She has two serious positions now and if Labor wins next week's election she will take carry those positions from opposition into office - she would become the Leader of the Government in the Senate and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. She is content to be part of Labor's parliamentary leadership group. She does not need to become leader to complete some glorious personal vanity project. Wong consistently has put the greater good over her own self-interest. For instance, in her speech to the Lowy Institute last week she said: "Over the course of this campaign I have been asked about the significance of an Asian-Australian being our foreign minister should Labor win the election. Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit: "What is significant about that possibility is not my personal attributes. Rather what would be significant about an Asian Australian being our foreign minister is what it says about us. What it says about who we are." Wong is a serious and responsible politician and legislator. She has something you cannot manufacture with any amount of media training - gravitas. It was on display when she spoke at the Labor Party campaign launch on Sunday as one of the warm-up speakers for Bill Shorten. Even when she was delivering a laugh line in attacking Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack: "They are small men," said Wong. "Small men with small" – the merest pause – "ideas."

Loading Perhaps the most powerful image of Wong in the public mind is the moment she broke into tears at the success of the same-sex marriage plebiscite. Wong has never been shy about her identity as a woman, as a Malaysian-Chinese Australian, as a lesbian. Why doesn't she take it the next step? In the era of raging identity politics, it is fashionable on the political Left to play up such elements of minority status, to use them as the basis for a claim for special treatment. Wong has the trifecta – gender, race and sexuality minority status. Why doesn't she play these trump cards in the vogue game of identity politics? "The recognition of someone's experience as an Aboriginal person or a person of disability is to make the country stronger," she says. Identity shouldn't be used to divide, in other words, but to unite. It was youthful anger at what she saw as John Howard's race-based dog-whistling that drove Wong to take up politics. She has worked for inclusion for minorities, not a national splintering in pursuit of personal or political advantage. She declared at the Labor launch that the party is "truly dedicated to that fundamental Australian value that every one of us is equal. No matter who your parents were, no matter where you were born, or who you love". This is what she has worked for and she is living, breathing evidence that this is true.

She can play hard, partisan politics. But she does not do it gratuitously and she does not do it for the attention. And on the biggest and most important issues of our time, she has helped give Australia an incalculable gift – national unity in the face of the challenge posed by an assertive, restless, rising China. When the Turnbull government proposed laws to limit foreign interference in Australia, it would have been easy for Labor to play politics with the issue. On the weekend Paul Keating showed just how easy. He attacked the government for needlessly damaging relations with China. Senator Wong in tears after the same-sex marriage vote. Credit:Andrew Meares Australia's security chiefs were "nutters", said Keating, who needed to be "cleared out" by an incoming Labor government. He believes that the defence and intelligence agency heads have overplayed domestic security worries and taken hostage Australia's overall relationship with China. Wong's response to Keating? "As both Bill and Tanya have made clear today, Labor has great respect for our security agencies. We always work cooperatively with them in the national interest. We have utmost confidence in their leadership, capacities and expertise to advise on issues related to our national interests."

The head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, regards Wong as "very sharp and very able and she understands that the biggest challenge for an incoming government will be the strategic challenge of China. It's not a matter of nuance, that's just about language, it's a real challenge of protecting Australia's interests." Wong has signalled that she would not be naive about this as foreign affairs minister. "Challenges in the relationship may intensify," she said in her Lowy speech. "It is not simply a matter of a 'diplomatic reset'. Fundamentally, we are in a new phase in the relationship." "China is not a democracy nor does it share our commitment to the rule of law," she points out. She is not needlessly belligerent but nor is she afraid. She has been critical of Beijing's systematic oppression of its Uighur minority, for instance. Hard times in a values clash lie ahead and cannot be papered over. The China relationship needs to be redefined, she says, and she calls on everyone involved to join in the "constructive management of difference". It's been her life's work, and, should Labor win, she will be taking it to the grandest of scales.