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In public, Teena McQueen was the firebrand conservative who toured a beauty pageant with Donald Trump, joked about sexual harassment, and rejoiced in the defeat of her more progressive colleagues in the Liberal Party.
In private, she was a grandmother who went out of her way to take care of friends, from organising hotels and tickets to the Elvis musical, to supporting families through cancer.
“She was unbelievable,” said her brother Brad Walton, one of 200 mourners who gathered at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on Friday to farewell her. After their father died 30 years ago, she supported the whole family, Walton said. “She gave me some of the best times of my life.”
Walton is still grappling with McQueen’s sudden death, aged 66, from an illness which progressed rapidly over a week to leave his family without the sister, mother and grandmother who took them from the suburbs of the Central Coast to an apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour.
McQueen’s memorial reflected her two lives. It was held in the grand St Mary’s Cathedral, but the speeches were made by those closest to her, including her grandson, Charlie.
Her vanguard of conservative political warriors, including One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and controversial broadcaster Alan Jones, were in the room as spectators, not speakers. NSW Liberal leader Kellie Sloane, shadow attorney-general Damien Tudehope and former ministers David Elliott and Matt Kean were also among the mourners.
Her former employer, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, did not attend, nor did her long-time political muse, Tony Abbott, who is overseas and sent a representative to speak in his stead.
“I loved her,” said her friend Barbara Martin, who would visit Sydney for musicals with McQueen. “She was genuine.”
No one could accuse McQueen of hiding what she thought. She labelled former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull a hypocrite who should be expelled from the party; she apologised for saying she would “kill to be sexually harassed” after Brittany Higgins alleged she had been raped in Parliament House; and she described far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as an entertainer.
“Yeah, she put herself out there, but she copped the criticism on the chin as well,” said Walton.
Carolyn Reid, a former Liberal preselection hopeful for Gladys Berejiklian’s blue-ribbon seat of Willoughby, said McQueen “had more courage in her little finger than a lot of men”.
McQueen’s family, Jones, and a group of Sky News commentators, including Warren Mundine, then made their way down Macquarie Street to the Royal Automobile Club of Australia for the wake.
Inside, beneath the draped curtains, colonial landscapes and chandeliers of the Victoria Room, a child wore a One Nation-branded MAGA hat: MAKE ALBO GO AWAY.
In May, the former Liberal vice president left the party to join One Nation. The defection was driven by her disdain for the Liberals’ moderate wing and 10 years of bashing her “head against a wall” to try to reincarnate the party in the image of Abbott.
Outside St Mary’s, Hanson told The Australian Financial Review that McQueen was a patriotic Australian who was “devastated by the way the country was going”.
Inside the Victoria room, the blue-blooded base of the Liberal Party discussed their own frustrations.
“I think we’re in the battle of our lives here in Australia; you people, you need to wake up,” said Reid. “This is the moment when we either keep our freedom or we don’t.”
Until a few days ago, Reid was a Liberal Party member. Now she will be campaigning for One Nation.
“I will go and fight,” she said. “I think Pauline Hanson’s onto something, and I think she speaks for the silent majority of Australians.”
In life, McQueen pushed the Liberal Party to the right. In death, she might pull its base from underneath it.
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Eryk Bagshaw is an investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.He was previously North Asia correspondent. Reach him securely on Signal @bagshawe.01Connect via X or email.
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