An Interview with Andrew Barr

Conducted By Grace Sixsmith and Juliette Baxter

With the ACT Election coming up, Woroni sat down with Chief Minister of the ACT Andrew Barr to find out more about his experience at ANU, his connection to Malcolm Turnbull, his plans for the ACT and his favourite fruit.

Woroni: So, we’ve seen your column ‘Look to the Left’ and we did want to hear about it. We also heard that it caused such outrage that they had to do ‘Look to the Right’. So do you want to give us a little bit of background on ‘Look to the Left’?

Andrew Barr: Yes. So that would have been probably 1993, I think. So I’ve either been a third or second year student. I was a Canberra boy.

Well, I came here when I was four. Coming to ANU in 1992, was when Australia was last in recession. So, there weren’t many jobs around. Students really struggled to get any sort of part time work. So we all had, let’s be frank, quite a little bit of time on our hands.

And aside from studying, I got involved in student politics. I joined the student Labor club in 1992. And then at the end of that year, Woroni. Back when editors were elected. Are they still?

W: Yeah.

AB: The election at the end of that year and the team that won was different from the administration that won the Students’ Association elections. They ran as an independent Woroni team, which is fair enough. But then I think they probably felt that in order to have some balance with the administration, they should allow, yeah, they had the association pages and then they had a few guest columnists.

And so it was, I think like the combination of force of personality and, you know, a willingness to actually write something every two weeks. Yes.‘Look to the Left’. Yes, it did cause a degree of controversy, because there were some who thought I didn’t look far enough to the left.

Then there was the right who were not so happy about it as well. There’s been a very strong history of student liberal activity here. Labor was in government federally then. So they were a bit more active, around that time. Paul Keating was the Prime Minister, and the then liberal opposition leader was John Hewson. Who’s, whether his politics has moved or not, is now saying he’s a little bit more progressive, but at the time was the devil. It really was the campaigns that were run. Very very tough. So that’s how it started. I think I was a columnist for a few years for Woroni.

And I then had the Association pages when I was the Treasurer. You have to write stuff for that as well.

W: Do you have a favorite article that you can remember writing for look to the left?

AB: No...

W: Maybe we should print one next to it. I’m pretty sure they’re all just over there [gestures to the Woroni office]

AB: Have to be very careful about that one, but yeah. Yeah. Suffice to say things you say when you’re 20 years old, it’s...