by Julia Baird
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Notes
Introduction to 2021 edition
1Kate Ellis, Sex, Lies and Question Time: Why the successes and struggles of women in Australia’s parliament matter to us all, Hardie Grant, Sydney, 2021, p. 125.
2Blair Williams, ‘A gendered media analysis of the prime ministerial ascension of Gillard and Turnbull: he’s “taken back the reins” and she’s “a backstabbing” murderer’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 52:4, 2017, pp. 550–564.
3Ibid, pp. 555–559.
4Jessica Sier & Vanessa Desloires, ‘The Abbott government breaks more promises than it keeps’, Australian Financial Review, 5 September 2014.
5Kate Ellis, op cit. p. 7.
6Ibid. p. 124.
7Ibid. pp. 124–125.
8Abigail Lewis, ‘The Way In: Representation in the Australian Parliament, Per Capita’, 2019.
9Eryk Bagshaw, ‘Parliament is no more diverse now than it was in 1988 as political staffer ranks explode’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Jan. 2019.
10Women’s Working Group chaired by Rosemary Craddock, Room for Movement: Women and Leadership in the Liberal Party, A Liberal Party Federal Executive Initiative, 2015.
Prelude
1Patricia Morgan, ‘Mrs Thatcher will warn Australians: Russian threat not just a European problem’, Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1976, p. 5.
2T. S. Monks, ‘The Iron Lady is set fair for Downing Street’, SMH, 28 Aug. 1976, p. 14.
3Ros Dunn, ‘Not just a pretty face’, Australian, 11 D
ec. 1974.
4Letters to the editor, SMH, 21 Feb. 1975, p. 6.
5Patricia Morgan, op. cit.
6Thatcher’s memories of the trip to Broken Hill were dominated by the strength of the unionism in the mining town. The union leaders, she later wrote, ‘informed me proudly that no one could live or work in the town without belonging to the union. A bar in the town which had recently challenged the rule had simply been boycotted and forced to close down. My guides were completely unabashed, indeed perversely pleased, about this blatant infraction of liberty. I could not help wondering whether I had had an insight into Britain’s future.’ Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, HarperCollins, London, 1995, p. 387. The only other comments Thatcher made about her trip to Australia involved her admiration for former Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies.
7Editorial, untitled, Sun-Herald, 19 Sept. 1976.
8Martin Beesley, ‘Twelve thousand mile run to Downing St’, Australian, 21 Sept. 1976, p. 15.
9Margaret Thatcher, op. cit.
10Editorial, ‘Lady in waiting’, SMH, 13 Feb. 1975, p. 6; Editorial, ‘Petticoat government’, Daily Telegraph, 14 Sept. 1976.
11It also should be noted that during this time, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who owned newspapers the Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror in Sydney, the News in Adelaide, and the Daily Sun in Brisbane, supported Thatcher in the 1979 election. His support continued in the early 1980s in both Britain and Australia.
12Beatrix Campbell, The Iron Ladies: Why Do Women Vote Tory?, Virago Press, London, 1987, p. 233.
13Kathy Sullivan speaking on ABC Radio, 11 Jan. 1991, Federal Parliamentary Library transcript, p. 9.
14Quoted by Wendy Webster, Not a Man to Match Her, Women’s Press, London, 1990, p. 71.
Chapter One: Steel Sheilas: female MPs, ambition and power
1In hindsight, there are many similarities to the Hanson phenomenon which occurred three years later: she had immense grassroots support, though most of her colleagues despised her; the media paid her much attention but little respect; she was a populist who engaged in repetitive and simple rhetoric; and politicians were forced to take her seriously by a series of polls that proved she had electoral pulling power.
2Glennys Bell, ‘Rise of the prettier polly’, Bulletin, 21 April, 1981, p. 7.
3Untitled, Time, 24 Feb. 1975, p. 10.
4Donald Horne, A Time of Hope: Australia 1966–72, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1980, pp. 2–3.
5‘McMahon: women too soft to be PM’, Age, 21 June 1978.
6‘A mother with political ambitions’, SMH, 10 April 1975, p. 14.
7Ralph Sharman, ‘Minister promises end to dole cheats’, Daily Telegraph, Dec. 1975.
8Chris Anderson, ‘Woman Senator to Lead Liberals?’, Sun-Herald, 9 March 1975, p. 3.
9She told the National Press Club in November 1977 she had not seen a possible candidate for the first female prime minister, and she was certainly not one, despite being one of the Fraser government’s most effective ministers.
10Claudia Cragg, ‘Rosemary Foot: the Iron Lady of Down Under’, South China Morning Post, 27 May 1984.
11Nikki Barrowclough, ‘Rosie’, Sydney, Feb. 1982, p. 42.
12Catherine Menagh, ‘Dedication to a career’, West Australian, 8 June 1981, p. 46.
13Matthew Moore, ‘Chadwick in need of correction’, SMH, 7 April 1990.
14Many journalists admired her success in resisting cuts, as she repeatedly battled attempts by treasurers (first Phillip Lynch, then John Howard) to restrict eligibility for family allowances and over-70s pensions. The fact that a woman could continually stand up to, and get the better of, a group of men, and prevent them from cutting her department’s budget was a subject of perpetual fascination for members of the press gallery. However, this in itself could distract from the real story. In October 1979, the chief political correspondent at the Age, Michelle Grattan, questioned the ‘ballooning cost’ of welfare recipients. She pointed out federal budget expenditure on social security and welfare had increased from 17.3 per cent of the 1969–70 budget to estimates of 28.2 per cent for 1979–80. (Michelle Grattan, ‘The giant jelly, welfare’, Age, 24 Oct. 1979.) The Australian Financial Review editorialised that Guilfoyle’s ability to resist the pruning of her department’s budget was not evidence of her invincibility, but a worrying sign of a government being held hostage by a Senate which refused to cut public spending on welfare. The annoyance at the attention paid to Guilfoyle instead of the state of the budget was reflected in the headline ‘How a lady senator distracts the eye’ (AFR, 4 June 1979).
15Terry Slavin, ‘Yes Virginia, the Minister is a woman’, Sun-Herald, 3 April 1988; Nick Yardley, ‘Meet Greiner’s Iron Maiden’, Sunday Telegraph, 22 May 1988. Note that a series of budget cuts led to closure of one-quarter of district offices, amalgamation of more, and widespread job losses. Demonstrations and public protests followed. At one point, nearly 150 welfare agencies took out a $4000 full-page ad in the SMH, calling on the premier to stop the cuts. At the same time, there was a series of problems in juvenile detention centres, including escapes and suicides, which coincided with a more punitive approach to juvenile detention taken by Chadwick. She was going, the Sunday Telegraph opined, ‘from crisis to crisis’.
16Reflecting what was a growing consciousness of sexism in reportage, the reporter agreed: ‘Right down to the irrelevant description of trim, petite, blonde, blue-eyed mother of three’. (‘A woman with $9000 million a year to spend’, Courier-Mail, 1 Sept. 1979.) When asked by one journalist about labels like tough, aloof, cold, steel butterfly and ice maiden, Guilfoyle said cautiously, ‘I suppose I am a lot of things to a lot of people . . . It’s not easy to be close to people and . . . I am not necessarily what people always say I am.’ She insisted competent was a more accurate description of her than tough. (Gail Franzmann, ‘No soft job for the Senator’, Herald (Melbourne), 10 Dec. 1979.)
17Anne Summers, ‘“I think you grow every day in a job like this” — an interview with Margaret Guilfoyle’, National Times, 6–11 Sept. 1976, pp. 52–54.
18Guilfoyle, uncharacteristically, attributed the tag to a double standard or discomfort with powerful women: ‘I feel that image is one which women in top positions attract by making decisions that, while necessary, are unpopular. A man making the same decision would be seen as strong and competent but a woman attracts descriptions such as uncaring, unfeeling.’ (Alex Kennedy, ‘Calm during the storms’, Advertiser, 4 April 1979, p. 4.) Asked what she considered the most unfair publicity she and the department received, Guilfoyle cited television programs or articles that portrayed the department as ‘needlessly cruel, heartless and not doing its job properly’.
19Michael Harvey, ‘The Dame bows out with her customary grace . . .’, Herald (Melbourne), 2 June 1987. Harvey also recorded that she rejected the idea of having harboured leadership ambitions, and referred to her lack of complaint abut gender bias: ‘If being the lone woman on both the pilot razor gang and the renowned Fraser Cabinet was a constant battle against male prejudices, Senator Guilfoyle was not about to let on.’
20Reporter Belinda Luscombe wrote that while Greiner believed Metherell would be remembered as the punitive father of the NSW modern education system, Chadwick ‘may well be remembered as its mother’: ‘Like the archetypal father of Victorian romantic novels, Metherell took an out-of-control child and beat him into shape. He cut out his pocket money, threatened to disinherit him, banned him from going out and even (in reintroducing the cane) spanked him. Exit Metherell, leaving child resentful, hurt, confused and angry. Enter Chadwick, soothing, gentle and kind — she tends to her charge’s wounds, gives him a hug and puts him gently to bed.’ Luscombe, however, warned against thinking of the ‘marble minister’ as a soft touch, writing that on the issue of the Teachers Federation and the Parents and Citizens Association she was ‘as firm as sugar-coated granite’. (Belinda Luscombe,‘Mother Superior’, Daily Telegraph, 22 Sept. 1990.)
; 21Jeremy Moon and Imogen Fountain argue this is more reflective of ‘women’s areas of community and parliamentary specialisation’. (Jeremy Moon and Imogen Fountain, ‘Keeping the gates: women as ministers in Australia, 1970– 96’, Australian Journal of Political Science, p. 465.)
22‘Action woman’, New Idea, 16 Dec. 1989, p. 10.
23Jodie Brough, ‘An entirely different lady’, Canberra Times, 31 Oct. 1992, pp. C1– C2.
24He said when Bishop lost preselection in 1974, she was consumed with the fact that this had happened because she was a woman: ‘I have vivid memories of her . . . telling me privately at that preselection that she was so incensed about the way the world treated women that she’d taught her daughters to urinate standing up. She used another word, and it really stuck in my mind.’ (David Leser, Bronwyn Bishop: A Woman in Pursuit of Power, Text, Melbourne, 1987, p. 39.)
25Australian Women’s Weekly, June 1993.
26Mike Gibson, Daily Telegraph Mirror, 4 Oct. 1993, p. 10.
27Alan Ramsey, ‘Bishop fights her way to public notice’, SMH, 22 April 1989, p. 31.
28Frank Devine, ‘Bronwyn’s push may soon turn to shove’, Australian, 12 Aug. 1993.
29Jodie Brough, op. cit.
30Gerard Henderson was sceptical: ‘In a recent editorial in the Australian Business Monthly, Bruce Stannard referred to (unnamed) individuals who had described Bishop as “Menzies in a frock”. I wonder.’ (SMH, 1 Feb. 1994, p. 13.)
31Sue Williams, ‘Now trendy Wendy must wear the flak’, Telegraph Mirror, 18 Feb. 1991.
32She also cultivated connections with Rodney Adler, then FAI chief executive; celebrity agent Harry M. Miller; and Mary Fairfax. Alan Jones was also a key backer, and defended her in Sunday Telegraph columns as the victim of jealousy.
33In February, according to another Newspoll, given the choice between Hewson and Bishop, 48 per cent chose Bishop and 34 per cent Hewson. If Bishop were leader, 56 per cent said they would vote for the Liberal Party at an election, and 47 per cent of those polled said the same of Hewson. Fifty per cent of voters thought she would make a better PM than Keating. According to another poll in February, she was perceived to be stronger, more competent, and more intelligent than Hewson.