Kimberley Kitching

Kimberley Kitching died aged 52 of a suspected heart attack on March 10 · Female Labor senators who deny bullying her were there at the funeral ...

The comments that have been reported do not reflect Senator Wong's views, as those who know her would understand, and she deeply regrets pain these reports have caused. All of us have spent many years in the service of the public. It is for this reason Senator Wong wishes to place on record a response to specific claims regarding an exchange in a meeting with Senator Kitching. All three of us will be attending Senator Kitching's funeral. We do so because we want to make a contribution to the nation. The allegations of bullying are untrue. Our priority at this time has been Senator Kitching's husband, Andrew, her family and her loved ones. Given the hurtful statements that continue to be made we feel it necessary to respond. Senator Kitching's tragic death has been a shock to us all. This has been a difficult time for the Labor family. The next day she lodged her bullying complaint. within the Parliament, within our own parties, and across the aisle, and I would always urge people to do so.'

Kimberley Kitching has been remembered as a "lioness who touched the lives of so many" as her funeral was held in Melbourne on Monday.

Her smile and eyes could glow, she had this marvellous, enormous democratic laugh encompassing all," he said. She believed in and championed Australian democracy. "But I hope it's sufficient to say she deserved so very much better. "Kimba was a lioness who touched the lives of so many with her boundless empathy and courage," he added. Mr Landeryou said his wife was the "truest and the staunchest of Labor true believers" as he took a swipe at those who opposed her within the party. New to Flash? Try 1 month free.

The late Labor Senator's husband, Andrew Landeryou, sent a clear message to those accused of bullying his wife. ABC's political correspondent Laura Tingle did ...

There is an early episode of The Simpsons where Monty Burns, seeking to get Homer to sign away any legal claims after an accident at the plant, ...

Delivering eulogy at wife's funeral, Andrew Landeryou says she 'deserved so very much better' from internal party rivals.

“Her friends and ferociously loyal staff are angry about how she was treated, of course they are, and I have no quarrel with them about that. “It feels like yesterday looking down on a grey Derby Day that I saw her walking in,” he said. “But I hope it’s sufficient to say she deserved so very much better. “If I am angry with anyone, I am angry with myself, I am angry I wasn’t driving her around that busy day as I often did, I am angry I didn’t meddle enough in her health, I’m angry I failed and failed again to persuade her to slow down, I’m angry I couldn’t and didn’t protect her from menace and I fear I attracted some.” “And of course, there’s a lot I could say about the unpleasantness of a cantankerous cabal – not all of them in parliament – that was aimed at Kimba, and the intensity of it did baffle and hurt her. “It’s a poignant reminder to me of her thoughtfulness, that even when she had a lot on her mind, other than call me, I think it was the last thing she did,” he said.

Kimberley Kitching's funeral marked the end of her storied political career, but also of factions as we know them.

It’s no go the finger chime / it’s no go Magnitsky / All we want is a cup of chai / And a password for your Netflix. I was trying to eavesdrop on the gabbing of Bridget McKenzie and Michaelia Cash, the latter in a sort of bronze-and-black full length that looked like it had been torn off a freshwater crocodile while it was still alive, possibly at a Boxing Day sale. Nearby, in a circle of six or so, one of the Michael Danbys was talking to the Ukrainian ambassador. The national left and the Conroyites are seeking to cut off and pretty much kill Kim Carr’s Victorian Socialist Left faction, arguing that Carr’s nationalist social-democratic politics are arcane, that he did it to some of them with past “stability pacts”, and that they really, really just don’t like that guy. He spoke of her belief in America, and the last best hope, and Bobby Kennedy, and I tried to find the principle amid the naïveté of all that. None of the essentially sociopathic things this man has lent his energy to, the destruction and suffering he has caused, were undone by this speech — but nor do they tarnish the dignity and grace of it, this commendation to the light, spoken from a place I am sure is nearer to the dark. He spoke of meeting Kitching at a Queensland Young Labor do in the mid-1990s — “I had been warned of her (formidable intelligence).” Pause. “She had certainly been warned about me”. Got a good laugh. But it was Andrew Landeryou who rose to the moment, in the first speech given that was moving and accomplished, modest and open-hearted, drawing together the private and public character of his wife. — he sounded like a man well on the way to over, and he’s sounded half way there for a while. He finally lit it up with an anecdote about a multifamily visit to the ghastly Titanic restaurant, tricked by a playful Kitching into wearing Edwardian costume, which the other 200 patrons weren’t. Yeah. It was sweet, it was funny, it sketched out Kitching well, and it could have been told at a Collingwood councillors retirement dinner in 1961, for all the moment he could bring to it. That combined with a conservative geopolitical vision and social values, without such peoples’ frequent cloying diffidence and parochialism, means she might have had the possibility of being the sort of prime minister Kim Beazley imagined he could have been, after the Keating deluge, returning Labor to a nationalist ideal capable of winning the nation’s support. They all came after two weeks in which Kitching had been turned from a little-known senator into a champion of human rights and a cause célèbre of alleged wrongs, accusations of bullying made on the base of pretty limited public evidence.