Karin Sowada - Senate Career

Senate Career

Having filled the casual vacancy and been assigned the role of spokesperson on industrial relations, Sowada controversially backed the Hawke government's move to enshrine the right to strike in legislation. While this stand earned her much praise from the trade union movement – in September, she became the first female politician and first Democrat to address the biennial congress of the Australian Council of Trade Unions – it also sparked a major clash with party founder Don Chipp, who threatened to resign from the party because of the direction the party was taking with Sowada in charge of industrial relations. Coulter appeared to take notice of Chipp's criticism when he officially took over as leader in October, as Sowada lost the industrial relations portfolio in the subsequent reshuffle. Soon after, she crossed the floor to vote with the opposition Liberal Party against a move to ban political advertising during elections. This was to be the first of several clashes between the federal party leadership and Sowada and her ally, New South Wales state parliamentary leader Elisabeth Kirkby.

In November 1991, the High Court of Australia decided Sykes v Cleary, which had significant ramifications for members of parliament with dual citizenship. While Sowada was born in Australia, she had automatically inherited Swiss citizenship from her Swiss father, which may have disqualified her from parliamentary office. However, this possibility was avoided since she had married an Australian citizen five weeks before her Senate appointment.

Sowada spent the 1991-92 summer recess in an archaeological dig in Jordan, and kept a lower profile when she returned for the first sitting of 1992. She helped to set up a mentoring program for the intellectually disabled in Sydney, and was assigned the services of then student politician Natasha Stott Despoja as a staffer by leader John Coulter.

In June 1992, Sowada accused her party of neglecting its traditional focus on social issues to concentrate on environmental issues under Coulter, a noted environmentalist. An annoyed federal executive retaliated by criticising Sowada and Kirkby's handling of the New South Wales branch of the party, leading to a divisive spat in the media. Two months later, Sowada was the only Democrat senator to express concern at the resignation of the deposed former leader Janet Powell from the party.

She was very active in the education debate, which had taken centre stage owing to the draconian tertiary-education reforms initiated by former Hawke education minister, John Dawkins. She fought a pitched campaign against the government and Labor opposition over re-introduction of fees for university students and the declining quality and chronic under-funding of the higher education and post-secondary training sector. In addition, she spent much of 1992 working on youth issues, particularly in her role as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Training, where she initiated an inquiry into high levels of youth unemployment.

Sowada faced her first and only electoral test at the 1993 election. After a month-long count, she was defeated by the National Party's Sandy Macdonald.