Beneath a happy blue sky, with Sunday newspapers and TV bulletins filled with emotive reports of September 11 commemorations, Newcastle Liberal MP Tim Owen is in a reflective mood.
‘‘I woke up this morning and thought about it [terrorist attacks], and I’ve been thinking about it for days,’’ he says, seated at a small white outdoor table opposite his wife, Charlotte (pronounced Charlotta) Thaarup-Owen in the family’s leafy New Lambton Heights backyard.
Owen, a former deputy commander of the Australian Defence Force in Iraq and Afghanistan, has witnessed the ongoing fallout of that tragic day and, in a way, that experience led to his new role in state politics.
His decision to resign in 2009 from the stellar military career that had taken him around the world, including a three-year stint in London as the air force adviser, during which he was responsible for ‘‘all interaction between the RAAF and the Royal Air Force’’, didn’t surprise those closest to him.
Halfway through what would become his last posting, Owen, who describes his military career as ‘‘all-encompassing’’, was granted leave from Iraq for a family get-together. It was early 2009 and he flew to Europe for two weeks to meet Danish-born Thaarup-Owen at her family’s holiday house in a small village in southern France.
Owen arrived the night before and met his wife at the airport. He’d been working ‘‘18 to 20 hours a day, every day of the week. You never clock off’’.
‘‘He was like a different man,’’ Thaarup-Owen remembers, looking at her husband seated across the table. ‘‘He was so thin. And he listened to classical music and ate salad,’’ she continues, with a half-laugh. ‘‘I thought, what’s happened to this man? He was so quiet, demure almost.’’
A few months later, Owen, who first joined the Royal Australia Air Force in 1979 as a pilot officer, resigned.
‘‘When he came back [from the Middle East] he looked bloody awful,’’ says friend and former Knights chairman Mike Tyler, who is credited with linking Owen with the Liberal Party last year when candidates were being sought. ‘‘He’d taken off a lot of weight and Tim’s never been overweight. He’s always been trim, taut and terrific ... it drives me insane.
‘‘I suggested there was another world out there.’’
Owen had been due to take up another posting after returning from the Middle East, this time in Malaysia. Instead, he accepted a position as CEO of CI Agent Solutions, the Maryville-based company that distributes and manufactures a product capable of cleaning large oil and fuel spills of which Tyler is chairman. The pair have been friends since meeting at a RAAF function at Williamtown seven years ago.
‘‘Charlotte and I had definitely drifted apart,’’ Owen says, surprisingly upfront. ‘‘It gets to the stage where you say, what do you have in common? It was very obvious we needed to be together. And while we’re both still travelling, at least I live here now. For the last three years of my military career, I didn’t. I found it tough.’’
‘‘You missed cuddles,’’ interjects Thaarup-Owen, smiling. ‘‘Well, you do,’’ Owen agrees, demonstratively and somewhat unexpectedly given his 30-year career immersed in the blokey military milieu. ‘‘You miss affection, intimacy.’’
There are many who view the defence force’s loss as Newcastle’s gain – though initially Thaarup-Owen wasn’t one of them. After years as a military wife, having to raise the couple’s two sons Andreas, 21, and Nikolai, 18, largely on her own (Owen has another son, Daniel, from his first marriage), forever packing up and moving cities – and countries – without the support of family and friends, the 49-year-old was thrilled to finally have her husband home. It was time for her to focus more intensely on her own work as an accredited family dispute resolution practitioner and a trained Mindfully Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher, and the couple had plans.
‘‘I knew it would be great for Newcastle, but I didn’t know if it would be so good for Tim and us,’’ Thaarup-Owen says. ‘‘I can’t say I was a great supporter and it felt a little bit like going back into the military in terms of time [demands]. I didn’t want to become the ‘wife’ again. I’m passionate about my own work. We had those discussions and decided that’s not how it’s going to be. I’m not going to be at every event with Tim.’’
In fact, on the night of the election, Thaarup-Owen was in Hawaii working with a Buddhist master and followed the surprising result on her laptop. ‘‘What! What! What!’’ she exclaims, her voice getting louder and higher as she re-enacts her response to finding out Owen had been elected.
Owen stunned even the most astute political commentators when he so convincingly won the seat that had been held by Labor for 84 years – except for the term between 1988 and 1991 when Independent George Keegan was elected – and secured 52.6 per cent of the vote on a two-party preferred basis, achieving a swing of almost 27 per cent. Election analyst Antony Green described the Liberal win in Newcastle as a ‘‘political earthquake’’.
‘‘I think Charlotte and I have come to a reasonable compromise,’’ concludes Owen, who is maintaining the hectic pace of his military career, often working from 7am to 9pm and still managing to fit in a daily eight-kilometre run.
When Parliament sits, which is eight days a month, he resides at the family’s recently bought Elizabeth Bay apartment (Nikolai will soon join him when he begins a jewellery design course). Owen sometimes stays extra nights in Sydney for meetings and functions. The remaining time is spent at his Hunter Street electorate office, meeting constituents and the city’s movers and shakers, as well as attending local events.
‘‘Tim, who became our patron after he was elected, attended our education breakfast a few Fridays ago at 7 o’clock,’’ says Hunter Prostate Cancer Alliance CEO Cary Lee, ‘‘and then had meetings all day before heading over to watch the Knights take on Souths, and then he was rushing to the University’s sport awards. That’s an average day from what I gather.’’
‘‘There is great expectation in this city and I’m working very, very hard to deliver outcomes,’’ Owen, 56, says. ‘‘I don’t want to be seen as someone who won the seat for the Liberal Party and then said, ‘That’ll be it’.’’
The Liberal Party could not have conjured a more ideal candidate than Owen. He and Thaarup-Owen form the political couple from central casting: she, all sunny Scandinavian sophistication and poise, he, model handsome and charismatic. (Owen actually did some professional modelling when he was younger and met fellow model Thaarup-Owen, who had come to Australia as an exchange student, in the early ’90s on the set of an advertising campaign in Canberra).
The son of an Austrian Jew who fled to Switzerland on foot with his parents and sister after their homeland was annexed by the Third Reich, Owen has always had a strong sense of integrity and leadership, citing Sir Roden Cutler as a role model.
Fifty members of Owen’s family were killed during the Holocaust. Owen’s father – who changed his Austrian Jewish name to Kenneth Clifford Owen when he later settled in Australia to avoid prejudice when looking for work – found freedom in the United States. He fought with the US Marines in the Pacific for three years before meeting Owen’s mother Denise Blake while on R&R in Australia. Blake was the widow of an Australian airman who was killed while flying for the Royal Airforce over Belgium.
A military career for Tim Owen was almost predetermined.
He presented as a ‘‘gold guy’’ in the lead-up to preselection, according to former Newcastle Liberal Party president Hugh Thomson.
Also in the mix were Newcastle councillor Brad Luke and former BHP worker and retired Macquarie Generation human resources manager Col Peebles. Owen, who met with Mike Gallacher, now the Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Hunter, over coffee in Mike Tyler’s office last year, was clearly a standout possibility. After that meeting, both the party and Owen began taking his candidature more seriously.
‘‘A lot of different parts of the community had been saying to the Liberal Party, ‘Listen, if you give us a good candidate, you might find that people would actually think about voting for you’,’’ Owen recalls. ‘‘There was no doubt in my mind that an O’Farrell-led government was going to win the election. I’m renowned as somebody who speaks his mind and I thought it would be good for the city to have a strong voice in the government of the day. I was looking for something, a change, and I thought I’d give it a go. There’s also a bit of ego in it.’’
In October 2010 Owen joined the Liberal Party and in December, after an internal ballot, he was endorsed as the candidate for Newcastle.
‘‘We ran an exceedingly good campaign,’’ Owen boasts. ‘‘I think what we’ve done collectively as Novocastrians is put the government on notice. This is now a swinging seat, so you better friggin’ deliver.’’
Unlike career politicians such as Gallacher, who was founding president of the Central Coast Young Liberals, Owen, who was born and bred in Queensland, has always been a pragmatist. ‘‘I’m not a political being, frankly,’’ he reveals, probably too honestly. ‘‘Clearly, I’ve had a leaning towards conservatism to a degree, but I voted Labor once as well. In the military you can never really have any open political allegiance. You serve the government of the day without fear or favour, whether they’re Liberal, Labor or martian. That’s your job.’’
Uninterested in dissecting the dumping of ALP incumbent Jodi McKay, other than to say, ‘‘I have no animosity, I think she’s a fine person’’, Owen also doesn’t appear overly irritated a couple of days later by her assessment of his performance. McKay, who has put her Newcastle house up for sale and moved to Sydney, told the Herald’s Joanne McCarthy that ‘‘since he’s been elected, there’s not a whole lot coming from Tim about what he’s doing. There are no new ideas. He’s basically recycling the things I’ve put into place.’’
Ever the diplomat, the only comment Owen will make is that while Labor did buy the derelict Newcastle Post Office and push to open up Nobbys Lighthouse to the community, no clear plans were put in place. He also believes a decision should have been made about the rail line.
Owen is working on a plan and feels strongly that a previous lack of co-operation between the three tiers of government was detrimental to the city. He is determined to work with federal Labor MP Sharon Grierson and Newcastle lord mayor John Tate to get things done. The trio has already met a couple times with Regional Development Australia’s Hunter CEO Todd Williams, a first according to Williams. ‘‘No one is interested in chest beating, but there is dialogue and a strong desire to put politics aside and get things done for the city,’’ Williams says. ‘‘There is progress and, really, in terms of what’s happened in the past, this is big news.’’
It’s early days, but Williams describes Owen as a ‘‘genuine guy’’. ‘‘If he says he’s going to do something, he does it. He rings me after hours to follow things up. He’s collaborative, determined. I don’t think he expected to get in, now he’s there he’s giving it everything.’’
‘‘Make no bones about it, he is making things happen,’’ a Liberal Party insider says. ‘‘He stays out of the media limelight because if you get drawn into pointing fingers over every little thing, you lose the advantage of diplomacy and if there’s one thing this city needs, it’s that.
‘‘I think it’s there in the way he’s gone about fostering a relationship with the lord mayor. At the moment the easiest thing anyone could do is take a knife to John Tate. The political capital that could be gained from that would be huge, particularly for us as we make a push on council.’’
Owen has a handful of objectives: remove the inner-city rail line and replace it with light rail (‘‘This government gets that we’ve got to make a decision on the train line’’), revitalise the CBD (he is talking with GPT), get work started on the University’s city campus, the legal precinct, and the expansion of Newcastle Art Gallery.
‘‘If I can execute those things, it opens the door to investment,’’ Owen says, ‘‘and, frankly, if at the end of my term people say, ‘Gee, he did that but I’m going to vote for Labor’, I won’t have a problem with that. I will have done what I said I was going to do and Charlotte will vouch for me; I always do what I say I’m going to do.’’ (Charlotte says later when referring to his dog-with-a-bone manner that he oversaw the renovation of their home before Christmas last year with a ridiculously tight five-week deadline. And, yes, he pulled it off.)
‘‘I’m sure he gave you a line,’’ a Liberal Party insider says, ‘‘that when he was in the military if he made a commitment and didn’t deliver, people died.’’ (Owen didn’t give me the line.)
While the stakes aren’t as high – or dramatic – as that, Owen’s performance is being watched closely. ‘‘I’ve said to him, ‘If you take on too many things, mate, you won’t achieve them,’’ Newcastle Alliance chairman Paul Murphy says. ‘‘What we need to understand, and all due respect to him, I don’t think he ever expected to get the seat. He’s learning as he’s going but I’m quietly confident he can deliver.
‘‘If he doesn’t do a good job, myself and plenty of others will be tapping him on the shoulder and giving him a reminder. Fix Our City is not dead, it’s still registered in my name. The message is still there loud and clear.’’
While criticism has been directed at the federal government for recently allocating $7million to the city’s art gallery while overlooking the Glendale Interchange, Owen, who wrote to Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean appealing for the gallery funds, believes the expansion will help boost the cultural profile of Newcastle and enhance the inner city. ‘‘There’ll be things that will happen in Lake Macquarie that are good for the Hunter and I might miss out on something for the broader good,’’ he says philosophically. ‘‘You’ve got to be strong for your electorate, but also be able to understand the needs of the region, and the state.’’
Watch ABC TV’s Q&A on a Monday night and you quickly realise that politicians find it impossible to respond to questions in a straightforward way without pushing a carefully planned party line.
Initially, I attribute Owen’s directness to his ‘‘greenness’’ as a politician, but it soon becomes clear that it is his nature. In almost two hours, the only line he uses – and he prefaces it by saying that he doesn’t want to make a political statement – is ‘‘Barry O’Farrell is an honest guy and I think there’s some very good people in government at the moment’’.
There is a marked absence of spin, an approach that would drive most political press staffers bonkers. ‘‘The campaign we ran,’’ an insider says, ‘‘was effectively a rogue – that’s probably too strong a word – stand-alone campaign. The way he was branded wasn’t media generated, but Tim Owen generated. The ‘I’m a real guy’ vibe ... he sat there and said, ‘I am not a Macquarie Street politician, I have not grown up in the system and I’m not going to be saying empty lines. I’m going to campaign on my own merit’.’’
After phoning a number of people for their assessment of Owen’s performance thus far, the worst anyone will say is that he’s smooth and an inexperienced politician. One Macquarie Street staffer tells me Owen is getting a reputation for ‘‘being a pest, but in a good way’’. ‘‘He never lets up. He pokes his head in all the key ministers’ offices every day, checking where things are at for Newcastle. He’s been like a dog with a bone over Orica.’’
There is no doubt Owen thinks strategically – hard not to when you were once responsible for planning ADF operations in East Timor and briefing General Peter Cosgrove – and possesses finely honed diplomatic skills. He is the first one to admit that he is still finding his feet as a politician, though his military training is coming in handy. Commanding 2500 personnel in the Middle East or representing Newcastle in state parliament? In simple terms, both roles revolve around people.
In his former role, he was introduced to the Queen and met Tony Blair in the buffet queue at Buckingham Palace, but he also witnessed the devastation and deprivation of war. Even this, he says, hasn’t prepared him for the breadth of humanity he is encountering as a politician.
‘‘Door-knocking during the campaign was an eye-opener,’’ he says. ‘‘A lot of people are doing it tough. Individually, we all have the same wants. Collectively, we can lose our way. That’s why I think there’s a responsibility to give back and build a strong society, and not just a financially strong one.’’
Owen often turns to Thaarup-Owen for advice and support. Her expertise – she has recently returned from overseeing a mindfulness retreat in Bali – is ‘‘invaluable’’. ‘‘In very pragmatic terms, some of the concepts Charlotte talks about are very useful in any work or relationship environment,’’ he says.
‘‘I’m passionate about mindfulness,’’ Thaarup-Owen beams. ‘‘Many people think it’s just about being present, but it’s much more than that; it is cultivating the ability to be now, to be aware that our mind tends to be preoccupied with the past and future and this generates endless worry and concern. I love it because it endlessly unfolds and is so healthy and sound.’’
I can’t help but be struck by the couple’s contrasting careers and interests. The website for Thaarup-Owen’s business, Creative Transformations, features purple butterflies fluttering across the screen, far removed from the bureaucratic machinations of government. With her serene demeanour, she is a walking advertisement for the benefits of mindfulness, a practice born of Buddhism that Thaarup-Owen first encountered in her 20s. She has just helped teach 100 psychologists the practice of mindfulness and regularly runs classes in Newcastle. Owen, a Harley-Davidson-riding, sport-loving bloke, says he draws on techniques taught by Thaarup-Owen to wind down.
I notice two pairs of running shoes under a nearby seat and ask the couple what they enjoy doing together.
‘‘We walk, we run,’’ Owen says, looking directly at his wife. ‘‘We like sex!’’ he then exclaims enthusiastically. ‘‘That’s always good. We value that.’’ They burst into laughter.
There is no awkwardness or wariness about how this moment could be interpreted by a journalist, readers, and even Owen’s conservative parliamentary colleagues.
This much is clear: Owen doesn’t behave like a typical politician. Maybe Newcastle will be all the better for it.
