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Hairstyles the least of leaders’ worries
SMH: 27 JANUARY, 2011
For men in politics, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. At least, it was for Henry Kissinger in 1973 when he was secretary of state in the Nixon administration and was rarely photographed on social occasions without a gorgeous woman on his arm … read more
At last, jobs for the girls
SMH: 18 DECEMBER, 2010
AT a breakfast in the boardroom of Citi, perched high above the Sydney skyline, some of the country’s most powerful chief executives agreed to become visible champions of the cause of improving the numbers of women in leadership positions within their companies. … read more
Fears for the future in 7.30 Report-land
Age: 19 NOVEMBER, 2010
The news that the ABC is reviewing what its flagship current affairs television program, The 7.30 Report, should look like once the long-term presenter and hard-hitting interviewer O’Brien departs at the end of this year is cause for alarm … read more
Unlucky precedents for first female PMs
Age: 4 SEPTEMBER, 2010
As she tries to put in place a minority government, Prime Minister Julia Gillard must be hoping she can avoid the fate of two other prominent female political leaders: Canada’s Kim Campbell and Israel’s Tzipi Livni. Campbell lost office in November 1993, after just four months at the helm as Canada’s first female prime minister. Livni came tantalisingly close in 2008 to being able to form a coalition that would have made her Israel’s second female prime minister … read more
A wager on what women want
Age: 14 AUGUST, 2010
That day in June when Australia’s first female Governor-General swore in Australia’s first female Prime Minister, there were few women in this country who did not feel a particular frisson of pleasure and pride. History was being made: the two most important positions in the country were now both occupied by women … read more
The ability to connect
Age: 26 JUNE, 2010
There’s a story in Sydney, perhaps apocryphal but certainly instructive, of how some time last year the hard men of the NSW Labor Party (the “Sussex Street assassins” as Tony Abbott would have it) reacted nervously to the news that Julia Gillard was planning to attend a big function in the western suburbs … read more
Historic moment, but barriers remain for half the population
SMH: 25 JUNE, 2010
Julia Gillard may have played down the significance of her sex when she became Australia’s first female prime minister yesterday, saying she “did not set out to crash my head against any glass ceilings” and pointing out that she was also the first redhead to lead the country. But there is no denying this moment of history … read more
Little Pill that changed the world
SMH: 8-9 MAY, 2010
It was 1966, I was a student at Adelaide University, with a boyfriend, and I decided it was time to try the new contraceptive. But the doctor at the student health service wasn’t having any of it: Are you married? he asked sternly. He apparently didn’t realize that these were the Swinging Sixties. I slunk away, embarrassed. It took a few months before someone gave me the name of a doctor off campus who was willing to prescribe the Pill to single girls. … read more
Dangerous liaisons
Age: 1 DECEMBER, 2009
IN 1973, in an interview with The New York Times, Henry Kissinger explained how a short, fat and — let’s face it — not terribly good looking man like him always managed to have glamorous women on his arm: ‘‘Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,’’ the US secretary of state said … read more
Mistress in a gilded cage
Age: 3 MAY, 2009
IN HIS talk at Readings bookshop the other day, the writer Alain de Botton claimed that the rise of marriages based on love, rather than property, in the mid-18th century meant the end of the mistress. Perhaps he was unaware of the drama taking place a few suburbs away in Kew, where the cardboard box king Richard Pratt lay dying … read more
Proponents of terror Australis at sea in a leaky moat
SMH: 2 MAY, 2009
A week ago, we were debating whether we should be turning back tiny boats of desperate people seeking asylum on our shores. This week the Federal Government has assumed the power to put people suspected of having swine flu in mainland mandatory detention … read more
Need for more than great speeches and symbolism
SMH: 10 JANUARY, 2009
It is just 10 days until Barack Obama becomes America’s first African-American President in an inauguration that promises to be high on symbolism as well as ceremony. But even before he is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, the man who promised “change we can believe in” has already caused deep disappointment among previously ardent supporters … read more
Our Future in the Balance
SMH: 27 SEPTEMBER, 2008
In 37 days we will know who Americans have chosen as their next president. Their decision could not be more crucial, not just for the debt-ravaged United States but for the entire world, and the unprecedented events of the past week have given us all a pretty clear picture of what’s at stake … read more
Binge Drinking Something to Wine About
SMH: JUNE 21, 2008
If four glasses of wine enjoyed by adults over dinner is now going to be labeled binge drinking, we will need a whole new vocabulary to describe kids throwing down 24 vodka shots on a night out on the town … read more
The Numbers Hillary Didn’t Count On
SMH: JUNE 14, 2008
A lot of people, mostly men, just don’t seem to understand why so many of us, and we are not all women, are so upset about the treatment of Hillary Clinton. It is not just because she lost, although of course many – myself included – wanted her to win. Nor are we suggesting, as some commentators have speciously suggested, she lost because she is a woman … read more
The Trailblazer who opened his heart and mind to women’s rights
SMH: MARCH 21, 2008
For the first 60 years of his life, Clyde Cameron, the former Labor Minister who died last week wrote, “I had accepted the teaching that to abort an embryo was the equivalent of murder.” Then, not long after the vote on the Lamb-McKenzie bill, “something happened that caused me to see lawful abortion in another light. It was when a young Italian who had always letterboxed a part of my electorate returned his pamphlets; and, sobbing like a child, explained he could not do the job because his partner had died at the hands of a backyard abortionist in Hindley Street” … read more
It Seems Only Luck Can Save Her Now
SMH: FEBRUARY 16-17, 2008
There is a story doing the rounds of New York City concerning a tied vote in one of the districts in the Democratic caucus in Nevada a few weeks ago.
It being Las Vegas, a deck was produced and shuffled and the precinct captains were each invited to take a card. Barack Obama’s captain drew a 10 of clubs and sat back smiling; then Hillary Clinton’s captain took his: the queen of hearts. The former first lady won the district – and the state. Luck was a lady that night, but Clinton has been on a losing streak ever since.
She has lost the past eight contests in the primary election battles, several by huge margins, and now has at least 100 fewer delegates committed to voting for her at the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado, in August than her rival, Obama … read more
A Sorry Way to Right a Terrible Wrong
SMH: JANUARY 12-13, 2008
It;s been more than 10 years so it is now almost impossible for people like me to recall clearly the shock and the horror, the shame and the sadness we felt when we first read (or read about) Bringing Them Home the report of the HUman Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into what was termed “the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.” … read more
Room with a view or two – a homely taste of the future
SMH: JANUARY 3, 2008
On December 11 last year when many Australians were engaged in the relentless round of pre-Christmas parties, others were flexing their political muscles in an innovative and perhaps ground breaking exercise in political activism … read more
Labor’s Women of Power Turn a Page in Politics
SMH: DECEMBER 21, 2007
I am told that Senator Penny Wong had quite a fan club at the UN in Bali. The various European Union delegations were openly enthused about her performance, while one young woman, a climate campaigner from Greenpeace China, was thrilled to receive a smile when she passed Wong in a corridor.
Wong’s impressive .. read more
Strip Clubs – big for businessmen, not for business
THE AGE: AUGUST 21, 2007
No one, it seems, is ready to step up and condemn Kevin Rudd for visiting a New York strip joint while on official business observing the UN four years ago. After all, Australians are pretty tolerant of people getting drunk and doing stupid things… read more
Still ruling, the Golden Oldies
SMH: JULY 26, 2007
Question: what do Tina Turner, Seamus Heaney, Ralph Lauren, John Cleese, Sir David Frost, and Francis Ford Coppola have in common? Answer: Like our prime minister, they all turn 68 this year. And, again like John Howard, they are all still working and, again like him, probably don’t feel ready for the scrap heap yet … read more
Book Review SMH: JULY 21-22, 2007
All Hail, the demander-in-chief
The transformation of Hillary Rodham Clinton from small town Arkansas corporate lawyer to America’s First Lady to US Senator from New York to Democratic Party frontrunner with a real chance of becoming the 44th president of the United States is one of the most remarkable political narratives of the modern era.
Child-care agreement gets back to valuing workers
SMH: JULY 14-15, 2007
Union power comes in many forms and with all the recent brouhaha about alleged thuggish behaviour from officials in the construction and mining industries, it is good to see union efforts benefit some of Australia’s lowest paid, yet most important, employees … read more
Better the unions’ lackey than Howard’s bitch-boy
SMH: JUNE 25, 2007
Part of the reason for Kevin Rudd’s remarkable ascension in the polls has been that since he became Labor leader he has acted as if he were already prime minister. Rudd was the opposite of Kim Beazley’s “me too” politics. He jettisoned the Beazley “small target” approach and opted to occupy the centre stage. He set the agenda with policy initiatives: in education there were measures to improve numeracy and literary, and to attract students to science and maths; on the economy, to improve productivity and on communications, to roll out a national broadband network … read more
Down south, it’s a totally different culture
SMH: MAY 5, 2007
In Melbourne this week they were bleating about getting “only” $63 million extra for the arts in the state budget brought down on Tuesday. As we in New South Wales brace for what are likely to be swingeing cuts to the Arts in our budget, I found it salutary during a few days spent down south this week to experience the very different ways the two states approach arts and culture. Our government seems to see this sector as an irritating, even embarrassing, adjunct to the main game … read more
The Bottom Line on Good Child Care
SMH: APRIL 12, 2007
The peace dividend of the 1990sput money or benefits into people’s pockets, but John Howard’s proposed human dividend seems designed just to make us feel good. The so-called “peace dividend” was a collateral benefit of the end of the Cold War that supposedly diverted money from defence spending into health, welfare and other tangible social benefits. Howard’s catchphrase seems more designed to put a bow on the benefits that have flowed from the economic reforms of his 11 years of government. … read more
Spousal Arousal Like New Before
SMH: MARCH 31, 2007
It’s nothing new for candidates for high political office in the US to have to come clean about something –their taxes, their health, their financial probity, their drug use, any and every aspect of their private lives. But the politics of disclosure is breaking new ground in the current US Presidential election because it is not just the candidates who are laying themselves on the media alter. The 2008 Election is already shaping up as the Year of the Spouse. Partners, too, it turns out, have plenty to unburden – and a far bigger role to play than in any previous election. … read more
Time to make the shoe fit
THE AGE: MARCH 3, 2007
MAXINE McKew’s audacious bid to unseat the Prime Minister at the next election has ignited the political imagination and sparked speculation about the future of the former ABC broadcaster. “Maxine for PM” emails were flying round before she had even secured the nomination — let alone the seat. If she takes Bennelong, McKew will go down in history as the Howard slayer — but it is most unlikely she will ever end up in the Lodge … read more
The day that shook Howard’s world
SMH: FEBRUARY 17, 2007
The key to understanding the Prime Minister’s extraordinarily intemperate remarks about US presidential hopeful Barack Obama last weekend is to remember that John Howard was in Washington DC on September 11, 2001. He was right at the epicentre of the emotional firestorm that engulfed US politics after the al-Qaeda attacks and that helped forge his relationship with George Bush, the rookie US President, whom he met for the first time the day before … read more
The Hillary machine builds momentum
JANUARY 13, 2007
Within the next few weeks Senator Hillary Clinton is expected to announce the establishment of a presidential exploratory committee, the first step in her historic quest to become the first woman president of the United States … read more
What’s the score with all those Poms?
DECEMBER 23, 2006
Is John Howard’s proposed citizenship test going to be the Tampa of next year’s federal elections? Is it going to be a case of “we will decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they can become a citizen”? There is, unfortunately, every sign that this was the Prime Minister’s intention when he proposed what he called a “positive way of ensuring that newcomers are more fully integrated into Australian society” … read more
PM glosses over double standard
OCTOBER 7, 2006
In the same week that the federal Attorney General ordered books removed from a university library and the Defence Minister hand-annotated an official letter to a vice-chancellor suggesting a change to the history curriculum, the Prime Minister told us we had embarked on “a generational struggle for ideals of democratic freedom and liberty under the law” ….read more
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Ozone Man, a new rival for Hillary
SEPTEMBER 28, 2006
Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions may be about to encounter an unexpected obstacle in the form of Ozone Man, her husband’s former vice-president Al Gore. …. read more
Sadly, women are having to win back ground lost to Howard
AUGUST 24, 2006 (The Age)
Janine Haines was one of the first women in Federal Parliament to not be afraid to speak up for her sex. She saw her role in public life as being partly to represent the interests of other women…. read more
Government avoids the heavy artillery
JUNE 19, 2006
For anyone tempted to think, or maybe hope, that the Government is losing its touch after ten years in power, the past week has provided a powerful refutation. And it’s not just the Prime Minister’s obvious (and appalling) wedge on the ACT legislation on gay civil unions…. read more
New Language Barrier No Way to Build a Tolerant Society
MAY 2, 2006
Andrew Robb has proposed that new citizens in Australia would “more quickly and effectively integrate into our Australian family” if they were to learn our language and “something about our history and heritage”. Robb is a rookie parliamentary secretary, widely assumed to have been put into the Immigration and Multicultural Affairs portfolio to curb the inclinations of the minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, to give a bit of stick to asylum-seekers. … read more
All Together Now
FEBRUARY 18, 2006
I feel a strong sense of historical justice in the fact that it has been the successful effort to reverse the ban on RU486 that has brought women parliamentarians in Canberra out of the political closet … read more
True Voice of the Desperate Housewives
FEBRUARY 7, 2006
At a small dinner in Sydney in the mid-1990s, the celebrated writer and feminist Betty Friedan, who died on Saturday, her 85th birthday, was asked how she characterised herself. She did not hesitate: “First, I am an American. Second, a Jew and thirdly, I am a woman.” It was a remarkable repositioning of self-perception and priorities from the woman whose book The Feminine Mystique in 1963 changed the lives of millions of women around the world, but by then she had been largely spurned by the movement she helped found and had decided, or been forced, to move onto other issues … read more
Hillary’s presidential remake leaves the Clinton heartland cold
JANUARY 13, 2006
You might expect the political conversation among Democrats to be along the lines of “is Hillary electable” (given the preponderance of red states on the American political map) but I discovered during a recent visit to the US, many in her natural base have already washed their hands of her … read more
The last dab of Chanel
DECEMBER 17, 2005
Usually at airports my emotions hover at the anger end of the barometer, mostly ricocheting between outright rage and mere frustration as flights are delayed, gates changed or luggage fails to appear on the carousel. So I surprised myself recently at London’s Heathrow Airport when I realised as I wandered round the shops of Terminal Four that what I felt was desolation, and grief. It was, I worked out, because I had no one to shop for. Usually I buy my mother’s Christmas presents at Heathrow … read more
Mail-order insult shows women still lack respect from society
AUGUST 30, 2005
Why is it that in Australia today the racial slur is seen as far more offensive than the sexual one? In July Bryan Fletcher was fined $10,000 and stripped of the captaincy of the South Sydney Rabbitohs for calling another player a “black c—”. It was the “B” word that was deemed to be the insulting one. … read more
Future of abortion hangs on landmark hearing
AUGUST 11, 2005
For the first time in more than 20 years a medical practitioner has been charged under the NSW Crimes Act with unlawfully prosecuting a miscarriage … read more
Bagless ladies: the powerful new breed of politician
JULY 6, 2005
You never see Condoleezza Rice carrying a handbag. Not for her, arguably the most powerful woman in the world, the traditional trappings of feminine encumbrance … read more
Prisoners of a nation’s prejudices
JUNE 17, 2005
It was probably inevitable that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton would make contact with Schapelle Corby. After all, Australia’s two most celebrated women of crime have a lot of experiences in common … read more
Back to work, it seems, any way you can
APRIL 14, 2005
Will the federal government ever let us stop working? Now there’s talk of raising the retirement age to 75. What if we want to stop?… read more
Abbott’s tale is grubbier than it seems
FEBRUARY 25, 2005
Has Tony Abbott’s media manipulation of the story of his reunion with the son he gave up for adoption 27 years ago irrevocably altered the terms of the debate on abortion? … read more
McPolitics is not a viable future
JANUARY 21, 2005
As we all know, a week is a long time in politics, and between today and next Friday, when the Federal Labor caucus meets to elect its new leader, we bystanders can expect to witness the playing out of a wide spectrum of political scenarios … read more
Relief is also for our reputation
JANUARY 13, 2005
Why has the world, and Australia in particular, responded so generously to the tsunami disaster relief efforts when other tragedies of even greater magnitude have not attracted the same support? … read more
Turning off politics is not an option
DECEMBER 24, 2004
For the sake of our political health Labor supporters should not disengage, although the temptation to do so is powerful … read more
Mao lies in prominence if not in state
DECEMBER 16, 2004
You can tell a lot about a country by the way it treats its embalmed former dictators, especially in China today where a political furore has broken out about Mao’s body continuing to lie in Tienanmen Square … read more
Women’s rights pushed back to the margin
NOVEMBER 15, 2004
The defenestration of the Canberra femocrat by the Howard Government was inevitable so the only question is: why did it take the Prime Minister, John Howard, so long to dump the Office of the Status of Women? … read more
No silver or bronze in fight for the Lodge
AUGUST 30, 2004
John Howard is no doubt hoping to blaze to electoral victory on the coat-tails of our Olympic team but instead he might find himself in a similar position to Malcolm Fraser, the last Liberal Prime Minister to be ousted in an election … read more
Women come in from the cold
JULY 21, 2004
At the last election federal Labor leader Kim Beazley slipped out a women’s policy two days before the election. Its centrepiece? A promise to remove the GST on tampons. There wasn’t much to sell … read more
Labor leader’s soap opera won’t wash
JULY 9, 2004
It’s time for our federal leaders to rise out of the gutter and ascend to the policy podium. The past week’s soap opera had a plot more worthy of Dallas than The West Wing: rumours of sex and violence swirl around Canberra … read more
Corralled back to the kids and kitchen
MAY 2004
Peter Costello’s “one for the father, one for the mothers, and one for the country” is all about making it harder for mothers to have jobs and have kids. … read more
Playing the Game Howard’s Way
APRIL 2004
The totally over-the-top hyperbole about politicians’ apparent plagiarism of words from US presidents has diverted attention from far more significant examples of policy rustling … read more
What the boardroom needs now: oestrogen
MARCH (2) 2004
The travails of director Catherine Walter aside (for the moment), you do have to conclude that the NAB does have a bad case of OTP – otherwise known as Organisational Testosterone Poisoning … read more
Claws rip the heart out of Wolf’s theme
MARCH (1) 2004
Twenty years ago, when I was living in Canberra, a journalist colleague visited me at home one Saturday afternoon. With her husband sitting beside her, holding her hand, she tearfully recounted how her editor was sexually harassing her … read more
Pragmatism rules in the Democrats’ quest to topple the President.
FEBRUARY 2004
Just as the ALP seems as if it is ready to bury all differences and unite behind their new leader to ensure the defeat of John Howard … read more
Hell hath no fury like a conservative scorned.
JANUARY 2004
Or so it would seem from the savagery with which the neo-con and right-wing cabals have turned on John le Carre and his latest book … read more
Feel it’s time to start a family? Go for broke
DECEMBER 2003
So Amanda Vanstone thinks Australia’s birthrate is falling because today’s parents are too materialistic. How quickly she forgets. Only last year … read more
PM, the money’s still there, if you’d care to use it
NOVEMBER 2003
Australia’s working mothers will have to hope that the Prime Minister’s surprising intervention last week in support of increasing childcare places this time delivers the goods … read more
Glass ceiling needs a bit of leverage
OCTOBER 2003
If it were going to happen naturally, it would have happened by now. Women would be moving and shaking their way around corporate Australia. It isn’t happening … read more
Bush can expect a hot welcome
SEPTEMBER 2003
The last time a US President visited Australia there were tears. This time, unfortunately, there is more likely to be tear gas. George W. Bush will drop in on us in late October for as long as twenty- four hours … read more
The times do suit the PM: he moulded them
AUGUST 2003
It is seventeen years ago last month since I had my memorable dinner, in Washington DC, with John Howard who was at the time Leader of the Opposition … read more
Sinking in the mire of messy peace
JULY 2003
We used to be a one-war-at-time kind of country but the way things are shaping up Australia could soon have, in addition to our continuing involvement in East Timor, major military involvement on three fronts, all of them fraught with peril … read more
Victim or victor? Hillary’s fine line
JUNE 2003
Hillary Clinton’s biggest challenge in writing her autobiography seems to have been how to position her knowledge that her husband did indeed have a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky … read more
Callous treatment for the victims of brutal acts
MAY 2003
In January this year the federal government pilfered $7.5 million from the Partnerships Against Domestic Violence programs and a further $2.5 million from the National Initiative to Combat Sexual assault … read more
The priority that no longer rates
APRIL 2003
Pru Goward must be wondering what it was she did. Not only has the Prime Minister derailed her paid maternity leave proposals, now his Attorney-General is trying to abolish her job … read more
Message is still the same: stay home
MARCH 2003
Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics this weekend concluded a three week tour of this country hosted by the Australian government … read more
Reaping the grim harvest we have sown
FEBRUARY 2003
A lot of people are asking: how is it that US President George W. Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are so certain, given the inconclusive nature of the UN Weapons Inspectors findings, that Iraq possess weapons of mass destruction? This is why … read more
Multi-cultural cringe becomes a snarl
JANUARY 2003
A few weeks before Christmas my nephew and his wife had their first baby, a little girl they named Jasmine. Jasmine’s mother is of Chinese descent but Jasmine will have an Anglo last name because her father’s forebears came from England and Ireland … read more
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