by Anne Summers
Early on we received some very welcome, and quite unexpected, help from Geoff Yeend who soon after I arrived established, and himself chaired, the Permanent Heads (as departmental secretaries used to be called) Task Force on the Status of Women (PHTF). This had been a pre-election promise by the Prime Minister in a policy document entitled Towards Equality, but I don’t think anyone expected the head of PM&C to embrace it with quite such enthusiasm. Yeend was a courtly and civil man who, whatever he may have thought of my appointment, and the political machinations it took to install me, unfailingly treated me with courtesy. He was the quintessential mandarin with an old-school view of how one conducted oneself, especially with the Prime Minister. He was undoubtedly manipulative—that was how mandarins worked—but it was rare to see his fingerprints.
There was no more powerful bureaucratic mechanism than the IDC, and none with the clout of one that consisted entirely of heads of departments. I attended the first meeting and could not help being impressed. Around the table were the heads of Attorney-General’s; Finance; Foreign Affairs; Employment and Industrial Relations; Industry, Technology and Commerce; Education; Treasury; Social Security; Community Services; Immigration and Ethnic Affairs; and the Public Service Board.1 Some in the women’s movement criticised the body because, until January 1985 when Helen Williams was appointed to run the department of Education, it comprised only men. Such attacks, like those on Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2014 for supposedly making himself the Minister for Women by bringing women’s policy back to PM&C after a period in the bureaucratic wilderness similar to that it had endured under the Fraser government, fail to understand how power works in Canberra. Susan Ryan, a Canberra native, and the women who contributed to her policy documents, knew exactly how it worked and they knew that it was essential to marshall this bureaucratic power to the benefit of women. The gender of the people at the table, while patently unrepresentative of the population, was not the point, or at least not the main point. What mattered was their mandate and how they exercised it.
The PHTF introduced two extraordinary reforms. John Stone, the cantankerous Treasury Secretary who would soon resign his position and later become a right-wing senator from Queensland, declined to go along with the first initiative on the grounds that Treasury did not actually administer any programs, but the other heads agreed to set up women’s units in their departments to monitor the impact on women of the policies and programs they administered, and to account for these in their annual reports.
I have often been given credit for the second reform, but it was actually Yeend’s suggestion that a new budget document, the Women’s Budget Program (WBP), be produced. His plan was ingenious, an exemplar of using bureaucratic processes to monitor and progress policy. Only an accomplished bureaucrat could have created such a mechanism, and only someone with his power and prestige could have ensured that it was effective. On budget night 1984, the Prime Minister tabled the first WBP in Parliament. It contained reports from thirteen departments describing how their policies impacted on women. I took this document to a meeting of the OECD Working Party on the Role of Women in the Economy in February 1985, where it received high praise and was quickly copied by other member countries. The document effectively required departments to scrutinise their work through a different perspective: that of women’s needs. The 1985 WBP, which we had more time to produce, was a substantial document of 300 pages that was an illuminating snapshot of how government policies impacted on women; it also identified gaps in service and thus pointers to where change was needed. Today, a large number of countries, mostly in the developing world, use similar mechanisms to monitor the gender impact of policies. Sadly, Australia no longer does.
Some bureaucrats continued to resist what they saw as OSW’s constant interference. Many thought it was just a passing fancy the government would soon tire of, and so need not be taken seriously. They turned out to be right: the cabinet comment requirement was removed in 1987. Others in the bureaucracy did try. OSW was constantly fielding phone calls or attending meetings with public servants who wanted to know how to assess ‘impact on women’. In trying to help them, we were both finding our feet policy-wise, and learning how to smooth the rough edges of the very many ways so much of the world impacted on women. In doing so, Australian feminists were in their pragmatic and unplanned way coming up with a new form of activism. The term ‘femocrat’—feminist bureaucrat—would become notorious. We were much mocked in the women’s movement for our beige suits, our briefcases and our high salaries. We were seen as having ‘sold out’, as having become mandarins and forgotten where we came from, and who we were supposed to represent. Often the people who scorned us the most were also our biggest mendicants, pleading with us to save policies, increase funding or initiate much-needed policies. At the same time, the bureaucrats, the actual mandarins, saw us as missionaries. In their eyes, we were determined to meddle with a perfectly good system with fervour akin to that of the early Christians and the zealotry of evangelicals. They, of course, saw themselves as professional in their approach to their jobs and personally aloof from the matters they administered or advised on. We femocrats were, in truth, trapped in a no-man’s land somewhere between the two, objects of suspicion by both the women’s movement and by our work peers and bosses. There were few people we could talk to, as much of what we did was covered by cabinet confidentiality, so every few weeks we femocrats would all have dinner together—to lend each other support, do deals and let off steam.
As well as our oversight role, we had other responsibilities. There was the Aboriginal Women’s Task Force that was charged with developing a policy on Indigenous women. Phyllis Daylight and Mary Johnstone, the two task force members, travelled around Australia consulting with other Indigenous women about their needs and in 1986 published their landmark report, Women’s Business. Phyllis and I met with Charles Perkins, who had just been appointed the first Aboriginal to head the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, about how to work together. There was extensive consultation with women in similar or related jobs: regular Commonwealth–State Women’s Advisers meetings, and the various advisory groups in TAFE, multicultural affairs, health and other areas. And of course I needed to be in touch with all the major women’s organisations, several of whom had representatives on our National Women’s Consultative Council (NWCC), which we had set up as a channel for allowing the views of women in the community to be conveyed to the government.
OSW had a very high profile. Women’s policy was obviously a government priority; we were clearly in Bob Hawke’s good books, and we were in great demand to give advice—or, to put it cynically, to help other organisations look good. As the head of the Office, I had so many invitations and external obligations and travelled so much that I feared I was not spending enough time in the Office. I delegated as much as I could but I was always under pressure to be the one at whatever event it was. I also met frequently with Bill Kelty, the Secretary of the ACTU, and worked with him on designing some of the social-wage policies that were needed for the Accord, and I attended at least one ACTU executive meeting. Then there were individual unions who wanted to see me, a few businesses and, of course, lots of individuals who had views to put or who wanted to get my input into what they were doing. I was constantly asked to be the now mandatory woman on public selection panels and to join all kinds of government advisory bodies. I helped redraft the Commonwealth Style Manual; was put on a Women and Sport group; consulted by the newly established Bicentennial Authority; and, one Sunday in November 1984, was called to Sydney at short notice to an emergency meeting convened by Health Minister Neal Blewett on how to address the looming AIDS crisis—and found myself a member of the AIDS Advisory Committee.
I was also available for Hazel Hawke, the Prime Minister’s wife, if she required assistance. Early on, she asked for my input into a speech she was delivering to the National Press Club on Australia Day 1984. In early January I went to Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister
ial Sydney residence, where the Hawkes were staying. I was directed to walk around to the front of the house, where the verandahs face onto the glorious waters of Sydney Harbour, the Opera House in full view. It was a sight to distract the busiest bureaucrat, but I was there to meet Hazel so I turned my eyes back to the house.
‘G’day Anne!’ the unmistakable voice of Bob Hawke greeted me.
I had not seen him. Rather, I had not recognised that the little guy in front of me, wearing nothing but tiny red Speedos, his nut-brown body daubed with white zinc, was the Prime Minister. I was decked out in full femocrat regalia, so I felt distinctly overdressed as I greeted the sunbather.
How we conducted ourselves day-to-day was critical. I was determined that we would become credible players in the political game. The Fraser government had treated the OWA almost sadistically. Its advice was seldom sought, and when proffered was mostly ignored. Not surprisingly, the staff had developed something of a siege mentality. They were used to being defensive and I wanted to change that. Most of the staff welcomed my appointment as someone who was well known, had good feminist credentials, who appeared to have the Prime Minister’s ear and who might lift the profile of the Office and its mission. But the reception was not warm. Many were upset that Kath Taperell, who had run OWA during the hard years, had not been given the job. And there were suspicions about where my ultimate loyalties lay. This was evident early on.
I had been in the job for just a few weeks when we learned there was a vacancy on a big agricultural board. Like so many others at the time, this board had never had a woman member. ‘We always nominate for these boards,’ the veterans of OSW urged me. ‘Not,’ they conceded, ‘that we usually get anyone up.’ (I was surprised that even feminists routinely used the ‘getting it up’ public service parlance.) Let’s find someone, I agreed. The Office maintained a Register of Women (ROW), a list of women suitable for board appointments. Disappointingly, it yielded no names I thought were of sufficient calibre for the Prime Minister to take to cabinet, so I decided we would not propose anyone. I detected the first inkling of distrust. I was just there as window-dressing, I could tell some of the veterans were thinking, I was not willing to fight. In fact, I could not wait but I was not going to take on a hopeless cause. Why lose all our credibility on an unqualified nominee? I suggested we boost the Register so that next time we would be better armed. The Office succeeded in expanding the range and depth of ROW and it subsequently yielded names of women whose qualifications made them eminently suitable for appointment to government boards. Indeed some of those early appointees went on to forge impressive board careers in the corporate world.
In addition to the day-to-day work, we had two big assignments. Our biggest initially was to work for society-wide acceptance of the SDA, the wide-ranging anti-discrimination laws that had been introduced to Parliament in 1983, and which would be formally enacted on 1 August 1984. But we also had to develop a complementary policy of affirmative action. Susan Ryan’s initial SDA bill had included such provisions but cabinet, wary of alienating business, had stripped them from the legislation and asked they be developed as a separate program. It was to be a priority undertaking when I started at the Office.
Resistance to the SDA had not ended with its enactment. It had been fiercely contested in Parliament, and opposition still raged. It was said the legislation would mean the end of the family, that it would de-sex women, and that it would force women to do jobs they did not want to do. Opponents included conservative state premiers, and none more so than Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the cunning National Party politician who had run Queensland since 1968. He would have no truck with anti-discrimination legislation—and Queensland did not get such laws until 1991, two years after Wayne Goss’s Labor government came to office. Susan Ryan decided that OSW should open Women’s Information Services (WIS) in those places that had no anti-discrimination laws: Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT. These shop-front offices were intended to provide information to the public about their entitlements under federal laws. They provided useful services, but they were also a political provocation and needed to be carefully managed.
In Brisbane, I found the perfect person to run Queensland Women’s Information Service: Quentin Bryce, a lawyer, who lectured at the University of Queensland. She was a locally well-known and respected feminist and human rights activist, and she had served on the National Women’s Advisory Council, the body chaired by Dame Beryl Beaurepaire that included other fine advocates such as Wendy McCarthy, Jan Marsh and Evelyn Scott during the Fraser government. NWAC had decision-making powers which it used judiciously to, among other things, commission important research on abortion and on economic issues; work on childcare policies and practices; and ensure the government sent serious representation to the 1980 UN Conference on Women in Copenhagen.
Bryce was tall with striking blonde hair worn twirled on top of her head, she dressed elegantly, usually wore stilettos (at a time when the rest of us were clumping around in lower, more ‘sensible’ heels). She was always so crisply turned out that it was rumoured she travelled with an iron. She was also married, to the designer Michael Bryce, with whom she had five children. And she’d been born in Ilfracombe, a tiny town in central west Queensland. You could not have asked for a more perfect person to counter Bjelke-Petersen’s conservative bulwark.
Bryce went on to become federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner in 1988, and to run the fractious national childcare accreditation process for the Keating government, before she moved to the University of Sydney and became principal of Women’s College. That job preceded her appointment as Governor of Queensland in 2003 and, in 2008, as Australia’s first female Governor-General, when she became a national figure widely regarded with affection and admiration for the grace, creativity and courage with which she tackled the position. But all that was ahead of her in 1984 when she took up the position at QWIS and began a gruelling public education program, that saw her travelling all around the huge state talking to people about why they should welcome the SDA. She endured a lot of resistance and hostility, which she absorbed with charm and humour, but which was a telling indicator that there was not a consensus in Australia, and certainly not in Queensland, that women were entitled to independence and self-reliance. Bryce was invariably gracious and cheerful, even in the face of some pretty awful personal attacks. She seemed to manage the job, with all its travel, and her young family with ease, never showing—to me anyway—any signs of stress. It was only much later, when her children were grown, with families of their own, that she talked publicly about how hard it had been to hold it all together in those difficult days.
Developing the affirmative action policy was even more tricky. We had to come up with a way to deal with the competing pressure from trade unions and women’s groups who wanted employers to be made to account publicly for the numbers and remuneration of their female employees, and the resistance from business and its political allies. Chris Ronalds, a barrister and a good friend of mine and Ryan’s, was already a consultant to OSW. She was an exuberant character with short blonde hair and an extensive wardrobe of colourful silk shirts who, in additional to her unparalleled legal expertise in what was then still the new field of discrimination law, was known for her extraordinarily generous hospitality. She liked to host big lunches at her Rozelle house where she chopped and cooked and assembled a dazzling array of dishes, usually a mixture of Asian and Italian, for a guest list that usually comprised feminists, politicos, legal types and their hangers on. Ryan had employed Ronalds to draft the SDA, an unusual move since legislation is normally drawn up by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. Now, over quite a few dinners and drinks, she and I plotted a legal and political strategy to win acceptance for complementary Affirmative Action legislation. We decided we had to make an economic case for AA, as we called it, and to demonstrate that it would actually be good for business. Ronalds prepared a discussion ‘Green’ Paper that set out the issues and made the case for AA leg
islation. The paper had immediate political clout for having an introduction written by the Prime Minister: ‘To date, women’s skills and talents have not been utilised in our workforce to the fullest extent possible. The country is the poorer for it.’2 We tried to make the idea of affirmative action less scary by explaining that it was merely ‘the means to achieve equal employment opportunity’ and, we assured business, we had no intention of introducing ‘American-style quotas’. But we took it further. Rather than just setting out a policy for discussion, we proposed to demonstrate how the law would actually work in practice. Hawke was receptive to my idea of creating a pilot program to test the legislation. He wrote to 28 ASX 200 companies and three universities, inviting them to start complying with the proposed laws on a voluntary basis. Every CEO readily complied with the PM’s request—with the exception of Sir Peter Abeles who, despite being a close personal friend of Hawke’s, needed personal persuasion. I met with him and after he put me through my paces, he agreed to commit his Ansett Airlines to trial the laws.
OSW was a policy office and we had no experience in running programs so we had to hire a whole new team to conduct the pilot. Soon the normally quiet OSW was punctuated by the rowdy interactions of the six women staffers of the Affirmative Action Research Unit, as they zoomed in and out of the office reporting on their progress. Each of them had to know the corporate world or, in one case, higher education, and they travelled constantly visiting the companies or universities each had been assigned to guide them through the novel task of complying with laws that had yet to be approved by Parliament. The participants ranged from banks located in a major city CBD to the Argyle Mines in remote Western Australia. We were making it up as we went along, but it was surprisingly successful. We worked closely with the Business Council of Australia and its policy head, Geoff Allen, as well as with the ACTU and the university sector. The government established an Advisory Group comprising women, unionists, business and MPs to review progress of the pilot and agree to the draft legislation. The Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) legislation was enacted in 1986. Although the Opposition decided at the time not to vote against the bill, it declared its opposition to its principles and wasted no time when it was returned to government a decade later in taking the axe to the law and to the agency that administered it.