by Julia Baird
Nervousness — or prejudice — about female candidates was reflected in the questions from preselectors about what would happen to their children, or even who would get their husbands’ dinners if they were elected to parliament. Myriad female politicians have complained of this during the 1970s and 1980s. Virginia Chadwick advised women candidates in the NSW Liberal Party to be prepared for a deluge of questions about their families from all quarters over this period, and to be polite while privately laughing them off:
And the one that used to frustrate me so much is people, particularly other women, who [say] — as if they’re bringing something to your attention that you couldn’t possibly have thought of before — ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do about your children?’ What are you meant to say? ‘Oh no, look, thank you for raising it, of course not.’ So I’ve often said to women, just play along, say what you have to say but in your mind you think, ‘Oh yes, I’ve got it all worked out, I’m going to tie them to the Hills Hoist and leave a bowl of water.’25
Some women played along with the housewife stereotype, believing it would boost their chances of election, or re-election, and appeal to those who held traditional views about women. Some wished to reassure their electorates that they were not neglecting their families. NSW Labor politician Deirdre Grusovin, elected to the upper house in 1978, said she was only asked once if she would pose doing housework. She agreed to a shot of her making sandwiches for school lunch, with one of her children up on the kitchen bench because it would mean ‘people knew her children were being looked after and not ignored’.26 She said she suffered from a ‘constant guilt complex’, like many working women.
Victorian Liberal Gracia Baylor, who was captured grinning while pulling a tray out of her oven by her local paper, insisted there was ‘nothing wrong with being a housewife’ and that her background running a house gave her useful practical and organisational skills. Housewives could run the country better than the men in Treasury, she said often, and it irked her that housewives were undervalued by society.27 In the lead-up to the 1980 election, Labor candidate Ros Kelly, then a 32-year-old former teacher, published Mrs Kelly’s Cookbook as part of her successful election campaign in a previously Liberal-held electorate, telling journalists she did not care if feminists did not like it: ‘I’ve had terrific support from women at home. I’ve been meeting a lot of housewives and I believe it’s an important part of my campaign.’28 The launch was held at her home, and Kelly was pictured behind rows of clean tea cups and saucers, reading her book. The photographs of her running or playing tennis would have prevented her being typecast as a housewife, she told me later: ‘I was never a big sort of house person type, so I was never going to be stereotyped like that anyway so it didn’t really worry me . . . It definitely wasn’t an image I developed over time.’29
Many women who closed their doors in the faces of newspaper photographers opened them up to reporters from women’s magazines or local newspapers. Even Joan Child was photographed in a flowered apron stirring a pot on her stove for Australian Women’s Weekly in 1975.30 Queensland Liberal senator Kathy Sullivan was also snapped in the kitchen, standing next to her oven and leaning over two saucepans, for an article in Woman’s Day just after she was elected. Sullivan (nee Martin), called ‘the new blonde Senator’ with ‘plenty of fight’, was quoted on a range of subjects including women’s liberation, which she said had ‘thoroughly buried the old “back to the kitchen, woman” syndrome’. The reporter, Lorraine Palmer, continued: ‘Just the same, the kitchen is a favoured place with Kathy, who entertains gourmet-style at her flat in Brisbane with meals such as fondue, steak bermuda (steak stuffed with ham and bananas and cooked in wine), or beef stroganoff.’31 Sullivan felt this was a positive article, because women she would not have otherwise reached now knew she existed, and many would have related to the fact that cooking was one of her hobbies.32 West Australian Labor politician Lyla Elliott said she was photographed gardening for a woman’s magazine, but argued the woman who was doing the article ‘was a feminist, so it was okay’.33
Part of the appeal of women’s magazines had long been their high circulation figures, which meant that at one time a magazine like the Australian Women’s Weekly was estimated to reach half of Australian women each week. In 1971, it had a circulation of 820,000, and, according to one survey, was read by 47.5 per cent of Australian women, compared with 35.2 per cent who read Woman’s Day, and 27.8 per cent who read New Idea.34 In the 1970s, dozens of new titles were launched, providing more opportunities for women politicians to reach voters who did not read daily metropolitan newspapers.35
Some women continued to promote themselves as housewives in the mainstream media well into the late 1980s. Liberal Senate candidate Bronwyn Bishop snapped up the opportunity in July 1987 when she ushered a journalist and photographer from the Sun newspaper into her North Shore home. After an interview, in which she spoke of her admiration for Thatcher, the photographer asked Bishop if she would pose with a carpet sweeper, as though she were doing her daily chores in her high heels. She readily agreed.36
The National Party’s Yvonne Chapman was photographed elbow-deep in suds a couple of months after being appointed Queensland’s minister for welfare services in 1986, saying that she wanted to be ‘a mum to all the kids out there’.37 After her next appearance in the Courier-Mail, dressed in an apron, holding a kettle, standing under frilly white curtains in her kitchen, and grinning broadly, a debate began in the letters page. One reader complained the picture was a ‘worn-out stereotype’ which was ‘quite offensive and an insult to her intelligence’, while another insisted it revealed Chapman ‘conveying the lighter side of life and a caring nature in both busy roles as a housewife and State parliamentarian’.38 Clearly not all readers viewed women as victims of the press.
Liberal Senate candidate Bronwyn Bishop poses with a carpet sweeper in her North Shore home, July 1987. John O’Gready/Sydney Morning Herald
*
Tropes, or ‘frames’, of reporting are remarkably resilient. When Carmen Lawrence was elected premier of Western Australia in 1990, the front cover of the Australian featured a file photograph of Lawrence standing in a kitchen, next to a stove, with the caption ‘Dr Lawrence can stand the heat.’39 The photograph had been taken some time before, when she was minister for Aboriginal affairs, opening a housing estate. The reference to heat came in part from the fact that Lawrence inherited a government suffering from the stigma of corruption, following allegations that the two previous Labor premiers had acted improperly in dealings with business, which became known as WA Inc. But the headline also neatly summarised the question that ran through much of the housewifely reportage: ‘Can women handle power?’
CHAPTER THREE
Florence Bjelke-Petersen: pumpkin politics
‘I’m far from a dumb blonde,’ she quipped, patting her greying hair. ‘I’ll make it in Canberra and I’ll emerge, I hope, more of a woman.’ Senator Flo agreed that she knows exactly where she is going. ‘Home to cook some pumpkin scones.’1
— Daily Telegraph
Florence Bjelke-Petersen told journalists one of the highlights of her life, both as a senator and as wife of the longest serving premier in Queensland’s history, was a state reception in Brisbane for the Prince and Princess of Wales. Prince Charles stood up in front of the crowd and said that he had been visiting Queensland since he was a little boy, and now he was a grown man and Joh Bjelke-Petersen was still the premier. He was starting to wonder, he said, if Sir Joh’s stamina came from eating Lady Bjelke-Petersen’s famous pumpkin scones. When asked how he’d heard about the scones, he replied that his mother, the Queen, had told him. Being a fierce royalist, Flo was ‘absolutely tickled pink’ to hear the head of the British Empire knew of the scones she had concocted in the kitchen of her northern Queensland home.2 It was not necessary for most Australians, however, to have a chat with the Queen in order to hear about Flo’s pumpkin scones. She was rarely alluded
to in print without a reference to her baking skills, and her husband’s favourite snack. ‘Mention pumpkin scones and lamingtons,’ said broadcaster Clive Hale, ‘and the name Flo Bjelke-Petersen inevitably springs to mind.’3
Flo Bjelke-Petersen, who with her scones was a regular presence in national newspaper headlines from 1979 to the mid-1980s, glorified what other women had resisted. Just as many journalists began to recognise and record the sexism implicit in photographing women doing the housework, she proffered them a plate of scones and beamed as they devoured them. It was a colourful and evocative image which was replicated hundreds of times. While it was based on a dish Bjelke-Petersen appeared to genuinely enjoy baking, not on a Thatcherite public relations campaign dreamt up by advertisers, Bjelke-Petersen clearly used it to her benefit. By nominating for the Senate in 1979, after more than a decade of heated debate about the place of women, the responsibilities of working mothers (and fathers), and the nature of housework, this aproned housewife from Kingaroy walked onto the national stage declaring that although a woman’s most important role was looking after her family, a good scone maker could be a good politician. The proud, hardworking wife and mother, who boasted at luncheons, dinners and morning teas across the country about her favourite recipe, entered an environment of uncertainty about the place of women and constant questioning of female politicians’ domestic skills. She placated anxieties, filled empty stomachs, and marched around the country delivering homespun wisdom from the 1950s, seemingly untouched by the turmoil of the intervening decades.
Florence Bjelke-Petersen was a member of the Senate for the National Party from 1980 to 1993. Before she was elected, her fame was built on two factors: her marriage to Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who had been the Queensland premier since 1968 (and would be until 1987 after a royal commission into police corruption revealed an extensive political culture of wrongdoing), and her reputation as a good baker. Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s particular brand of conservative politics meant he was renowned mostly for who he did not like: Aboriginal people, homosexuals, feminists, unions, the Labor Party, former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, many elements of the Liberal Party, environmentalists (‘Greenies’), protesters (‘rent-a-crowd’), journalists (‘scum’), and anyone with left-wing beliefs (‘Commies’).4 He reserved a particular brand of scorn for the media, whom he referred to as chooks that required regular feeding. His wife, while sharing his views, presented a friendlier face, and was a popular speaker who travelled throughout the state entertaining audiences with cheerful homilies, as well as tales of living with the premier and satisfying his seemingly insatiable appetite for pumpkin. Before she became a senator, Bjelke-Petersen spent so much time attending functions in her husband’s electorate that she became known as the member for Barambah, while Joh was known as the premier. Her popularity was not limited to Queensland, however, and she was asked to campaign for the National Party in the 1980 Victorian election.
Many commentators argued Bjelke-Petersen’s political work was vital as an adjunct to her husband’s, as she added warmth to his hard-line authoritarian approach.5 Ron Boswell, who entered the Senate in 1983 as number three on a ticket headed by Flo Bjelke-Petersen, surmised recently: ‘Joh had magic, but he was too right-wing for the people of Brisbane. But when you threw motherly Flo in, she softened his image . . . Flo and Joh were magnets for voters.’6 Their rhyming names were regularly linked as ‘the Flo and Joh show’. Several wives of other high-profile politicians had become celebrities by bringing glamour into the political scene, with former model Jill Hickson marrying the NSW premier Neville Wran, Sonia McMahon wearing dresses split to her thigh on a trip to the White House with her prime minister husband, and Susan Peacock’s modelling of sheets in a controversial advertising campaign which prompted her Liberal MP husband, Andrew Peacock, to offer to resign.7 Flo Bjelke-Petersen injected domesticity, a brand of femininity that was familiar, comforting, and unthreatening. She was the standard bearer for middle-aged mothers, ‘the epitome of Queensland motherhood’, a woman who did her own washing, ironing, and cooking, and milked the cow with her own hands.8 She represented women who were happy with looking after the needs of men, and excelled at it. A woman who had a homely kitchen with a large poster of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip taped to the wall. She stood for, wrote Queensland journalist Hugh Lunn in 1979, ‘everything the Australian Women’s Weekly stands for: Prince Charles, the Queen, lamington recipes and babies’.9
In 1979, when Bjelke-Petersen nominated as a candidate for the Senate, she told reporters she was now ready to stand if the party wanted her, because her daughters would soon be married. Her husband baldly informed reporters it was a way of extending his influence into the federal political arena: ‘We work together very closely, 100 per cent, and I would be there indirectly . . . She’s pretty good when it comes to politics.’10 Her detractors said her candidature was only possible because her husband had done her dirty work: she would be there merely as his puppet, and to keep an eye on the Liberal Party, with whom he often clashed.11 Bjelke-Petersen’s plan to enter the Senate was a big story. Two days after the Weekend Australian revealed her plans, the story was still the page one lead in metropolitan papers. When Brisbane television reporters flew to Kingaroy to interview her, they were, naturally, invited in for tea and homemade scones.
Newspapers in Victoria and NSW poked fun at the idea of the housewife from Kingaroy going to the Senate, while Queensland journalists who had witnessed the hard work and growing popularity of Bjelke-Petersen cautioned their southern counterparts not to underestimate her.12 The Australian’s Hugh Lunn, who had broken the story about her candidacy, led an article with: ‘Florence Bjelke-Petersen may be a figure of fun to many but since announcing her hope to run for the Senate there are few Liberals and Australian Democrats who want to laugh any more.’13 Since Gough Whitlam, whom the Bjelke-Petersens loathed, won the 1972 election, breaking a 23-year period of Liberal Party rule in Canberra, she had toured the state from top to bottom on her own. Although some regarded her as naive, a Courier-Mail journalist argued she possessed ‘a toughness and shrewdness below the motherly exterior. No longer is she the Little Woman, if she ever was. One can see her becoming more and more independent.’14 Janet Hawley warned that after 30 years of being a politician’s wife, ‘Flo is beginning to enjoy the smell of real power and wants to become the real thing herself at last.’15
But Bjelke-Petersen’s entrance to parliament was marked with controversy. She had been elected to a six-year term as a senator in October 1980, and was due to enter parliament in June 1981, but was nominated to fill a casual vacancy in March. It soon became clear that by entering the Senate three months early, she would be eligible for an additional $80,000 in superannuation. A journalist from the Age wrote: ‘Mrs Flo Bjelke-Petersen may soon put aside her beloved pumpkin scones and dream up a new recipe: what to do with a big, juicy windfall of $150,000.’16 The Australian editorialised: ‘The pumpkin scones that Senator-elect Flo Bjelke-Petersen bakes in her new kitchen in Canberra had better be scrumptious — for they will be downright expensive.’17 It was not just the newspapers who brought up the scones, however. In a letter to the Australian in which she defended herself about the superannuation allegations, Bjelke-Petersen ended with, ‘My pumpkin scones are always made of the best ingredients and always rise to the occasion.’18
Bjelke-Petersen’s cooking ability had clearly turned into a joke. Cartoonist Alan Moir, together with Mac Vines, wrote a book titled Flo Goes to Canberra: The Intimate Diary of a Kingaroy Housewife, which depicted her bumbling about the nation’s capital, clueless yet enthusiastic. Moir told me it was great stuff for comedy: ‘Ma and Pa Kettle going to Washington’. Don Dunlop wrote an indignant review for the Melbourne Herald: ‘Mrs Bjelke-Petersen isn’t really a funny person, either peculiar or ha-ha. But there are some who find this important lady hilarious . . . It’s all good clean fun — unless you think it is maybe time we took the senator seriously.’19
Flo
Bjelke-Petersen also wanted people to stop laughing. It was at the point of campaigning for the Senate, in mid-1980, that she began to tell journalists she was more than a dab hand in the kitchen, adding that she was in Canberra to represent Queensland, not her husband. After her first fortnight as senator-elect she professed reluctance to judge a pumpkin scones competition at a town outside Brisbane, saying to the journalist present, ‘It is becoming a bit of a gimmick. Some say I have to stop this image now I am to be a Senator and I don’t want to be known purely as someone who can make a good morning-tea.’ To demonstrate her diversity, she baked pikelets for a reporter.20
When she was about to leave for Canberra, Flo Bjelke-Petersen told journalists that she was hoping interviewers would ask her about politics rather than pumpkin scones, adding: ‘Of course I, like very many women, like baking, not only scones but pikelets, tea cakes, little cakes. We had the family up last week and a batch of little cakes I made disappeared overnight.’21 The Daily Telegraph cried: The day of the scone is over for Flo!’