Politician stumbles into a minefield

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Photo / Getty Images

Kristina Keneally, the American-born Labor Premier of New South Wales, is back-pedalling after trespassing on hallowed ground during a debate with her Liberal counterpart.

Keneally committed the nearest thing to heresy when she used the Kokoda Track as a sneer against Melbourne-born Barry O'Farrell.

To fan the flames, she also sideswiped Miss Australia 2007 Caroline Pemberton, whose brother was the youngest Aussie to climb Mt Everest and who works tirelessly raising money for charity.

Keneally didn't need all this.

She took over as leader of a state Government in terminal decline last December, becoming NSW's third Premier in less than three years.

In the past few weeks she has lost three ministers and a parliamentary secretary, and has been warding of calls to quit.

Throwing Kokoda into the tabloid mix has not helped her at all.

On the face of it, all she did was jest at O'Farrell's expense.

O'Farrell, 10 years older than the 41-year-old Premier, had replied to a radio host questioning his toughness: "I don't reckon I would have personally survived my Kokoda trek if I didn't have something inside me that kept me going."

Keneally's answer, given later to reporters, was: "Well, so did Miss Australia, so congratulations, Barry."

O'Farrell and Pemberton walked the tortuous, 96km mountain jungle track in 2008 with state Liberal MP Charlie Lynn, a Vietnam veteran who has made the trek dozens of times, and whose vision is badly impaired by a tropical infection as a result.

Kokoda is steadily gaining a wartime mythology and, while still paling in comparison to Gallipoli, has been promoted by such advocates as former Prime Minister Paul Keating as more fitting than the British-led Dardanelles disaster as a symbol of Australia.

Kokoda and the bombing of Darwin have more recently been officially enshrined as the Battle of Australia, appealing to popular culture but angering historians who argue that invasion was never a real option for Japan.

The sacrifice was real: a gruelling, vicious campaign fought over the 2200m pass through Papua New Guinea's Owen Stanley Range to hold back the advancing Japanese, costing 625 Australian lives and over 500 casualties from wounds and sickness.

With its increasing historical prominence, the track has attracted a surge of Australian trekkers, rising from fewer than 100 a decade ago to about 6000 a year now.

There has been true modern grit. Paralympic gold medallist Kurt Fearnley crawled the length of the track last year, just after 83-year-old Don Vale completed the journey.

Six trekkers have died, and 13 were killed when their aircraft crashed on the way to the track.

And Australians take their military mythology seriously.

The acronym Anzac is protected by law, coming to rival Digger as a term for Australian soldiers - too bad for the New Zealanders in the middle - and the concept of previous sacrifice and present service has assumed an almost religious awe.

So when Keneally used Kokoda she stepped on to a political landmine, prompting headings like the Daily Telegraph's "Kristina Keneally's cheap gibe insults Kokoda sacrifice".

Pemberton, miffed that her efforts should be given such short political shrift, chimed in: "To bring up Kokoda in jest is not only offensive to our Diggers, it's offensive to all Australians.

"Probably because she's got an American background she doesn't know what it means."

Keneally in fact had an Australian mother, is married to a relative of iconic Australian author Thomas Keneally, and has been a naturalised Australian for a decade.

But she has enough smarts to understand discretion. She quickly tried to turn the attack back on O'Farrell for using the "sacred institution" of Kokoda to muscle himself up politically and told Pemberton she could be rightly proud of her achievement on the track. Keneally said that when her two children were old enough she would be proud to make the trek herself.