Nestled at the foot of the Blue Mountains, Doug Cameron’s house features a fully stocked shelf of alcohol.
It’s a common sight in any Australian home, but it’s an unexpected find in the home of the 64-year-old Senator – he hasn’t had a drink in more than three and a half decades.
Senator Cameron’s drinking habits were one of the many things that changed after he and wife Elaine made the move from Scotland to Australia in 1973.
The fiery Senator believes his habit started as early as 15, when as a Protestant schoolboy, he quit his lessons to take on an apprenticeship and defied family wishes by marrying his Catholic girlfriend.
But just seven years later, work dried up and Senator Cameron was facing redundancy with a wife and baby to support.
He told SBS that his trade gave them the option to travel to Sydney in 1973 as part of “10 pound Pom” program.
“It was a bit of an adventure, but also trying to build a better life,” he says.
“It was quite exciting. The first thing that struck us was the colour in Australia, the brightness. All the different coloured roofs, I remember that always stuck in our minds.”
But Senator Cameron soon found it wasn’t enough to simply leave the pubs of Scotland in order to curb his drinking.
“Australia was like the UK with sunshine,” he says.
Doug Cameron and his family after moving to Australia in 1973 (Supplied)
“There was a big drinking culture as well, that was similar to what it was in Scotland.”
Describing himself as an alcoholic, Senator Cameron has spoken openly about his alcoholism, which he confronted in 1979.
“If I lifted one drink, I couldn’t even stop at eight,” he says.
“I’d just drink until I was drunk.”
He says the alcohol industry needs to take more responsibility, lending his support to the Australian Medical Association’s call for a national summit on alcohol.
“I think alcoholism and problems with drink are the great untalked about problems in Australia,” he says.
“Most people can drink, and drink in a reasonable manner – it doesn’t affect their family, it doesn’t affect them negatively. But for many people it does and I think it needs to be dealt with.”
‘We have to go home – nobody understands me’
But the Senator’s life has been more than a struggle with addiction.
Senator Cameron told SBS about arriving in Sydney and being welcomed into one of the city’s migrant hostels, a place which he still holds affection for.
Having moved from the Scottish equivalent of government housing, complete with “outside toilets”, he says he was treated very well while he settled into work at the Garden Island Dockyard.
“We lived in working class area in Scotland, the equivalent of the housing commission, so coming to Australia wasn’t too bad” he says.
“The migrant hostel was just this melting pot of different nationalities. All these different cultures, all these different people coming here with, I thought, the same view – they wanted to make a better life for themselves and for their families in Australia.”
Unlike some of his fellow migrants, Senator Cameron didn’t face hostility from his new countrymen.
But his accent did cause some problems he says, recounting a story from one of his days in the dockyard.
“I remember working with one of the other migrants on the job – I think he was Greek and he had not long arrived either,” he says.
“He said to me, ‘Doug, why you no speak good English like me?’ And I thought to myself, ‘we’re in trouble here’. We have to go home – nobody understands me.”
It’s a jibe which has followed him to parliament, where he has faced insults from his Coalition counterparts – on one occasion, Senator Bill Heffernan crossed the floor to tap the Scot on the chest, claiming he was “choking on his haggis”.
The incident made headlines, but Senator Cameron says he can laugh it off.
Senator Doug Cameron reacts as ACTU secretary Paul Howes (right) in 2011. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
“I think they said I was incomprehensible,” he says.
“You just take these things as they come. But I can really imagine who it would be more other migrants who are battling to learn English, battling to change.”
He says services have diminished since he first arrived, when support such as English lessons and crèches were offered.
“It was really sophisticated and I don’t think that happens these days,” he says.
“People are more or less left on their own to just make their own way. I think we should provide more support for support for migrants when they come in.
“If you spend the money upfront and people integrate effectively, I think that’s the best thing for Australia.”
‘The treatment of refugees is a problem that is a bitter stain on Australia’
It’s not just the country’s treatment towards migrants that has changed, with Senator Cameron says that the view must be internationally that “Australia is becoming more unfair”.
“I think the treatment of refugees is a problem that is a bitter stain on Australia,” he says.
“I think the issue bow of continually cutting foreign aid is huge problem… On one hand they want to fight terrorism, but when they get an opportunity to help create a society and an economy that is the antisepsis of terrorism, one that we give support to build a decent economy, they want to cut it. If you impoverish people, if you isolate people, then that’s where terrorism breeds.”
Australia’s marriage laws are another issue of equality that the Senator has spoken out on, going against then party leader and Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2011 to support same-sex marriage.
The outspoken Senator has also made headlines for his involvement in unions, a lifelong commitment that was strengthened after a Muswellbrook branch helped him find accommodation in 1975.
He was called to the stand as part of a 2013 investigation into alleged union corruption and just this week was accused of supporting a “misogynistic, offensive union bully”.
Doug Cameron, then national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, leads a protest in 2003 (AAP Image/Joe Castro)
Senator Cameron told the upper house on Wednesday that he has “never tolerated intimidation and bullying”, adding “I will not bow to the attempt by the minister to intimidate me”.
Once labelled one of the Senate’s “malevolent monkeys”, Senator Cameron said he is used to such debate in the upper house.
After nine years - which has seen name calling, new faces and an increasingly diverse crossbench – he says he can brush off most things as the quirks of the Senate.
“That’s democracy at work,” he says.
“You have to work with the hand that you’re dealt.”
