Profile: Alannah MacTiernan racing to be candidate for Perth Alannah MacTiernan with grandchildren Atlas, 3, and Umi Schapper, 7. ITS hard to imagine Alannah MacTiernan as a Catholic choir girl. But as a youngster, one of five children growing up in an Irish-Catholic household in Melbourne's working-class Heidelberg West, MacTiernan would go to church on Sundays to appease the nuns of St Bernadette's Primary School. On Saturdays she'd be sent by the nuns to round up classmates who hadn't been to church. And on Mondays she'd pop down to the local TAB to pick up her winnings on the horses. So there's always been a bit of the saint and the sinner in MacTiernan. "I wasn't a goody-two-shoes, although I enjoyed the religious experience,"" she says of her childhood. I joined this thing called the Legion of Mary. One of the things I remember [aged 11] was going out on a Saturday afternoon, knocking on a household and saying, "Your Frankie didn't turn up to Mass last week, we will come and pick him up tomorrow." There were two responses. One was "We will have him ready." Or a bloke would come out and tell us in no uncertain terms to bugger off. This was good training for a political career. It was my first doorknocking experience."" In her teens, she started having a punt at the TAB. "The bible in our house was actually a thing called the Miller's Guide,"" MacTiernan says. It was about horse breeding. Not that the study of horse breeding ever did my father any good. The betting pages were probably the first thing we ever learnt to read. I was about 15 when I used to put money on the TAB. I would usually win. And then I'd go and collect my earnings in my school uniform. I would get off the bus on a Monday afternoon, collect my winnings, and think, "How did this happen?." I was a cautious punter, after seeing my father, who thought betting on horses would make him a lot of money. I enjoyed the flutter. In fact, last year I ended up buying a share in a racehorse. But, unfortunately, before the bloody thing won a race, it pulled up lame. I never got to go to a bloody race."" It was also at 15 that she stopped believing in God. "There was a school subject, Biblical Literature, and it was one of those things that when I started looking at the Bible as a historic document I saw things differently,"" she says. It seemed to me that man had created God, rather than God creating man. It was a very sad moment. Most West Australians know Alannah Joan Geraldine Cecilia MacTiernan as an outspoken former Labor minister in the WA Parliament, a federal ALP candidate or as the Mayor of the City of Vincent. And it's fair to say that she is someone you either love or loathe. People who have worked with MacTiernan describe her as demanding, stubborn, obstinate and a micro manager. Equally, they say at any given moment she can be absolutely brilliant. She is a contradiction: a hard nut who can make grown men quiver with her acid "fishwife" tongue; but someone who can have a room in stitches with her one-liners and matter-of-fact descriptions of the world and personalities. When an old political sparring partner, 60-year-old Liberal MHR Don Randall, suggested that MacTiernan - who is the same age - was now too old to enter federal politics, she shot back: "I just say this to you, Donny, mate. You've never promoted yourself as a Rhodes scholar but you're really now top weight in the Dodo Stakes on this one."" On a Monday afternoon, MacTiernan and I arrange to meet at Le Papillon in West Perth to discuss her decision to resign as Mayor of Vincent and run for the federal seat of Perth at the next election. I can't find the place and make the mistake of ringing her for directions. What do you mean you don't know where it is? Google it, mate," she shouts down the phone before hanging up. Typical MacTiernan. Over a cup of coffee, she is more than comfortable talking politics. Getting her to speak about personal stuff, though, is like pulling teeth. But slowly she gives up snippets about her early life, her Irish father, Murrough, her mother, Dorothy, her three sisters and a brother. She credits Murrough with giving her a sense of confidence and the "gift of the gab." "It would be fair to say my father wasn't career orientated,"" MacTiernan says. He gave us a lot of confidence. He had a strong sense of self, but in terms of the one who actually provided for the family, that was my mother. She basically worked as a shop assistant in a department store. She was up at the crack of dawn doing the breakfast and lunch and going off to work. She had a tough life. She was a huge part of my life. I got the work ethic from my mother. My mother understood that the way out of our situation was education. She worked so we could go to Catholic schools and was determined we would have opportunities. All of us ended up at university. And I learnt the value of hard work. I grew up in a working-class area. We weren't well off. But we gained the ability to mix with a wide range of people and understood what it was like not to have money, although we never went hungry. It was an environment where you were conscious you couldn't just go out and buy something - that you had to work. She got her first job, at Coles, when she was 13. "I put my age up to get the job, and told them I was 14," she says. I thought it was fantastic to have money. I bought clothes and paid for my camps, things like that. When she was 18, she came to Perth to visit her brother and fell in love with the west coast. She returned in 1972 and studied Arts at the University of WA, then turned to law aged 28. By this time, she and her husband, lawyer Derek Schapper, had two children - Jake and Antoinette. MacTiernan doesn't want to discuss her relationship with Schapper, whom she outed by telling the media he was facing legal troubles when she announced her candidacy for Perth. He has appeared in the Perth Magistrates Court on a charge of holding funds contrary to directions. She says some things in life should be private. "I will call the interview to an end if you pursue this,"" she warns. "There are some things I don't do and talking about that is one."" MacTiernan is also loath to speak about her children and two grandchildren, Umi, 7, and Atlas, 3. She says son Jake and his family live next door and that she sees as much of her grandchildren as possible. They call her Dema. "My daughter-in-law is Japanese and came up with Dema," she says. It's supposed to be the Nyoongar word for grandma. I don't know if it is, but Dema stuck. We do lots of things together and have a good time. I am trying to give them responsibility, like learning in a managed way how to take risks, crack eggs, climb trees in a safe way - not be mollycoddled. I think these days we don't allow our children to develop resilience. My childhood had a lot of benefits in terms of building resilience. That becomes part of who you are - and how to deal with things. Two days later, we meet again, this time at the Beaufort St Merchant in Highgate where MacTiernan's treated like a rock star. The cafe refuses to charge me for our drinks when they find out I am interviewing her. She is in full flight, as she has been for much of her political career, which began in 1993 when she won a seat in the Upper House of the WA Parliament, before becoming the MLA for Armadale three years later. "I have always felt that in a democracy you had to take responsibility for what was happening, to be part of the solution," she says. She became a minister in 2001 when Geoff Gallop won government. I ask her about claims from a former staffer that she was a tough boss who went through 19 media advisers. "I worked hard - I expected them to work hard too," she says. Our discussion turns to the project that put her on the map in WA politics - the $1.66 billion Perth-to-Mandurah railway. She acknowledges that Richard Court's Liberal Government had started planning it but says their proposal was a "Mickey Mouse solution"" before she decided the route should be realigned to go under the Perth CBD and straight out to Mandurah. "Under the Liberals it was a monstrously stupid project," she says. They wanted to take the rail line on this great deviation out to Kenwick and out on the Armadale line. It was the most flawed, stupid project, which absolutely demonstrated they did not understand public transport. So as soon as we got into government, I said, "I am deeply troubled by this route - I think we need to look at it." "At the very first meeting I had with the rail planners, I assumed I was going to get all this resistance and I said, "Why can't we bring the rail line down the middle of the CBD?." And they said, "We can, and here is the plan for it." It was a really hard project, but I knew what we were doing was right. I never lost faith. I used to think, "S***, those poor blokes in war in the trenches - if they could survive that, I can survive this."" But MacTiernan's political career has not been without controversy. In 2001, she was stripped of the road-safety portfolio, having twice lost her licence for drink driving in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as having committed speeding offences. Then in 2008, the former planning and infrastructure minister was caught using a mobile phone while driving. Premier Colin Barnett made the mistake of bringing up her past drink-driving record in Parliament in 2009 after she announced she would contest the federal seat of Canning. "I'd just ask you to check Don Randall's record, mate, before you open your big gob,"" she threw back at Barnett across the chamber. Is MacTiernan sorry for her crimes? "Drink driving was 1984 and 1994 - they weren't while I was a minister,"" she says, looking me in the eye. I lost my licence on points. Yes, I was disappointed. In 1984 I was organising two functions and having to drive people around. I regret it, but it is not as if I went out there recklessly. I had to take these waiters from one function to another. And the 1994 one, I had deliberately left my car at home and got a taxi. I walked home about 3km and felt fine. I just went out to get some chips (in her car) and thought I was fine, but obviously wasn't. Now, I don't take any chances. Does she still enjoy a drink? "Of course I do," she says. It's the Australian way. It is very much part of our culture. MacTiernan is even less repentant about her mobile phone misdemeanour. "I was not talking on the phone,"" she says. I was (stopped) at the lights and actually checking to see whether the phone had been turned off. I picked the thing up. No way, was I driving around talking. I could have contested it, but I thought I would get more grief from doing that. I don't pretend to be a saint. Like all people, I have flaws and strengths. MacTiernan has long been detested by union heavyweights because of her outspoken views on the increasing role of factional powerbrokers and admits this played a part in her not getting the leadership of the WA Labor Party in 2008. The job went to former state treasurer Eric Ripper. "What has happened in WA is that a few individuals have got a disproportionate amount of power and in my view that is dangerous,"" she says. "Unions can still have a strong role without a few individuals having such power."" But she insists she did not spit the dummy and retire from state Parliament in 2010 - to run against Randall in Canning - because she was overlooked for the ALP leadership. "If I had been prepared to make certain undertakings about Labor reform I could have changed that outcome, but I couldn't live with that,"" she says. There would have been a preparedness for them to support me, had I said I would not pursue Labor reform agenda as leader - which in their view was divisive. I didn't leave WA Labor because I couldn't get the leadership. It was clear at that time that if we were going to win Canning I was the best person to do it. And I didn't want to hang around in WA Opposition for a number of years. For the first time, MacTiernan reveals that Kevin Rudd personally sought her out to contest the 2010 federal election, calling her to Kirribilli House in Sydney to convince her to run. "To say I was personally hand-picked by Kevin Rudd was nonsense, but in the process I was asked to go to Sydney and meet the Prime Minister to talk about the prospect of doing it - which I did,"" she says. And from there I made the decision to run. We had a discussion in 2009 about policy settings on climate change, how the party was travelling, about policy. His message was "We can get a swing in WA," which at the time was perfectly true. Unfortunately, some time later the wheels fell off the wagon. At the 2010 election, under new leader Julia Gillard, Labor won just three seats in WA. MacTiernan achieved a swing to Labor in Canning, but it wasn't enough to unseat Randall. After that defeat, she said publicly it was the end of her political career. But following Stephen Smith's decision to retire as MHR for Perth, she decided to have one last tilt at federal politics. And again the Rudd camp has played a part through deputy leader Anthony Albanese. "I have known Albanese for quite some time," she says. "He rang me and said, "I'm ringing you on my own behalf. I think you should stand."" Surprisingly, she's also had the support of several union heavyweights. "Quite a few union secretaries rang me and said they would support me," she says. Dave Kelly (former United Voice secretary and now Labor MP) has been very helpful. But it wasn't people from the top or union bosses who convinced her to run. "It was local people and rank-and-file members of the party, who I have a lot of time for, who said I must do it," MacTiernan says. "There is a sense that we can do this and that Labor is coming back after we thought we were dead."" She was tough on Gillard after Labor lost the March 9 state election, saying she should resign. "I made a genuine assessment that the Julia Gillard leadership team was driving people away from the Labor Party and I'd have to say that the events of the past month prove that is absolutely true,"" she says. I didn't say Julia Gillard was totally to blame for state Labor's loss, although it was a factor. The point I made was that federal Labor was going to do so much worse than state Labor. Two weeks before Julia Gillard stood down the primary vote had gone to 28 per cent in WA. Business as usual was not an acceptable option. It was not acceptable to watch a party go down the drain."" MacTiernan says she's looking forward to the election fight and that the transport needs of Perth will be a major issue. "I do think we have a good chance of winning,"" she says. Seriously, why would I give up my productive role in the City of Vincent if I didn't think I could win it? And I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think we could win government. Saying that, I will fight every inch of the way. I am ready.""