When Labor regained office just over a year ago she found herself put in charge of no less than six portfolios – housing,homelessness,mental health,youth,the North Coast and water – most of which come regularly attached to the word “crisis” in headlines. (“Minister for human misery” is how one MP rather brutally describes her grab bag of responsibilities.)
Rose Jackson reads every letter sent to her by residents in social housing.Ben Symons
Jackson was in a city cafe when new premier Chris Minns rang her to tell her what she’d be taking on. “I was writing and writing[the list] and,of course,there is only one answer,which is ‘thank you so much,it’s an honour to be offered the opportunity to serve’.” But after the call ended,there was a “gulp and an expletive”,she confesses.
Government was a shock after 12 long years in opposition. It was “just a jet blast in the face … the lived reality of it was much more significant than I had anticipated. And sometimes I’m like,god,this is really hard. But I’m not interested in making excuses … It helps a lot that I really like my portfolios.”
Jackson doesn’t make it easier for herself by insisting (to the consternation of her staff) on trying to read and sign a response to every letter that comes into the office from the state’s social housing tenants. That might mean (as it did recently),sitting in the corner of a six-year-old’s birthday party,where her young son was a guest,catching up on her briefs.
“My husband[senior St Vincent de Paul executive Sam Crosby] will say,‘you do that to yourself,those letters could go to the department’ – and he’s right,but I like to read what people are saying. The people who write in are angry or desperate or traumatised,and asking for help. What’s clear to me is how for many of them,it’s not an example of personal failure but of a dysfunctional[housing] market. Every homeless person I see,I feel that’s my responsibility.”
Nearly a quarter of a million NSW residents were in social housing at last count,with a daunting wait list of 58,000. She says it’s been “sobering … how subject you are to budgetary processes”.
“You are never going to click your fingers and[suddenly] deliver 10,000 homes. It’s always going to be 30 here,100 there,50 here,15 there,project by project,day by day;that’s just going to be the nature of the work.”
She’s also taking the fight to the Commonwealth (as she did this week,at a housing ministers’ meeting) for more funds to tackle the state’s wider housing crisis,which has become a political firestorm across the country.
It feels “overwhelming” at times. “But how do you run a marathon? You take the first step. It’s a cheesy saying,but you have to hold on to things like that,you have to get started,a project here,a person housed there.”
The food at Too Good Co:nutritious and unpretentious.Ben Symons
We lunch on a fine autumn Monday at a social enterprise cafe in Darlinghurst,in a restored heritage building now owned by the Ramsay Foundation,which provides headquarters to social justice organisations such as Shelter.
The cafe,Two Good Co,trains disadvantaged women for work in hospitality. The food is unpretentious,the menu modest but nutritious. Jackson,who clearly isn’t the long lunch type,orders a prosciutto,buffalo mozzarella and olive tapenade toastie,and her go-to cafe latte,while I opt for the savoury mushroom tart.
Her indomitable mother Liz remains,Jackson says,a source of “daily inspiration and a huge presence for me”.
Liz died in 2018,aged 67,after a drawn-out battle with cruelly disabling Parkinson’s disease,a battle Jackson’s father,Butler,documented in a moving program forFour Corners.
“It was extremely hard to watch her decline,” Jackson says,briefly blinking back tears. “But she didn’t want judgment,she didn’t want pity. So I won’t do that either … she fought so valiantly.”
Jackson salvaged precious mementos from her mother’s closest. “I like to wear her clothes:her dresses and jackets … and a pyjama top that she wore a lot,that I wear to bed. For me,there is an incredible sense of comfort in and security in that. Maybe that’s a bit morbid or weird,but a couple of people have mentioned to me that that’s something they have done too.”
Jackson originally aspired to acting or journalism – natural choices with two parents working in TV. (Full disclosure:I got to know both of them while working at the national broadcaster.)
She grew up in a modest semi a block from Bondi Beach,along with younger brother Joe,six years her junior. By coincidence,Jackson’s own two children,Oscar,6,and Charlotte,12,are also six years apart.
At the end of primary school,Jackson announced she was going to get herself into the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts even if that meant two trains and a bus,each way,every school day. She succeeded,became captain,and gained early notoriety leading a school strike against Pauline Hanson.
Jackson took seven years to finish her degrees as she juggled activism and study.Jon Reid
At Sydney University,it took her seven and a half years to finish her law and economic degrees as she was increasingly drawn into student leadership and activism,holding posts on the executive of the National Union of Students,the Students’ Representative Council,and the university’s senate.
“It had become clear to me that I was a partisan,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to practice the law,I wanted to change the law. Mum was taken aback at first when I joined Labor. She had a bit of cynicism about all politicians. But she could see that my passion was advancing the causes I believed in.”
As a firebrand student leader,Jackson attracted media attention early on,railing in one interview against the major parties for putting too many apparatchiks into the parliament.
Its ironic then,(and a point she concedes) that her own “well-trodden” path into Labor politics followed much the same pattern:a stint as a Labor staffer,several years with a major union (United Voice),ALP councillor on Waverley Council,convenor of the party’s left,and three-and-a-half years in the party’s notoriously faction-ridden Sussex Street headquarters as an assistant secretary before taking up a casual vacancy in the NSW upper house in 2019.
The rising star in the Minns government looks to her ABC journalist mother,Liz,for inspiration.
“You don’t want the party to be entirely people like me,” she concedes. “But,in my defence I realised at uni that I was passionate about politics. I realised that was my vocation.” And,she maintains,there is still a “healthy mix” inside the Labor caucus of MPs from other backgrounds.
,Jackson promised “no bullshit or spin”,and spoke of the fear of losing touch with herself in the “fog” of politics. She’s described her leadership style as “unique”.
“I’m a bit more informal than some others,” she explains. “I find it hard to do the formal thing. I try not to swear in parliament[but] I’ve decided ‘bullshit’ is OK. I speak off dot points,I never ask for a whole prepared speech … I don’t like buzzwords. I don’t like white noise. I feel like getting one of those buzzers when people say things like ‘systems realignment’ or ‘integration and partnership’.”
Her trademark feistiness had her up against “Tories and NIMBYs” (her words) onQ+Athis week,though that was a temperate performance compared with what she can unleash. (Witness her fiery takedown of serial political party-hopper and fellow MP Mark Latham in parliament three years ago,which had a viral moment on YouTube).
She remains a key member of Minns’ inner circle,despite the fact he’s from the party’s dominant right grouping. Internally,she was one of his most energetic supporters as he manoeuvred to gain the leadership.
Some rivals whisper that she and other prominent left-wingers in the ministerial ranks – people like Penny Sharpe,Jo Haylen and John Graham – all of whom are close to Minns – have compromised their principles for power. It’s a charge Jackson raises herself in order to reject it.
“I believed the Chris was the most electable person,” she says. “But I also believed that his integrity and intellect were what I was looking for in a leader of the Labor Party. Does that mean I agree with him on everything? Absolutely not.”
The bill at Too Good Co.Supplied
She is way ahead of Minns on drug law reform,for example. She has advocated for an expansion of injecting rooms,pill testing at music festivals,and marijuana law reform. Minns has been cool towards or resistant to all three. She is hoping – no,confident – that a promised drug summit later this year will give her a forum for persuasion. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg[the eminent US jurist] has a quote that I often reflect on,which is ‘fight like hell for the things you believe in but do it in a way that brings people with you’. That persuasion bit,that bringing people with you bit,that takes time – and energy.”
She hoses down speculation that she might eventually move to the lower house. “You would go to the lower house if you had aspirations to be parliamentary leader. I don’t have those aspirations,” she insists. “I can make a good contribution where I am,and I’m really enjoying making it.”
The most precious private things in her life right now are time with her kids and Sunday evenings – because “usually by then,I’m able to have a cup of tea or wine,and read some of my book – for pleasure!”
She’s currently working her way through a 600-page biography of US newspaper publisher Katharine Graham. At 20 to 30 pages at night,she might just finish it by Christmas.
For those who are curious as to how Jackson ended up with her mother’s surname,she says it’s because Liz insisted. She has bequeathed her own kids what she jokingly calls the “intergenerational burden” of a hyphenated surname:Jackson-Crosby.
“They can figure it out when they are grown-ups,” she says. “I did not let the Jackson women down.”
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