‘It’s her weapon’: Attorney-General Michaelia Cash’s surprising side

When Good Weekend senior writer Jane Cadzow set out to profile Michaelia Cash, she expected to unearth a character of a certain ferocity. The West Australian senator and federal Attorney-General is known to the public, after all, as one of the Coalition government’s fiercest attackers. Instead, Cadzow found a woman of warmth and affection. Exuberant, yes. Venomous, no.

“I didn’t expect her to be that really warm personality that she is,” says Cadzow. Some of those who intensely dislike the way Cash plays politics told Cadzow the same thing. “They might loathe everything she represents, but then they would say, ‘When you meet her she’s really, really friendly.’ It’s a weapon.”

Cadzow was speaking on the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks, having profiled the cat-loving, coffee-swilling, karaoke-singing Thatcher fan for this week’s cover story: The Cash machine: She’s one of Australia’s most provocative and polarising politicians. As Attorney-General, Michaelia Cash is also now one of the most powerful.

Joining Cadzow on the podcast – with moderation from Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland – was Shane Wright, senior economics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and a former veteran political correspondent for The West Australian.

Wright’s experience of Cash echoes that of Cadzow: visit her in her Canberra office, Wright says, and you’re going to get a hug. “You could be Karl Marx, and I reckon Karl would have got a hug from her if he had wandered in grinding his arms after writing The Communist Manifesto,” Wright says. “But then, she would also absolutely hammer everything that Marx stands for.”

At times while reporting the story, Cadzow questioned whether she was marking the fiery Cash too hard – and judging the most senior lawyer in the land through a gendered lens – but only briefly. “I think she’s in a class of her own,” says Cadzow of Cash’s antics. “I can’t think of a male who goes that berserko!”

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Cadzow notes that Cash manages rheumatoid arthritis on a daily basis, and says her prodigious work ethic and “no excuses” philosophy was instilled in her by parents who encouraged surmounting obstacles by whatever means necessary. “You go under it, over it, smash it – that’s a ruthlessness in a way,” Cadzow says. “You just do it.”

Wright notes that Cash’s hard edge has elements in common with other politicians from her state, whether Christian Porter, Julie Bishop or Mathias Cormann. “They’re individuals but they’re the same,” he says, “with a hardness driven by geography.”