Brendan O’Connor on politics, family and supporting sole parent families
After losing his wife and raising his daughter while serving as a cabinet minister, the outgoing MP says there is more the government could do to support sole parents.
When his wife, Jodi Dack, died after a long battle with breast cancer, Brendan O’Connor found himself in the same position as more than a million other Australians — suddenly thrust into the responsibility of being a sole parent.
It was August 2018, and the senior politician, who was serving on opposition leader Bill Shorten’s frontbench as shadow industrial relations minister, contemplated leaving politics to focus on raising his then 10-year-old daughter, Una.
After both father and daughter spent a month grieving at their Melbourne home, O’Connor told Una she had to go back to school. She responded: “I can do school from home".
“She sort of put it on me in a way that kids sometimes can, which probably shook me up into realising I had to, at some point, go back,” he tells Capital Brief from his office in Parliament House, where he is spending his last sitting fortnight as an MP.
