YES, CHIEF MINISTER

Y ES, CH I EF M I N ISTER

Andrew Barr is Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory and Australia’s first openly gay state or territory leader. He’s also a husband and a “fairy godfather”, he tells Michael Donnelly.

ave you seen the cool little

Hcapital of Australia lately? New buildings have shot up, and old buildings have come down, making way for carefully cultivated wetland parks. Sexy red trams zip out to the northern suburbs. Young people dress like they’re going on Tinder dates most of the time, and there are chic little wine bars. That bogan thing that’s so prevalent in other Australian cities? It’s not so strong in Canberra.

“The Canberra of today is a very different place to what people who came here decades ago on their year six school excursion would have seen,” says the ACT’s Chief Minister, Andrew Barr. And despite the fact he’s been the ACT’s tourism minister for 16 years, this is not industry claptrap. It’s real. Canberra’s come a long way.

The happily and openly gay 48-year-old Chief Minister, a bona fide “Ken Behren” since the age of four, is both a product of the city’s cosmopolitan transformation, and now also a symbol of it. Upon reaching the territory’s top job in 2014, he also became the first openly gay leader of any Australian state or territory, a milestone that was unthinkable not so long ago, even to himself.

“I didn’t come out until I was 26,” he says. “I was president of Young Labor, rising through the political ranks, but there was this other side of my life that I was not being honest about, to myself and to other people. I was sick of making excuses as to why I wasn’t going to have a second date with [women]. And I liked guys,” he says with an easy laugh.

“It became very hard to contain. You can’t sit on that forever. I thought I could either continue to cut all of that out of my life and just be this weird political animal, or actually it might be time to be a bit brave. It was time. My coming out experience was probably as amazing as you could possibly hope for.”

That coming out process ran the typical gay gamut – from getting blond highlights to meeting a boyfriend. Barr met Anthony Toms at Canberra’s fabulously modest gay venue, The Meridian Club, in November 1999. Sadly, The Meridian was not to be a stayer, but the couple are: they civilly united ten years to the day after their meeting, and were married ten years to the day after that.

Barr entered the territory’s Legislative Assembly in 2006, but it was not until 2011, when he became Deputy Leader to Katy Gallagher (now a senator for the ACT), that he perceived being openly gay was no barrier to one day becoming leader himself.

That day arrived sooner than expected when Gallagher quit in 2014.

“I expected Katy Gallagher to have stayed a little bit longer as Chief Minister, and I was very happy as Deputy and Treasurer. It wasn’t that I forced the issue in any way; it was Katy’s decision to run for the Senate that triggered it,” he says.

Since then, Barr has led his Labor team to victory in elections in 2016 and 2020, forming minority government with the support of the Greens. Footage of Barr thanking hubby Anthony during his 2020 victory speech, and kissing him on the lips, was hailed as a significant moment in its own right.

That election victory came in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak, a public health crisis that has comprehensively transformed the job of Chief Minister of the ACT, as it has everything else. For the past two years, Barr has used powers no previous occupant of the role has exercised, he’s also been a member of National Cabinet, and he’s gained a higher profile country-wide than any previous ACT Chief Minister.

“This happened in years six and seven of my time as Chief Minister, rather than years one and two… I’ve definitely benefited from having had that leadership experience,” he says.

The past two years have been “incredibly draining,” he admits, but it’s also had its satisfactions.

“I’ve had the most positive feedback,” he says. “The only other time it has been anything like this, just in terms of unsolicited positive feedback from my community, was the marriage equality week, when the ACT had the strongest Yes vote. There was an outpouring of emotion then, and you sort of felt like you’re surfing a wave of community goodwill. Managing the pandemic has been the equivalent.”

Barr and the ACT Legislative Assembly played a critical role in the fight for marriage equality, with the territory enacting the first legislation enabling same-sex marriage in the country. The laws were later struck out by the High Court – “but it was the catalyst for the issue landing fairly and squarely in the federal parliament,” he says. “There were no more excuses.”

The ACT’s pink push has continued since then, although Barr reveals homophobia has been just as constant.

“It’s sort of the fallback for anyone who has a grievance; if they can’t sustain the full policy argument, they’ll go the personal,” he says. “I’ve had to deal with it throughout [my career] and in almost every political job, every portfolio, anyone who doesn’t like something you’ve said or done, or a policy direction, will attack through the lens of your sexuality.”

While these attacks have diminished over time, he’s attuned to some of the subtler forms of homophobia, including the insinuation that as a gay man he couldn’t possibly understand the financial and social pressures on people who have kids. (For the record, he and Toms have no plans to be gay dads, but he describes himself as a “very proud and doting uncle… and fairy godfather to a number of other kids.”)

As a gay MP, Barr is one of a burgeoning cohort across Australia, with politicians from across the sexuality spectrum now taking seats in most of the nation’s parliaments. Federally, a rough scorecard would show the Liberals slightly ahead, with three gay men and one lesbian in the lower house, as well as one gay man in the senate, while Labor has three lesbians in the senate, and a lower house MP (Julian Hill) who acknowledged former partners of both genders in his first speech to parliament.

Would Barr himself follow Gallagher into federal parliament if an opportunity arose?

“I wouldn’t say it could never happen, but I’m not angling for it,” he says. And the pandemic has revealed a previously under-appreciated truth about Australia’s federal system, he adds: the states and territories have considerable sovereign power, and if you want to affect real change in Australia, the second tier of government is a good place to do it.

Barr’s own long-term project has been boosting Canberra, which has grown from a city of a quarter of a million just 25 years ago to 400,000 now.

“Part of this is driven by my own experience,” he says. “Most of the people I went to school or university with here felt compelled to leave because Canberra didn’t offer them the career or social life or whatever. So I’m driven by a desire to attract and retain more young people. Would I kill for a few hundred thousand more people, which would provide a slightly greater economic base to have more diverse entertainment and a few more venues and all those sorts of things that a slightly larger city can sustain? Yes, and that’s a reason to keep on this project for a bit longer. Cities are always evolving and maturing, and Canberra has gone from being the big country town to a pretty vibrant small city.”

Next up is making Canberra the most LGBTQIA+ friendly city in the country, Barr says, a goal to be realised not just through law reform but by people’s experiences.

“People can feel safe here; it’s not an issue to walk down any street in Canberra holding hands with your partner,” he says.

Barr says he likes to think he has helped pave the way for other LGBTQIA+ politicians in his patch, and with four MLAs in the ACT now openly gay or lesbian, he says, “the ACT may get its second gay or lesbian leader before any other state has its first”.

But will we ever see an openly gay or lesbian prime minister?

Barr believes it’s possible.

“If Penny Wong was in the lower house she would be a very credible Labor Party leader,” he says. “And I imagine Tim Wilson would think he could do it on the Liberal side, although whether he would be elected by the Australian people is another matter. But you don’t just land a leaders’ role the day you enter parliament. You need at least a decade in parliament before you’d be considered.

“I’d love to see it in my lifetime.”

Andrew and Anthony on their wedding day.

There was this other side of my life that I was not being honest about… it was time to be a bit brave.