FAMILY matters to Penelope Wong Ying Yen. It mattered that Wednesday morning of Aug 21, 2002 when the first-term senator took her place in the Senate chamber in Parliament and delivered her maiden speech.

It mattered on Wednesday at the National Press Club in Canberra when a confident first-term minister in Kevin Rudd's cabinet sketched the future for her extended Australian family -- what has to be done today for the children and grandchildren tomorrow.

"My thoughts this morning were of my late paternal grandmother, Poh Poh, as I called her in her language," Penny Wong, Senator for South Australia, began her Senate remarks. (http://tinyurl.com/6lz2fk)

"She was a diminutive woman with an indomitable spirit. A woman of the Hakka, or guest people, she was my grandfather's second wife.

"When World War 2 came to Malaysia, she and the rest of the family were in Sandakan, a name that many who fought in Australia's defence will be familiar with.
"Most of the family died during the war and she was left alone to care for my father and his siblings in unspeakable circumstances, which she did with extraordinary determination and a will to survive.

"She was barely literate; she was humble and compassionate but the strongest person I have ever known.

"Her name was Lai Fung Shim, and that her grand-daughter is here today would have been a source of pride, but also probably some consternation to her. How much the world can change in two generations!

"Perhaps this family history is why I place such emphasis on the need for compassion (which) lies at the heart of any truly civilised society.

"To call for compassion is not a plea for some bleeding-heart view of the world or a retreat to weak or populist government. Nor is it to shirk the responsibility of leadership to make hard decisions when these are called for.

"But it is to assert that those with power should act with compassion for those who have less. Compassion is what underscores our relationships with one another, and it is compassion which enables us to come to a place of community even in our diversity."

Compassion was pressing for Wong this past week as she launched the government's response to the draft recommendations of climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut, in an interim report released on July 4.

"If there is one message from Professor Garnaut's report," said Wong, "it is that failure on climate change is not an option for Australia -- one of the hottest and driest continents.

"Today, we are beginning to feel the economic and environmental cost of inaction on climate change.

"If we delay action any longer, these costs will be felt even more acutely not only by our generation but also our children and grandchildren."

Intergenerational and global concerns preoccupy Wong, born in Kota Kinabalu to a Malaysian father and Australian mother in 1968. They have, since Wong's recall of her Poh Poh to her formative year on exchange in Brazil, to law studies at the University of Adelaide, union activism from then to industry on graduation, politics, and since she was appointed Minister for Climate Change and Water last Dec 3. (http:// tinyurl.com/576r5x)

"Children and grandchildren" figure in Wong's scheme at every turn.

"(Action on climate change) is in our national interest," Wong said in a radio interview.

"It is in our economic interests and it is in the interests of our children and grandchildren."

There are those who had doubts about Rudd appointing a relatively young (39, in her first ministerial post) cabinet member to a job that would define Labor's first term back in office after 11 years. And also its prospects for re-election in 2010, when the pain of the government's "ambitions" on climate change will set in.

At the National Press Club, in the full glare of the nation -- and overseas -- Wong confounded the doubters. Sure, the cabinet had picked through government's response to Garnaut. But it was for Wong to carry the government's "green paper" -- in substance, in form, subject to all the nuances.

There Wong was, alone at the podium, all business in her striped, off-grey power suit over sharp, high-collar, dazzling white apparel, (http://tinyurl.com/63mbv9).

No aides to parry the media barbs. No Rudd to lend a crutch.

The set piece of Wong's opening address was one thing. She carried with aplomb and compassion her self-assured and authoritative response to the range of questions from the gathered media on a complex, contested issue.

The government is proposing an emissions trading scheme to turn industry and people from living as they have always been doing -- spewing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that science says is causing global warming.

That is, to make industry and people pay so they will use less. And by their having to pay, they will have the incentive to invent new ways of living -- to be more energy-efficient, and not rely on dirty coal, oil and fast-depleting fossil fuels.

It will cost them. More than an ecological issue, Australia's resource and fossil fuel-based economy will be transformed as never before.

As Wong said at the press club, tackling climate change will be hard. "It will cost, but we will help Australians every step of the way."

The issue is fertile for politicians to play politics with, as an inept opposition is seeking to exploit, as much as developed and developing nations have been polarised on the global stage.

The green paper (http://tinyurl. com/ 6dobhb) is the government's starting gun for conversation -- for government, business and private citizen. The initial reaction has been one of cautious optimism.

Garnaut will release a supplementary draft report late next month, with a final report due by Sept 30.

Treasury will run recommendations by its economic modelling in October, before the government presents its white paper by the end of the year.

In the thick of it all will be Wong, doubts of her capability lifted. People have been hanging on her every word. The press club was filled to its 280-seat capacity. Transcripts of Wong's address were sold out.

Far be it that Malaysia(ns) might claim ownership of a rising star who'd been living in Adelaide with her mother and younger brother since she was 8 years old.

But architect father Francis Wong Yit Shing in Kota Kinabalu can be proud.

Rudd? He's acknowledged Malaysia's contribution to Australia, and vice versa.

During his visit to Malaysia, he had this to say of Wong: "The Malaysian-Australian community has made a great contribution to Australia's development -- including through our Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who has Malaysian heritage."