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2012 Human Rights and Social Justice Lecture, University of Newcastle, 31 August 2012
Like many other Australians, I have been disturbed by the double standards that are seemingly applied to Julia Gillard by the Opposition, by the media and by many ordinary people. But in the course of researching this topic I discovered that Gillard is subjected to far worse than mere double-standards. There is an entire industry of vilification, much of it sexually crude, all of it offensive and designed to undermine her authority and thus her legitimacy in the role as Australia’s first female prime minister … read speech
Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture, State Library of Victoria, 21 October 2010 The newspapers the next morning showed a photograph of the prime minister, wearing a trademark light grey Zegna suit, standing close between two Bangarra dancers who were wearing not much more than a laplap and a bit of body paint. It was an endearing – and revealing – image of contemporary Australia … read speech
The Australian Public Sector Leadership Summit 2011, National Convention Centre, Canberra, Thursday 13 October, 2011
Thank you for inviting me to address you this morning on this important if challenging subject: the importance of developing and sharing a collective vision. Not an easy subject, but a very timely one, and one that is important – probably vital – for our future as a nation … read speech
Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture, State Library of Victoria, 21 October 2010 The newspapers the next morning showed a photograph of the prime minister, wearing a trademark light grey Zegna suit, standing close between two Bangarra dancers who were wearing not much more than a laplap and a bit of body paint. It was an endearing – and revealing – image of contemporary Australia … read speech
Communities in Control Conference 2010, Moonee Valley Racing Club, Melbourne, 1 June 2010 It is a great honour for me to have been invited to address you today and, especially, to have been introduced by no less a figure than Joan Kirner, whom we all love for the trails she has blazed – especially for women in politics. Thank you Joan. Thank you for the introduction, and thank you for all you done for those who have come after you. Last week in The Australian newspaper, the columnist Janet Albrechtson described me as an “aging activist”. She meant it as an insult. read speech
Review of EOWA and State of Play for Women at Work, Melbourne, Wednesday 25 November 2009 I speak to you this morning as someone who has had a very long involvement in monitoring the status of women, including women’s employment and remuneration. My background as a policy advisor, as a femocrat (as we used to be called when I worked in the federal bureaucracy), as an author and as an activist have all contributed to the views I put to you today. read speech
National Gallery of Australia, 17 November, 2009 In 1947, shortly after he arrived in Australia to take up his position as Inaugural Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, Joseph Burke was asked by an American art magazine to nominate the Australian artists he most admired. He listed six: William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Ian Fairweather, Russell Drysdale – and Constance Stokes. read speech
Opening Address, Serious Women’s Business Conference, Melbourne Convention Centre, Tuesday 10 November, 2009 This is not just a problem for those women who would like to be in the workforce but who are unable to because of lack of childcare or flexible working hours or who have been deterred because of the lack of opportunities for promotion or by the large, and growing, gender pay gap. It is also a huge problem for the economy. read speech
Talk to the Annual Dinner of the Copyright Council, Sydney, 15 October, 2009 I want to talk to you tonight about my new book, The Lost Mother, which was published in July. Since I understand you are interested in how works are created, I thought you might like to hear how this book was created. It is rather an unusual story, with several elements that I think will be relevant to the subjects that preoccupy you. There is the story in my book – several stories in fact – but there is also the story about my book and how it came to be. Let me explain. read speech
Address to Victorian Premier’s Women’s Summit, Melbourne, 8 September, 2009 It is a great honour for me to have been invited to address you today, at the 10th annual Victorian Premier’s Women’s Summit. This is a tremendous initiative, one that I wish other states – and the federal government – would emulate because there are simply not enough opportunities to governments to hear what women are thinking. I commend the Victorian government – and especially the Premier – for showing such leadership in this area. read speech
Paper delivered to Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, National Library of Australia, Canberra, March 27, 2009 It gives me great pleasure to be able to take part in this interesting and innovative forum that will, we all hope, help crystallise some of the important challenges new communications technologies present to us all. Cultural heritage organisations, especially, are challenged by these. In the case of libraries, charged with collecting and storing information that documents our national story, the challenge is quite daunting, I imagine. read speech
Opening Address, Serious Women’s Business Conference, Melbourne, 28 October, 2008 It is my job this morning to set the scene for this conference of women who are serious about themselves and their business and who are here to listen, to learn, to ask questions, to network and to come away with a better understanding of the unique connections that bind our society, locally and globally, and which link us to each other in all kinds of exciting and, often, challenging ways. read speech
Remarks to 20th Women, Management and Employment Relations Conference, Sydney, 24 July, 2008 Advance Australia Fair! I can’t think of a better title for a session exploring issues affecting women in the workplace. Because we want a fair deal for women. We have not had that for far too long but we can hope that, with the election of the Rudd government, that is going to change. read speech
Speech to the Australian Services Union’s Women’s Conference, Melbourne, 28 May 2008 Excerpt: None of this would be happening had Julia Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister, not referred the question of parental leave to the Productivity Commission, asked it to investigate and report back in early 2009. Until she did that, paid maternity leave was politically dead in the water. We should be grateful to her for finding a way to revive it. read speech
Book launch at Shearer’s Bookshop, Sydney April 8, 2008 Excerpt: As the house weeps, releasing its damp – so does she. She is, of course, conscious of the parallel: the widow and the house of her marriage are drying out together. But even she does not fully comprehend how necessary this rebuilding of the house is to her grieving until the walls are newly rendered andready to paint. Closing her eyes and running her hands over the surface, she is unable to tell which is the old wall and which is the new. “Only at this moment did I realise how fully I had been using the house as the canvas on which to paint my grief,” she writes. “This was my home, but I could not say any longer that I was quite at home inside it. I could not decide which was more distressing: to see the emptiness of my future without John presented so literally on these dried and rendered walls; or the awesome privilege of knowing that it was entirely up to me as to what I painted upon them”. read speech
International Women’s Day address to the Victorian TAFE Association, Melbourne March 13, 2008 Excerpt: “The default position of too many men – still, after all these years – is that you appoint people like yourselvess, middle-aged Anglo men, to run things.” read speech
International Women’s Day address to event organised by WIRE – Women’s Information, Melbourne March 4, 2008 Excerpt: “Let’s hope that this blunder by the Rudd government will be an early wake-up call that it needs to be mindful of gender balance when making appointments. Obviously it did not occur to any of the men who signed off on the Committee list that there was anything wrong with it.” read speech
The 7th Victorian Human Rights Oration, Zinc, Federation Square, Melbourne December 10, 2007 Excerpt: “Two weeks ago I dount that any of us could have imagined that the new international face of Australia would be a young woman Senator of Chinese descent, who was born in Malaysia and came to this country at the age of eight, who is openly gay, and who has now been charged with managing two of the portfolios that are critical to the future of this country: climate change and water. Penny Wong has also been given the job of representing Australia at the international negotiations over the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol that will, almost literally, determine the survival of the planet” read speech
Opening Address to Serious Women’s Business Conference, Melbourne, Sofitel Hotel, 30 October, 2007 read speech
Address to Hunter Valley Research Foundation, Newcastle City Hall 22 August, 2007 read speech
Address to Rationalist Society of Australia, Melbourne, 21 February, 2007 read speech
Janine Haines Annual Address, Melbourne, 23 August, 2006 read speech
Address to the Public Sector Association Annual Women’s Conference, Sydney, 8 September, 2005 read speech
Address to the Australian Services Union Women’s Conference, Melbourne, 26 July 2005. read speech
Address to the NSW Bar Association, 22 November 2004. read speech
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14th Annual Alicia Johnson Memorial Lecture Darwin, 19 November; Alice Springs 20 November 2004. In paying tribute to the life and work of young Northern Territory lawyer, Alicia Johnson who worked in the area of violence, I talk about the epidemicof sexual and domestic violence that is plaguing our society. read more
Address to the Law Institute Victoria, 11 November 2004. In this speech I talk about the end of optimism now that the Howard government has been returned and its anti-women policies will continue, and also address the current political firestorm on abortion. read more
The Reid Oration. University of Western Australia, 4 August 2004. In this address I discuss the threats to democracy via government attacks on the operations of Non Government Organisations (NGOs). read more
The 2004 Juanita Nielsen Memorial Lecture, 16 June 2004. It is becoming more difficult to exercise our democratic rights to protest. In this speech I look at local and international examples of the limits to dissent. read more
Talk given at Sydney Writers Festival, 23 May 2004. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have bemoaned the lack of role models for boys. Is there really a crisis in masculinity? read more
Address to the Sydney Institute, December 2003. In this address, I outlined the major themes of my book, sketching how I believe the revolution in women’s lives that I once believed was “unstoppable and irreversible” has been put in jeopardy. read more
Address to ACOSS National Congress, Nov 2003. The theme of this Congress is “piecing it together: equity, empowerment and change” which is a rather apt one for the subject that I wish to address this morning. I propose to put to you that as a society we cannot claim to have addressed, let alone solved, the question of equity in the modern world if women are left out of the occasion. read more
Pamela Denoon Lecture, Mar 2003. An exposé of how women’s rights have been eroded in Australia since the election of the Howard government in 1996. “…this government began virtually from day one to systematically dismantle the apparatus designed to achieve and nurture equality of opportunity. What we have today, instead, is a government whose policy – implicit and explicitly – is to remove women from the full-time workforce.” read more
ANZ Ladies Masters of Business Conference, Feb 2002. Why are there so few women in senior management and board positions in Australia today? Is it that the opportunity is not there or simply that the system operates in such a manner to make it more difficult for women to succeed at this senior level? What does Australia’s history on women’s issues tell us to illuminate these questions? read more
Conference ‘Human Rights – The Search for Global Responsibility’, Oct 2001. International Organizations and Human Rights. When you look at this topic perhaps you think the United Nations, the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund. However, when I think “international organization” I think of international non-government organizations such as Greenpeace that have played such a pivotal role in protecting the environment and, as I shall argue, the basic human rights of people around the world…. read more
Insurance Council of Australia, May 2001. Looking back over the past one hundred years Australian as a nation has a lot to celebrate. We’ve had seven Nobel Prize winners, have pioneered the world in political and social reform – inventing the secret ballot, the widow’s pension and child endowment; have a reputation for innovation and experimentation – inventing a host of innovations including the black box and the inflatable aircraft escape slide, the bionic ear and the production of penicillin. But despite our achievements and accomplishments Australians are still, in many ways, and insecure and uncertain people… we believe that we live in Godzone country, the greatest country on earth, we just don’t act as if we believe it. read more
Book launch, Sep 2000. Kings Cross has been the seat of much Australian literary history. Many writers including Dymphna Cusack and Florence James (Come in Spinner), poet Michael Dransfield and M Barnard Eldershaw (the literary name of Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw, authors of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow), have lived and worked in the Cross. Others, like Barry Humphries, have had far too good a time there (witness his spectacular last bender before going off the booze for good). Its icons have provided the backdrop for many literary works – the Piccolo Bar being the subject of poems by both John Tranter and Yusef Komunyakaa. In the Gutter … Looking at the Stars explores this deep vein of literary history. read more
Panel discussion on the 1960s, National Biography Award, Mar 2000. Is the generation who came of age in the1960s – my generation – really as their image suggests – self-obsessed, self-aggrandising and self-promoting? Were the ‘60s all they are now cracked up to be – a romanticised period of freedom? I divide the ‘60s into the ‘bad’, the early part of the decade where abuses of power – sexual and institutional – were rife and the ‘good’ the beginning of a new way of thinking, the precursor to the ‘70s! read more
Opening words for the exhibitions “Beauty and Desire in Edo Period Japan and Read My Lips, the works of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, National Gallery of Australia, Jun 1998. Two very different exhibitions which are ultimately about women – the Geisha of Edo Japan and the women artists of late 20th century Manhattan. The exhibition portrays two very different cultures each of which has reached the zenith of its current economic, social and political power, so that these images, and these icons, are also historical documents, powerful reminders of eras that have peaked and are now in decline. read more
ACTU Whitlam Lecture Series, Jun 1997. Looking back over my long involvement with politics in Australia I think that to be a ‘Whitlamite’ meant to think rationally but to have political passions, to care about justice and equality, and to make these concepts the guiding principles we applied to every area of social and political life. It meant learning to develop positions on such subjects as education, Aboriginal affairs, social security, health policy and, of course, conscription and the Vietnam War. Perhaps strangely, women did not include themselves as part of the agenda because we did not yet have the view that it was necessary. But it was not long before all that changed, and by 1972 the economic and social status of women was very much part of the Whitlam Government’s program of reform. We became ardent about these issues because we were convinced of the essential injustice of so many areas of Australian life, and we were energised by realising not only that change was desirable – but it was both possible and permissible.” read more
Elizabeth Jolley Lecture, Jun 1997. Three successful and accomplished women: Carmen Lawrence, Helen Garner and — somewhat regretfully — myself have recently (1995) been subjected to extraordinary barrages of vilification. The stories are unconnected and the women concerned, despite similarities in age and background barely know each other. I want to explore, through the recent stories of these three women, what the vilification of women in high or public positions means for the continued advancement of women. If it is having an effect on the progress of women into all areas and levels of our society? And if so, is this effect entirely negative or can we discern any benefits at all? Is there a silver lining somewhere in this large black cloud?” read more
Investigator Lecture, Mar 1994. “One hundred years after Australian women first were enabled to vote, the political system stands in clear need of reform to improve the representation of women. The political will to accomplish this appears to be developing, but an even more alluring opportunity exists to rewrite the fundamental rules of Australian politics to enshrine gender equality. The inexorable movement of the nation towards a new, republican constitution provides a unique opportunity to include gender equality as a fundamental principle of political representation. For this to happen, however, women’s groups need to harness their energies and imagination towards this goal as the outcome of equality is neither unanimously supported nor guaranteed to occur. It is particularly unlikely to happen if the contemporary women’s movement follows the lead of the fin de siècle feminists into spiritualism, the occult and other forms of millenarianism that are at odds with the tough pragmatic negotiations needed for the republican debate.” read more
Inaugural Donald Horne Lecture, May 1991. “Our country is changing rapidly, especially in its ethnic and racial composition, and we need to redefine ourselves as a result. The ideas we have about ourselves are mostly relics of an earlier time when we were a smaller and more inward looking nation, with a smug sense of superiority. Today we are less certain of ourselves. We are searching for a vision to inspire us, and give us confidence. We want to feel assured that we can take control of our future. We want to be able to feel optimistic.” read more
Women in Uniform: Perceptions and Pathways Conference, May 1991. When the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1983 made the subject of women in the military a hot political issue, the women’s movement in Australia remained largely unmoved by the struggles of their sisters in uniform. In some cases, there was even active opposition to the efforts of women to se cure equality of opportunity within the armed services. Over the past fifteen years attitudes have gradually altered and many more women who identify as feminists are willing to take a stand in support of women’s advancement within the military. In the United Stated, feminist ambivalence on this issue reached a high point during the Gulf War when many military mothers went into battle, precipitating a massive domestic debate which forced feminists to take a stand. In Australia, the recent landmark decision of the Chief of the Defence Force to recommend the federal government open all combat positions to women forced a similar soul-searching on the part of the women’s movement here. A significant shift in attitudes was evident from this debate, and it appears that the women’s movement and women in the military are, finally, marching in step. read more |
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