Sydney’s second airport is one step closer to reality after Prime Minister Tony Abbott signed up for the Badgerys Creek plan on Tuesday.
But one of Abbott’s own former party members has launched a scathing attack over the move, telling the ABC a long grassroots “soccer mums” campaign will put a stop to the airport.
Former federal Liberal MP Jackie Kelly, who held the Western Sydney seat where the new airport is planned until 2007, launched the attack on Abbott from London, saying she and her supporters will “do the prime minister over”.
“If you think for a second that the soccer mums of Western Sydney aren’t going to give you a kick over this issue you’re dreaming,” she told Fran Kelly on Radio National.
“The grassroots campaign has already started. There’s an enormous campaign underway.”
So just how powerful will the soccer mums be? And who exactly are they?
Largely an American term, and one reinvigorated by Sarah Palin making a joke about being a soccer mum during the opening speech for her vice presidential campaign, ‘soccer mums’ tends to refer to a group of middle-class suburban women with time on their hands. Enough of which they can contribute to a significant campaign – such as what Kelly’s proposing in order to halt the Badgerys Creek plan. It’s a term that attracts plenty of stereotypes (such as SUV driving), a term some might consider derogatory, yet one that a number of women have been proud to label themselves with.
And not only can ‘soccer mums’ produce some significant results, but individuals within such groups can get some excellent training in all forms of community engagement, funding, policy and coordination for later careers – such as in management and on boards. Some of our most prominent and powerful female company directors got significant community and campaigning experience while taking time out from their previous careers to raise young children, enabling them to offer such experience and contacts to prominent companies later on. While they may not have been ‘soccer mums’ in today’s sense of the term, they did once battle for the interests of their own families and neighbourhoods through networking and grassroots campaigning.
Kelly has plenty of experience raising children while campaigning herself. She became the first serving federal minister to have a child in 2000, when she gave birth to her daughter Dominique. She retired from federal politics in 2007 following controversy surrounding her husband who was caught handing out fake pamphlets from a non-existent Islamic group (something Kelly denied knowing anything about). She’s recently announced she’s seeking pre-selection for the state seat of Penrith.
So just how powerful are the ‘soccer mums’ of Western Sydney? We’ll have to wait and see.