“So, Ms Hartman, let me begin on immigration. You’re proposing to cut migrant intake in half - why?”
A softball. Luna almost broke into a grin. Ida Fields was an old hawk, but she was slipping. It was why Henri had chosen her for Luna’s first interview. You want the respectability, he said. Polls look good, now you need to show you’re not a lightweight. But we don’t want some cub from the Herald trying to make a name for himself. Himself? she’d asked with an overwrought eyebrow.
Now, under the tessellating glare of the studio lights, she tempered the grin into a professional smile. “It’s a question of economics, Ida,” the words came comfortably, polished by days of rehearsal, “Reduce the demand for housing, give time for supply to catch up, and prices will fall. Or at least return to the realm of reality. It worked in Canada, it worked in Malaysia, and it can work here.” Henri, pacing nervously behind the cameraman, looked up and gave her a tentative nod.
“Be that as it may,” Ida continued, “what do you say to the critics who point out that such a reduction would mean drastically reducing humanitarian intake too?”
“I would say, Ida, that we need to put our own masks on before helping others.” Another line from the briefing notes. Check.
“If that means,” Luna continued, “temporarily pausing intake of low-value migrants—”
“Low-value?” Ida sat up straighter in her chair, instincts honed from decades of interviews overcoming the comfort and inertia of old age.
“Of course I mean low economic value,” Luna replied, the words coming out quickly. Too quickly, she knew Henri would later say. “I mean, if they don’t have anything to contribute.”
Henri had frozen, mid stride, strain blossoming across his face, brow creasing.
“I’m sorry,” and with this Ida leaned in, smelling blood, “They don’t have anything to contribute? Is this your opinion or the official party line?”
“I mean— I—”
The blinding lights intensified, fell bodily on Luna, her sweat-slick face tightening, stage-smile a million miles away, and she saw.
She saw the barely-disguised glee on the faces of the newsreaders, that night at 6pm, introducing the racist candidate for Parkes, the soundbite taking a life of its own and spooling out across the internet like a cast line, Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, then rebounding and regurgitating onto the opinion pages of the next day’s papers.
She saw the hard, straight line of Henri’s shoulders in the silent car ride home, eyes boring into the road, jaw set, congratulating himself for his restraint, but closing the car door too loudly, wincing at the noise, stalking into the house and a locked bathroom, emerging later, putting his arms around her from behind, It’s ok, It’s ok, I’ll start fixing it first thing, I’ll call the guys, but his eyes unable to meet hers.
She saw the legal pads, strewn about the dining table, the half-eaten takeaway containers, the whiteboard covered in her small, precise handwriting, the money on the counter for the cleaner who was due tomorrow, the campaign poster mock-up leaning against the island bench.
She saw the caller ID she dreaded most flash brightly across her screen, the sudden noise of the speaker-phone voice making her jump, We are so sorry, Could have happened to any of us, You understand the position this puts us in, Need to make way for a less tainted candidate; saw herself hanging up and pacing, psyching herself up for that next fearful call, to her mother, and they would cry together, her mother for longer, her mother who would not even broach the question, of what would happen to the funds she had donated, but it would loom like an axe over Luna’s head.
She saw the applications, PhD programs at G8 universities in Sydney and Melbourne, the rejection letters coming in one-by-one despite her stellar career in the private sector, her world-class application essay, each dagger buried in the mailbox by letters for Henri who continued to win, another term, but, Would she mind, Maybe just stay home on election night, Keep her presence minimal on the campaign trail, Maybe a mea culpa with a friendly journalist, her face burning brightly with a deep, sick red.
She saw everything she had put on hold. The friendships she had given up. And the child she had never had.
She saw everyone so supportive, always supportive, and perhaps that would be the worst of it. The unsaid. The conversations when she left the room. Henri pleading with branch leadership. Her parents arguing over their savings account. And herself, looking into the mirror, into a steely gaze which now seemed hollow and false.
Luna saw all this, in the blink of an eye.
“Let’s move on, shall we? My next question is about superannuation…”
