and Home Affairs Jason Clare, Labor member for Bankstown. Picture: Kelly RohanSource: News Limited
Back when Clare went to the University of NSW to get his law degree, Cabramatta was the heroin capital of Australia. "Every night I would be offered heroin on the way home. You'd get off the train in a flannelette shirt and a pair of jeans and a back pack and someone would come up and say, 'Do you want a cap' - a cap of heroin … It's just totally different now. The place was full of syringes, now it's kids."
He takes some credit for the transformation. As a law and order policy adviser with then premier Bob Carr, he helped implement a multi-department clean-up. Clare was doing corporate spin and community relations with road builder Transurban when he was recruited to Rudd's call for a younger and fresher team for the successful 2007 tilt.
When Tran five years ago announced to her parents she was seeing the local MP she explained it was the bloke on their fridge magnet. They met when she was doing volunteer public relations for a local children's festival. She'd been on stage at the same festival just a few years earlier, as an instructor demonstrating Vietnamese martial arts, Vovinam. "She doesn't do it anymore but she is still a lethal weapon," Clare says. Tran does PR for food charity Ozharvest.
Clare holds Blaxland on a comfortable 12 per margin. In an electorate where 44.5 per cent of the population is overseas born, the ethnic vote is crucial. Around 14 per cent of households speak Vietnamese at home and 19 per cent speak Arabic.
Jason Clare MP and wife Louise Tran. Picture: Tim Hunter Source: News Limited
His Liberal Party opponent Anthony Khoury said people feel abandoned by Labor. "The local member and his Party are just offering the people of Blaxland more of the same. If Labor hangs on, they will only be offering more talk, more chaos, more division, more uncertainty and more unexpected new taxes."
Vietnamese Community Association vice president Dr Tien Nguyen says Clare has an elevated status in the community. "He is considered a great friend of the Vietnamese community. Also the fact that he has a Vietnamese wife make him closer to the Vietnamese. And his wife's taught him a few phrases. We always have a laugh because he has a funny accent."
He has "down pat" an important phrase which he spoke at the last annual vigil in June for the estimated tens of thousands of Vietnamese who have died attempting to flee their homeland. It's an old saying, from when people were fleeing Saigon almost 40 years ago: "If the lamp posts could walk, they would have left".
Columnist with The Australian newspaper Niki Savva says the noise when Clare first entered politics that he was a potential future leader of Labor has quietened. "Maybe that's because he has become much more visible and his talent is less obvious. At first glance you think, here's a guy who has something about him. When you have a closer look, whatever 'it' is, I don't think he has got 'it', " Savva says.
Jason Clare and his wife - then fiance - LouiseTran at a friend's wedding in 2011. Picture: SuppliedSource: Supplied
Clare annoyed some of his colleagues in February at the dramatic "blackest day in sport" press conference announcing the Crime Commission's investigation into drugs in sport. "It was the sort of press conference you have when you are about to arrest people," one party insider said.
Savva says it preceded Kevin Rudd's decision to remove Clare from his cabinet secretary's position. "I am sure that was Kevin Rudd's rationale for it, but even so I don't think that would cripple his prospects in the long term. Leaders have to have a certain weight, a certain gravitas, intellect, verve and aggression, the ability to cut through with messages, " Savva says.
Does Clare one day want the top job? "No. It's such a difficult job. So much pressure is placed on that one person and that one job. I'm the sort of person who wants to be part of a team to make a difference. My dream one day is to be able to do that in education. That's the job that can make a difference for so many different people."
