Opinion
Politics is a club. When you join you learn the rules. Like football. Or the boardroom. Or the dog show committee.
The rules of being a leader haven’t changed much in 80 years. Look like a leader. Sound like a leader. Know the answer to every question. If you don’t, answer a different one, convincingly. Be distinctive but not unsettling.
For me, the performance came with its own costume and choreography: pastel pantsuits, crisp collared shirts and that practised tread across the marble foyer of Parliament House.
Beneath it all, a louder, less obedient tune was playing.
In my rebel teenage years, I was drawn to punk’s venomous attacks on hypocrisy, on people who acted grand while living shallow, and to its refusal to shrink the self to fit the room. What punk offered me then, and still offers us all, is not a manifesto but a test: how much of yourself survives once your words have been filtered and shaped to meet the moment?
In politics, authenticity matters enormously. But reveal too much, and it can quickly become evidence against you. I’m bemused by reactions to the post-political me, as though leaving the role made me somehow different. And better. Now you seem like a person who cares. Why didn’t we ever see this side of you? Followed by the faintly patronising verdict: We never liked you much, but it turns out you’re alright.
When you leave politics, people judge you as a person. While you are there, they are looking for something else entirely. The qualities they welcome afterwards – candour, nuance, and a reflective inner life – are not rewarded in office. Most people encounter politicians in the media, not through the long hours and hard work it takes to solve problems.
I stood at countless press conferences, hair and makeup done, microphones banked up in front of me. Deep breath, drop the shoulders, march to the podium. I have confidence, I am across the detail, I have answers to every question, real or imagined. The cameras are not about to find an alarming new angle.
How did I actually feel?
Like hell after less than four hours’ sleep. Hoping the adrenaline would carry me through. Hoping, too, that I wouldn’t stumble because in every presser you are one stupid sentence away from bringing the whole thing crashing down.
And the policy? It was good, but I could see its weaknesses as well as its strengths. It was seldom the story anyway. The press are always more interested in the latest insurrection in the ranks.
And while I weighed every word, a thousand photographs were taken. Click, click, click. To be searched for signs of vulnerability, with the most promising filed away for future use, ready for the day I was declared politically dead.
What would happen if, instead of staying on message, I had answered every question with complete frankness?
We made political judgement calls. We might have got some of them wrong. We weren’t able to foresee every consequence. No, I don’t have complete confidence in every one of my colleagues.
Too much of this and the headlines write themselves: embattled and under pressure. And in a whisper, rather than a scream: female, flaky, emotional. In politics, once you understand the damage done in an unguarded moment, you do everything possible to prevent the next one.
The public expects leaders to have all the answers, not to lie awake in the small hours running through every disaster. You could never admit to waking at 3am, heart racing, body braced for attack. No missile is coming through the sealed hotel window. It only feels that way.
We want leaders who project mastery and certainty, never a shadow of doubt. But messy trade-offs and compromise lie just below the surface and the qualities they reveal – empathy, caution and moral seriousness – are rarely safe to display.
Psychologists talk about the false self. Politicians might seem like natural candidates for a masterclass. But has anyone stopped to ask why? Perhaps the political persona we are so quick to dismiss is simply a rational adaptation to what we expect from our leaders?
I had chosen this life and it was a genuine privilege to serve. Yet in time, the role consumed almost every waking hour. It stopped feeling like something I did and began to feel like something I was.
When leaders leave the building, we fess up. We admit that we spent more time pretending everything was fine than we ever let on, and that we craved stillness, away from the spectacle. I loved the parts of the job where my office and I could help people who felt invisible, for whom we were the last resort. Those moments felt more real than the bright lights ever did.
Inside the bubble, the audience is guaranteed. Outside it, perhaps not. Maybe the punters see the game for what it is and simply switch off.
Don’t know, Don’t care.
Six months after my political career ended, I went to see London Calling – The Clash Tribute at The Factory in Marrickville. Introducing the song Clampdown, “Joe Strummer” took aim at politicians everywhere: “This one’s for all the bastards on the Hill.”
Loud roar.
“Because it doesn’t matter what country you’re in, there’s always bastards on the Hill.”
An even louder roar.
At the end of the gig, the mosh pit ironically hailed me as a punk rock icon and we all laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. None of us was quite who we had been when we first heard the music. For a moment, being authentic required no effort at all.
Sussan Ley is a former leader of the Liberal Party, a writer, and the non-executive director of Snowy Hydro.
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