Hosted by the Victorian Women’s Trust on Monday 31 October 2022, Women Represent: Power, Politics and Making a Difference was an online panel discussion which sought to unpack the power women hold in office (despite their numbers) and the ways in which women lead.
Moderated by Mary Crooks AO and featuring panelists such as Ramona Vijeyarasa (author of ‘The Woman President’, a unique comparative study of women’s leadership and the law); Fiona Patten MP (Leader of the Reason Party); The Hon. Judith Troeth (former Liberal MP); Samantha Ratnam (Leader of the Victorian Greens); and The Hon. Jenny Macklin (former deputy leader of the federal Labor Party).
Transcript
Editor’s note: Transcripts are provided for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.
Mary Crooks
Hello, everyone, and welcome to, to our session today on Women Represent: Power, Politics and Making a Difference. Let me begin though, by acknowledging our First Nation peoples, and pay our respects to their elders past and present.
Mary Crooks
I, as a western district, girl, I went to school, in my early home life on on Gunditjmara land. And I now live and work on Wurundjeri land. And, and I understand and accept that those lands have never been ceded. And I also take great pride from the Women’s Trust point of view. In the 30 years partnership that the Women’s Trust has had with Koorie Women Mean Business. We think that’s a great example where the rubber hits the road in genuine reconciliation when we partner up, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with great mutual respect. So welcome, everyone, what a stellar panel we have today brought together and, and I will thank our panellists at the end. But can I also thank them upfront because none of them, none of them needed to be talked into this panel, everyone accepted our invitation with alacrity. And these women are very busy and they’re dealing with lots of things in their personal and professional lives. And it’s just amazing to report them together. So let me introduce our stellar panel. We have first of all Ramona Vijeyarasa. Ramona is the author of a very recently published book called “Woman President”, which she will draw on in a little bit. Ramona has got a fascinating intersection between human rights activism and law. And her human rights activism has been informed by a decade of working in civil society. She has advanced anti-trafficking victim reintegration networks in Vietnam and the Ukraine. She has filed briefs before the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of Moldova, the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and she’s managed multi country programmes to advance women’s reproductive rights and freedom from violence across the global south.
Mary Crooks
Judith Troeth AM has been a trailblazer for rural women in politics, social justice and human rights. Before she entered politics, she was a teacher and a farmer. Both occupations I think, are not very highly represented in our Parliaments I should say. She’s had a strong voice in national parliament. She was a Liberal Senator and Victoria from 1993 to 2011. She has been a vocal advocate for the humane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. She’s been a member of key parliamentary committees throughout her career, including Parliamentary Secretary for the primary industries and energy portfolio, and agriculture, fisheries and forestry.
Mary Crooks
Samantha Ratnam before Samantha entered Victorian Parliament, she was a social worker in the field of drug and alcohol rehabilitation, international development and settlement services. She was an elected councillor for the city of Moreland such as local government experience as well. And the first greens mayor of Moreland or near avec, as it is now called cement that says the threat of climate change and the need for governments to address it urgently made her want to get involved in politics in the first place. So we’ll be able to see if if that’s been bearing out for her.
Mary Crooks
The Honourable Jenny Macklin, Jenny served for 23 years longer than than Judith. But not quite in the same period of time as the federal member for Jagajaga. She was in fact the longest serving woman in the House of Representatives, the first woman to become a deputy leader of the major of the other major Australian political party. She was deputy leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party from 2001 to 2006. She served as Minister for families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Minister for Disability reform in the Rudd and Gillard governments. So there’ll be lots of examples she will call on around parental leave around the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And the stolen generation and closing the gap and so on.
Mary Crooks
Sorry, Ally, does that okay. I was just about to say that. Jenny has just recently been appointed to the newly minted Women’s Economic Security Task Force, federal government level, the one that has been chaired by Sam Mostyn AO. So that’s great Jenny.
Mary Crooks
Fiona Pattern, Fiona has been an active MP since 2014, as a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the N orthern metropolitan region and re-elected in 2018. She’s one of a number of crossbenchers now playing a critical role in the Victorian Opera House. She’s leader of the Reason Party, and she will call on I think, in her experience, the work that she’s been involved in around safe exclusion zones around abortion clinics, inquiries into law reform, around the establishment of online aid petitions to Parliament transforming the transport industry through ride sharing, and a trial for Victoria’s first medically supervised injecting centre and so on and so forth.
Mary Crooks
So, as I said at the outset, we have a stellar panel. We have women across the political spectrum. We have women who have been long serving women more recently, the last half dozen years in politics, we have state, we have federal, and we have women who do share a lot in common a passion for gender equality, or passion working for the common good, and using their political power as best they can.
Mary Crooks
So without any further ado from me, I’m going to throw the first question to Ramona to help set the scene. I’ve read her book “Woman President”, have had the pleasure of talking with her at a Readings event, having read the book in its entirety, and it’s a wonderful piece of work. And I’d love it also because, because she gets away from the Western, UK, Australian American framework of women and leadership and looks at successful women leaders in the south and southeast part of Asia. But Ramona, can I ask you to set the scene, you’ve got a very plain speak, easy to read scholarly treatment of women and power. You advance for the first time, the main tool that you developed called the gender legislative index, set the scene for us before we talk to practising politicians, former and and existing, set the scene for us as to what do you think is a really constructive way of looking at the question of women in power, politics, making an impact.
Ramona Vijeyarasa
Sure. thank you, Mary. And coming from you those kind words about my book mean a lot. And as someone who is currently an academic, it is truly my honour to be on this panel with this incredible group of women. And if I could make one remark before I would talk about women’s impact, it falls off the point that you just made Mary which is we do often think about women’s experiences of politics as being an Australian experience or a UK experience. But if there’s one thing I’ve observed in my time researching outside of Australia, is that there’s a true commonality in what women experience in their pathway to politics and their actual political journey. So if I may, I was in Sri Lanka, interviewing the head of a women’s rights NGO about the former president Kimora Tonga. And this woman turned to me and said, “Oh, and then the woman cut her hair, she cut her hair, and she stopped being the image of the strong South Asian woman leader.” Now, as an Australian woman sitting in that interview, I’m sure you know, who came to mind when I was sitting in that conversation. But it was one of those moments when I thought, wow, there is a true commonality and how women experience politics today, I think for the good and for the bad. So with that in mind, I think the roads potent lessons we can extract from South and Southeast Asia.
Ramona Vijeyarasa
And I’d say three things about these women, presidents impact, and the lessons we can take away and the first years, women need a critical mass to make change. So the women presidents I studied from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, appointed more women to cabinet roles than the men who went before them. So they pulled women up the political ladder, it made them better leaders. And it meant they didn’t have to be the voice for women’s issues, which wouldn’t always be well received in the countries they were from.
Ramona Vijeyarasa
The second thing I’d say is that there is a role model effect. So as an academic, yes, it’s hard to quantify, it’s often anecdotal. But when a woman leads, it does change the perception of future generations of young women about who has a place or a right in politics. But I would also say that that role model effect only lasts so long. So the Philippines haven’t had a woman leader for 12 years, Indonesia for 18. And when first time voters vote at the next Australian federal election in 2025 or so, there’ll be 18 year olds, who are first time voters who have very little memory of the time we had a woman leader in this country. And so it can’t be a one off. And yet, unfortunately, if you look at the picture of women presidents and prime ministers, for so many countries around the world, it’s a one off.
Ramona Vijeyarasa
And then finally, as the creator of the Gender Legislative Index, I would make a remark on the impact women leaders have on legislation. So I created the Gender Legislative Index to measure what are good laws for women and I say that cautiously because not all women want the same thing. And not all women are going to bring each women’s issues to the table. But I could rattle off an endless list of good laws that were enacted when these women were in power in relation to maternity leave in the Philippines back in 1992. There were laws on gender based violence and workplace equality. But I think if there’s one lesson we can take away, is that we need to bring a much broader spectrum when we talk about women’s issues and a much broader body of laws to the table. So if you could take an example from local politics, if a local government decides to invest in street lighting, how people are going to experience street lighting will be very different in terms of safety for men, to women, and sexual and gender minorities. And so we have an onus on us to bring more issues to the so called women’s issues basket. So if we could just finish Mary in terms of the impact these women have had, it’s never perfect. There were many flaws from these women presidents, there’s no one reality. But I do think we spent so long talking about the absence of women in these leadership roles. So we do need to start talking about the presence that they’ve had and to shine some light on the positive impact they had as women leaders at that very senior executive level. Thanks Mary
Mary Crooks
Thank you, Ramona, that’s a superb introduction. Thank you around those three points critical mass, the role model effect, and the broader spectrum of issues which do affect women’s lives issue based but also through the range of legislation.
Mary Crooks
So let me let me go now, then to, to Judith Troeth, Judith, close to three decades in the Australian Senate, at a time when there were far fewer women in both houses of of our national parliament. From your vantage point then, what would you say were some of the most significant ways that yourself and women around you impacted in the business of the Senate and the National Parliament at that point?
Judith Troeth
Well, thank you, Mary. You can hear me I take it. Yes, that’s fine. Thank you. I can I say how delighted I am to be part of this panel. And I’m looking forward to some of the later remarks. Certainly, when I went into the Senate in 1993, the coalition had eight women in federal parliament in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Now in the relatively strong victory that we had in 1996, that then it ultimately got to 26 women. But equally, because many of those women were selected in marginal seats. The theory being that women are very good marginal seat campaigners, many of them then went out in the subsequent elections of 1998, and 2001. So I would certainly say that we need that critical mass to be able to achieve something. And that did happen later in the 2000s. For me, certainly, when I was able to bring together a coalition of women from four parties, Labor, Liberal, Democrat and National Party to put through a private member’s bill, removing the medication RU486 from the purview of the minister’s office, to back to the approval process by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. And that was quite revolutionary at the time, and I think still is for 4 parties to get together in that way. Now, we got that bill through, as you know, initially through the Senate, and then through the House of Representatives. But the main point for me was that we had been able to work extremely closely together with no mishaps or leakages. Along the way, everyone gave up their utmost attention, as did our staff. And for me, that was probably a highlight. So that was one good thing. The other good thing I was able to do when Parliamentary Secretary for agriculture, and because I was in a position of seniority, was institute Rural scholarships for women who wanted to be on national, agricultural and other boards and committees, women often get to the community and local stage, but they never get any further. And we were able to have a Department of Transport and Regional Affairs back to proper inquiry with a range of women on that to find out why that is so, and I believe that still referred to today. We laughingly said that if there wasn’t this was in 2006, that if there wasn’t a better percentage of women on national boards and committees by 2010, we would look at instituting a quota system. Now, of course, this probably didn’t happen. But as we all know, a quota system is very hard to institute. So probably a note those Rural scholarships, I might add that I spoke earlier about, are still going today. They’re supported by all sides of government, by industry, and by rural women themselves, which is very gratifying to see. So probably, they came about because we had that critical mass of women, but also in the Senate at the time of the RU486 legislation. We had a female whip. Senator Jeannie Faris, unfortunately now did but because of her administrative position, Jeannie was able to see that that legislation got on the notice paper and was on the programme, where as I suspected, had the reverse been true, it would have been, you know, deferred forever. And we were able to put a very strong case to John Howard, for that to come on the legislative programme. And then, you know, get on the programme. So I was very pleased with how everything came together like that.
Mary Crooks
Judith, thank you, the the Coalition around RU486, that was unprecedented. It wasn’t not.
Judith Troeth
Yes it was, I believe. So for women to join together like that. Needless to say, it was viewed with great suspicion by all the mainstream political parties. I think they thought this could set be the end of the world in front of them. But we had one aim to fought to get that legislation through both houses. And that was what we did. I did subsequently try and do some other initiatives, which unfortunately, weren’t quite as successful in terms of an Inspector General of security legislation. And I think the the counselling processes that offered that existed at the time around about termination, and birth control, and I joined with senators, one in each instance from other parties. But the mainstream parties weren’t keen on that. And it came to nothing but you can only try.
Mary Crooks
Yeah. So Romana’s point about critical mass. I think you provide an interesting perspective on that, too, in that you have a critical mass, for example, within a party, let alone women across the parliament, then it can serve as an antidote to losing talent from
Judith Troeth
the fact that of the 10 women senators, we had at the time, 8 of them came to a meeting with John Howard, to up to request that this would go on to the legislative programme. And once he could see that 8 out of 10 women, senators from the coalition supported this, he was far more easy to persuade to do that.
Mary Crooks
Okay, thank you. We’ll come back for some other insight, Judith.
Mary Crooks
Jenny, Jenny Macklin. As I said at the outset, you’ve you’ve been in parliament for much, much longer than other women. I can recall you saying some time ago, I think not long after you had retired from politics. At another function, you mentioned that the party you entered was very different to the one you left on retirement. I wonder if you could just tell us take us a little bit more through that observation. And in particular, to focus on your impact within the party, and how it have you and other women within your party impacted at the policy and legislative level.
Jenny Macklin
Thanks very much, Mary. And great to see everybody on the panel. And those of you who’ve joined us for this terrific discussion. And I joined with everyone in acknowledging traditional owners, and particularly welcome the momentum that now exists to implement the Uluru statement from the heart, which we’re very, very proud of. I thought I’d come at this Mary from 3 perspectives, representation, which is the point you’ve raised, policies, because good policy really matters. And the third heading is leadership. On, representation, like Judith, when I first came into the House of representatives on the Labor side, it was a very bad election for Labor. But there were only 4 women in the House of Representatives on the Labor side. So there weren’t very many of us. One of the things that is very, very clear to me is that you cannot exercise power if you are not in the room. And so what, of course, many of us were involved over many, many years to implement a quota system in the Australian Labor Party, both at the national level and state by state. And although it may seem now, all these years later, easy, I can assure you, it was not. There was a lot of opposition, and there is no question whatsoever that it would not have happened without enormous amount of effort and campaigning by many, many women right around Australia. It is the quoters that have delivered the huge change. This is the answer to your question, Mary. What’s delivered the change in representation of women in the Australian Labor Party both at a federal and state level? It is the quota system. Without it. It would not have changed. I’m absolutely sure about that. And even though we have a clear quota system in our rules, it’s not as if this isn’t contested, many, many times. So at each preselection round, there’s often an effort to say “Oh, we’ve got this brilliant bloke. And he really should come in, in such in such and see, generally a very safe one.” And then, of course, the good thing is we’ve got a quota system. And fortunately, now the number of women in power, and in the branches make it very, very difficult for that to be changed. So that’s the first thing. Representation is absolutely essential. I just want to pay credit to Judith for having the courage to stand up and do it. And I mean, it Judith , I know how hard it is to stand up against your own party, it’s not easy. The second area of policies you’ve talked about, Judith talked about one of the really important cross party issues that was dealt with in the federal parliament. And on that issue of women’s reproductive rights, I would also add abortion policy, this was not done publicly. But there was a lot of cross party discussion, done very privately and quietly, largely to protect some women in the parliament who would have been pilloried in their own parties, if it had been known that they were doing what they were doing. If I can just pay credit to the Victorian members who are on the panel of Victorian parliamentary members. One of the successes, I think, is that on some of these very, very difficult moral questions, you do get a better result, when you can do it through maybe the approach that Judith took, or maybe cross party parliamentary committees, there are very good ways to deliver these very difficult moral policy issues.
Jenny Macklin
But on some of the other big issues that I was involved with, for that, particularly affected women. It was the case that we were able to deliver equal pay for community workers largely as a result of Julia Gillard when she was the minister, before she became prime minister, changing the Fair Work Act, but also, of course, an outstanding campaign run by women in the Australian Services Union. And you’ll see that I think in every single policy reform, that it usually involves great campaigns on the ground by women certainly was the case with paid parental leave, that I was really pleased to be involved with. And that took me about 10 years. So the other thing I’d say is if you want to deliver big policy reforms, sometimes it takes a very long time. With the big pension reforms that I delivered, one of the good things was to recognise a lot of older women who are reliant on the pension, doing it very, very tough, particularly once they become single, if their partner dies, or they are divorced. And so we changed that percentage that single people were able to get to deliver better, a better effect. One of the very difficult policy issues that I was involved with for a very long time was child support. This is extremely controversial. In fact, the original child support legislation was introduced by Brian Howe in the 1980s, when he was the Social Security Ministers of course one of my great mentors, enormously difficult and controversial to implement, and still very, very controversial. Just an anecdote, one of the interesting things that I saw Judith might comment on this, I noticed that the people that came to see us as individual local members of parliament, largely it was women who would come to see me or other female colleagues, but the men who were had problems or complaints would often go to the male members of parliament was a very interesting experience. This was very controversial inside our own caucus. Every year I was needing to debate these issues. And it is a good example of women, as we increase the numbers in our federal caucus, having much greater power on this very, very significant issue for single mothers in a way that they otherwise may not have The final point I want to emphasise is leadership. And this goes to the important question of, of course, the woman in the leadership position as Ramona has so eloquently set out in her book. And of course, we were able to see with Julia Gillard, a woman being able to represent what is possible for other women in society. But the qualities that I think are essential that we need to talk about that really, both men and women have emphasised to me when men and women prime ministers, is imagination, having the imagination of what can be better about our society for women, the courage to implement it, often these changes take enormous courage to implement. And thirdly, communication, the capacity to actually bring the community with you to be able to talk to the community, to the public about the changes that you’re wanting to implement. I think these qualities are absolutely imperative. And when we’re talking to people wanting to come into the Parliament, and I love seeing all these young people coming in. It’s, I think, important to say to each of them, what are the qualities that you’re going to have to learn about and become more confident about, if you want to introduce big reforms.
Mary Crooks
Jenny, thank you. And I’m loving the way each of us so far, is coming in at different entry points, and complementing the content of each other. And I’m assuming this will continue with you Fiona Pattern. You, as I said, you occupy a really significant position as influential crossbencher in Victoria’s upper house. So from your vantage point, what what are you going to nominate as the sort of the realm of impact of having women in politics?
Fiona Patten
Thank you Mary. And it’s just I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been listening to Judith, Jenny and Ramona. I could have listened to them all day today, and how connected that is to the, to the experiences that I had. But yeah, I’d also just like to acknowledge that I too, am working and living on Wurundjeri land. And I’m really pay any respects to to any elders, and First Nations people who are who are with us today. And I think, being as the I believe, I’m the first independent chair of a parliamentary standing committee in the Victorian Parliament. And I can tell you that that in looking at criminal justice matters in looking at housing matters. Aboriginal women just are exponentially affected by the impacts in those in those areas. That, I remember very clearly when Judith and Lynn Allison and the the Coalition of those brave for women, and we’re raising RU486, and you’re my nemesis in the Federal Parliament at that time was Senator Harradine. And I was sure it was Judith as well. He was many of our nemesis and I was waiting for him to somehow to scuttle that just scattered that really amazing body of work and legislation that you got through and I was just so fabulously pleased that he wasn’t able to do that, as he had done with many other progressive moves around particularly around women’s around legislation that affected reproductive health rights.
Fiona Patten
It and it reminded me when it reminded me at the time when I was first elected, there was another woman elected at the same time on the crossbench, Rachel Canning Jenkins from the DLP. And she, she and I had, it would appear like if you looked at our “How to vote” cards, we actually had very similar policies, you know, abortion rights, reproductive rights, sex work, a whole range of things except the opposite. She wanted to roll back our abortion rights she wanted to roll she wanted to further prohibits sex work in any way and etc. So after the third or fourth day of Parliament sitting, there was a message sent around to all meet in a Labor MP Charla Porphyrin’s office to discuss a range of matters. And there was women from all parties in that room. and I barely knew where the toilet was it. So finding Charla’s office, and it was so encouraging to see women from all parties there, talking about how we could work together to ensure that Victoria did not go backwards on reproductive rights, and on women’s rights in general. And it was it just was a really great way to start. My parliamentary time in Victoria, was with that. And it gave me the courage to, to introduce my first private member’s bill, which was around safe access zones around abortion clinics. And, you know, while I’ve put up lots of bills, and many of them have have subsequently become law, never in my own name, they’ve always been the government of the day of the Labor government has obviously has taken them on. On this one, it was very interesting on how to negotiate that, and how to bring the government to the table to ensure that they would actually introduce these protests free zones around abortion clinics. And I was very fortunate that the government was negotiated with me saying, right, just adjourn it off, we promise we will do it.
Fiona Patten
But I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t that trustworthy, of that, of that off the record commitment. So to her absolute credit, Jill Hennessy, the then Health Minister committed to standing on the steps with me in a media conference and stating that they would do that. And they did. And for the Liberal Party. This was difficult. You know, this was a really difficult policy. It wasn’t difficult for a number of the women in the Liberal Party, but it was for the Liberal Party as a whole, to come to terms with this, but Mary Wooldridge, who had been had been in that room on that first day that we’d met. She negotiated that they’ll be allowed a conscience vote on that piece of legislation. So while that legislation was debated to 4:00 in the morning, you know, and really, this was about stopping people harassing, largely women and people who can get pregnant while they were going for a medical procedure. We debated this till 4am In the morning, because this was seen as just a huge imposition on people’s free speech. It was totally absurd. And as we’ve seen, you know, we see people quite rightly protesting or speaking their minds around abortion issues outside parliament, every sitting week, but it was the work of certainly the women in the council. And I’d have to say, on top of that, I think some of the attitudes in the council have changed. You know, I was recall, we were debating the medicinal cannabis bill. And in the Committee of the Whole, which is when a bill is really is reviewed line by line in the Legislative Council, there was only women undertaking that review, in the end so that the minister was a female, it was job. The minister was female, Mary Wooldridge was head carriage of it, Colleen Heartland from the Greens and myself. And it was not there was no animosity there. We were actually all trying to get the best from that piece of legislation. And we were trying to get the best, I guess, discussion around what each clause meant to the benefit of the patients of medicinal cannabis. And it was, and we all commented on it, it was a four or five that four or five hours in that review process. It was a it was quite a long process. But we all commented at the end, and how constructive that had been. And I you know, and I and I don’t, you know, I certainly don’t want to be accused of gender arising that in any way. But I do feel that that that having a more or greater gender balance in our in our chamber now, in Samantha in my chamber in particular, we do have almost 50/50 We I think you do find greater cause constructive conversations about the management of the day. You know, we still haven’t got family friendly hours in our chamber. But they’ve been achieved in the assembly’s chamber and I have no doubt if you know, Samantha and I their next term that that that that will be moved to our chamber as well.
Mary Crooks
Okay Thank you, Fiona. And I want to move on after we hear from Samantha because there’s some really interesting terrain to cover as well. Samantha, you’ve been in the fortunate position to hear these women before you, and I’m assuming that a lot of what you might want to say, could have been covering similar kinds of points. So how about we throw to you to pick up on? Also too, as well? What kind of perspectives would you bring to the impact that you and other women you send around you’re having on in a political culture? What would you add to the mix?
Samantha Ratnam
Thanks so much, Mary. I’m great to be on this stellar lineup this afternoon. And thanks, everyone, for joining. I’m joining us from Wurundjeri Country and pay my respects the First Nations lands that were variously meeting from today. Yeah, some incredible points that have been canvassed and certainly is a shared experience that I’ve had as well being in public life for about 10 years now five years and local government and just knocking on five years in state parliament. And it actually was brought home to me literally, within the first few days, I was elected to local government and picks up on some of the points that Ramona, you mentioned as well, in terms of the issues and I think what I’m hopefully will say, I think, reflects the the lenses and the schema that you’ve created to understand the impact that women leadership can have in terms of policy and community. When I got elected to Moreland Council, Mayor, big Council now, in 2012, a couple of remarkable things happen. Firstly, it was the first female majority of the council 6 to 5 out of 11. So just the majority, but first time and it ticked over. Plus, it was the first time that no one political party had a clear majority. So it’s actually kind of shared power arrangement from day one with a female majority. What also happened in that first few weeks was really tragically, we had a murder of a woman, which garnered a lot of public attention, nationwide attention. Jill Meagher was murdered in Brunswick, the electorate that I represented. So that was the issue at the top of our communities’ mind going into the election and afterwards, and one of the first things that we were tasked to do was this task for how do we improve women’s safety in our area and perceptions of safety as well. What we had at that time was a conservative state government who was pressuring us to install CCTV cameras everywhere as the only solution essentially, to the issue of gendered violence. And with this female majority and council, what we saw was this really interesting policy debate that erupted post that, and these women essentially screaming out saying, Look, we understand that those cameras have their place. They’ve been found to help apprehend perpetrators after a crime has been committed. But actually, the evidence tells you they don’t help prevent crime. And the women across parties, you know, really spoke out together to say, we need to rethink what’s happening here and how we actually protect women and prevent this violence from happening in the first place.
Samantha Ratnam
We had briefing after briefing, we spawned a Women’s Safety Leadership Committee, we had the Police telling us y’all need to pay attention to family violence, that’s your biggest issue facing you as a new council. And, you know, you’ve need to get that balance right to. And I remember there was this one moment in that debate over a number of months on we’re deciding whether take the state government money, because it would stymie us in our ability to do other types of family violence and women’s safety and increasing prevention work. It was a real bind, they were putting us in because we wanted to do more, not just the cameras, we wanted to prevent the violence from happening in the first place. And there was this moment, we put under so much pressure on the talkback radio, and the conservative radio was like this council is going to, you know, put women in danger when we were doing everything, but that trying to keep women safe. And there was a briefing one day, and there was so much pressure, and we had a predominantly male administration as well, also putting pressure internally on us. And we did a straw poll, and we said to everyone, okay, how many people are in favour of these cameras, if it means we can’t do anything else, because all the money goes into those because not only the state government would give us money, but the council would have to put in at least double the amount which took all the money we had for them for violence prevention measures. And the hands went up, who was in favour of the men who was against all the women. Now women were in the majority, it forced a new conversation about what else can we do, ultimately, what we got, we, you know, essentially said okay, to the cameras, well, we’re not going to put all the money into that we syphoned off half the money council was going to put into it into family violence prevention work, which has continued to this day and was a legacy that was created by that female majority.
Samantha Ratnam
I found that experience in state parliament to we’ve been really campaigning on getting more culturally specific services for women experiencing family violence from diverse communities. And so my reflection has been that with more women leadership positions, we change what we talk about. And we also change how we talk about it and how we make decisions on those issues. And I was born at the local council. It’s happening in the culturally diverse family violence work that I’m doing, which is about building collaborations and building teams of women, the critical mass that’s been spoken about. So I’ve certainly seen that born out in practice and just finally, on reflection of the last parliament and thinking about the powerful impact that women play and continue to play and will do so we need more women in our parliament is this last parliament where Fiona and I had been on a cross bench of 11 Cross benches, the largest cross bench in Victorian parliamentary history actually grew to about 30 At the end, we were bigger than the opposition. But in that crossbench that started at 11. There were three women out of 11. But Fiona and I have worked quite closely together about how do we keep that group together? While we differ on policy, we also had strength as a non government and non opposition group. And we had to make sure that we maintain our voices in their parliament. So from day one, if you had and I’ve been working with some others, but I think we, I think it’s fair to say if you’re you and I kind of tried to spearhead that work in bringing that group together, and I saw often the men would get angry at each other and stop talking to each other. And our work was, how do we keep each other together to the point that we can be a show of force when there are attempts to take our power away from the chamber, some procedural administrative matters that stopped me in our ability to speak out into issues, you know, every every parliamentary week for that entire four years. Despite this motley crew of crossbenches, we manage weekly meetings with the crossbench. Before I met the government and opposition, we talked about our strategy that we, and that happened to the last week of this term of Parliament. And I think that wouldn’t have happened without women talking about collaboration and keeping the dialogue going. So that’s been a real highlight of the last four years.
Mary Crooks
Samatha, Thank you. But I want to throw it to you, Ramona. Back to you for the moment. Jenny Macklin talked about those qualities of leadership, imagination, courage and communication. Did that resonate with you in terms of your research with the women president, leaders?
Ramona Vijeyarasa
Thanks so much, Mary. It’s a tricky question in the sense that these countries have only ever had one or two female leader. And so there’s very few to draw on. I suppose it’s a point of frustration for me right now, we only have 32 women presidents and prime ministers all around the world, out of the world’s 200 or so countries. So we’re talking 15% and number that I think women would probably not accept in any other context, but we’re struggling with here. So there’s only a small sample to draw on. But I suppose that the woman who really stands out would be Corazon Aquino, in terms of filling Jenny’s beautiful model of imagination and courage and communication. And she did communicate beautifully. She was up against a an anti-corruption regime that she took over from and would often describe herself as a crusading housewife. In a den of the CIO, she communicated eloquently. She showed courage in terms of what she wanted to pursue. In her time, the Philippines introduced maternity leave in 1992. There were laws on workplace equality, she changed some of the laws around unionism. So women could not be forced into certain unions that they felt didn’t represent their interests. So I personally think the Philippines is a world leader in terms of legislation and policy reform. And I created Corazon Aquino, with a lot of those beginnings. Many people don’t know that the Philippines was also one of the first countries to introduce gender responsive budgeting, again under Corazon Aquino, and it was legislated for, and that legislation still stands today. And so that’s the kind of legislative reform that lasts beyond the tenure, because it’s so well thought through and it has buy in, and it makes it into legislative reform. So there are remarkable women who meets those criteria.
Ramona Vijeyarasa
I will say without without being negative about it, there’s also a challenge for women in executive office, because when they fail, it’s a failure for all women who follow. So you know, the news is making a naturally a big point of Liz Truss being the shortest woman, UK, shortest UK leader in history. But unfortunately, whether you are pro or against her policies, her loss will impact the next woman who decides to run. And similarly in Finland, when the media played so much attention to the private socialising of Santa Maria, and it may seem a distant memory. But when the next young woman contests, it will come out again. And so we do have these very high expectations of women leaders, we do want to see them show imagination and courage and communicate beautifully. But sadly, that’s a very high expectation and when they failed at something felt by all women. And I think this goes back to the question of critical mass, because this is the result of the burden of being one of a few being one of only 32 women, presidents and prime ministers. And if we had that critical mass, perhaps not every woman leader in the future would feel the consequences and repercussions of the women who went before them. Because you wouldn’t expect a man to suffer the consequences a male leader to suffer the consequences of all men who led before them. And so again, I think this critical mass has been such a beautiful, rich connection through all the conversations because it is so fundamental, and I’d say as fundamental in local politics, national politics, but also at the executive level of leadership. So hopefully, we see a change there too. Thanks, Mary
Mary Crooks
Thanks, Ramona. I’m just conscious of the time and the richness of the content and I loathe to shorten it, but I want to move on to and I wonder if we can be quick by each person on the panel here before we get on through some blockers. And that is just give us person by person. Or we might start with you, Judith, literally, at a personal level, and achievement highlight sounds the most significant positive thing you will take out of your experience at being in, in the den of politics, Judith, something that was just, you will never, ever forget, because it was such a significant thing to have occurred.
Judith Troeth
I would have to say it was the RU486 legislation, the fact that we brought the women together against opposition from both sides. We we worked on it, there was not one, you know, bad behaviour by anybody. We pushed it through. We won us when no one said we, we know, lots of people thought we wouldn’t get anywhere. And to me, that is something I will always cherish.
Mary Crooks
And what about you, Jenny?
Jenny Macklin
Can I just add to Romona’s point with a comment that Julia Gillard made when she stood down as the Prime Minister. She, you might recall Ramona, she said that she thinks that for the next woman, Prime Minister in Australia, it won’t be as difficult as it was for her that the end of I think in part, she was referring to the horrific abuse that she was subjected to. But I do think your critical mass point is similar that the more you have, the more usual it seems. And and the more women that you have in politics to support a woman leader will hopefully mean that the sort of abuse that so many subjected to as you point out, and Gillard particularly was that that will lessen. But to answer your question, Mary, I was fortunate to be part of some very big national reforms. But I’d have to say the most significant was the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, it has changed the lives of so many hundreds of thousands of Australians with profound disabilities and their families. And I just see every day and hear from people every day, how it means that people can live, their better live. So very, very pleased that it continues.
Mary Crooks
Yeah, and I guess, a good example, to Jenny of an inspiring idea of adding an important pillar to the Australian fabric over industrial relations and many Medicare and so on. But between the idea and the reality force, the shadow, there’s obviously a lot of work to be done to bring NDIS into, you know, the most effective support for people.
Jenny Macklin
That’s true that there’s still a lot of work to be done. But I think, when you’re looking at huge policy reform, and this is now as you describe it a pillar of our national social safety net, it is the biggest reform since the introduction of that other great pillar of our social safety, net Medicare, this is now in place, and it won’t be removed. Because it won’t be removed, because so many people just like they support Medicare and understand its critical nature. People understand the critical nature of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And that’s one of the big tests of policy reform. Is it? Is it sustainable? Will it live on? And I am sure the NDIS will
Mary Crooks
Back to your earlier point about sustainable. Great policy is by definition sustainable. Yep. Fioana what about you in terms of an absolute gem, a personal highlight?
Fiona Patten
There’s no doubt establishing safe access owns around abortion clinics, it was the first piece of legislation that I put forward, and it was successful. And we’ve seen that legislation then repeated not not only across every jurisdiction in Australia, but but also in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and and just more recently, Scotland. So that was, obviously, you know, that will remain a cherished piece of legislation. But I think the supervised injecting room in North Richmond was the hardest. And it was the toughest thing to get through. And it had been something that people have been trying to establish since the early 1990s. In fact, probably the late 80s 1980s. So to have managed to make make that a reality in North Richmond. Now, it still work to be done. But we are now talking about a second overdose prevention site in Melbourne. And I think it will, it will lead the way to more to more and it will lead the way to saving more lives. But it was literally probably one of the hardest pieces of of legislation that I’ve ever worked on. And, and that’s including, you know, having worked on things like volunteer sister dying. So I think, for me, that showed the power of it showed the work that you can do when you work with the community with the parliament. But I also use the parliamentary committee process and inquiry process as a whole. And it was using every single aspect of that. And every single organisation to achieve that change, which yet I don’t think many people thought was was ever going to happen.
Mary Crooks
Fiona, thank you, and Samantha, on this point, have a particular highlight.
Samantha Ratnam
I would say over the last few years, and they’ve been lots of highlights, but introducing some big ideas on the table that people have thought are relegated to being impossible or too complex to fix for far too long. And I think that’s what a diversity of voices with a diversity of life experiences and seeing the possibilities realise before your eyes can change the legislative agenda. So we introduced a bill to end homelessness by 2030. No problem that governments will tell us to all too often, it’s just too hard to fix. All we can do is just top up more and more money in these homelessness programmes, which while is welcome isn’t what’s going to solve homelessness ultimately. And so to put the ambition on the table, actually having a realistic plan of how we’re going to get there having proper, you know, having proper targets and legislation, housing first approaches, you know, the the quantum of housing that’s needed public housing that’s needed to enable that to be a possibility, putting that all in legislation and putting it on the table legislative table to say this is possible. Now let’s talk about, you know, you argue against me about why it’s not possible, you argue against us, and it shifts the conversation. And that’s all part of campaigning, you’ve got to put ideas on the table, you build coalitions of support, you socialise and prime the idea. And suddenly people go, Oh, it’s possible? Well, let’s hold our governments account to that possible vision that we see now is much more probable than we thought before.
Mary Crooks
Okay. So I’ll come back to you, Samantha, and we’re running close to our time. But for each of you, including yourself, Ramona, and political experienced people around the panel between now and say, the next decade, assuming more and more upward trajectory, as women enter politics and contend with politics in the way that our panellists have today, over the last couple of decades, in looking at it in 10 years time, what blockers what blockers have been either removed or eroded, diffused dismantled, to make the impact of women even much sharper and greater than it has been to date? Jenny Macklin, just quickly, we’ll do a quick round of people, what what would be one or two of the blockers that we will have seen off will have seen removed to make it easier for women to be there in their numbers?
Jenny Macklin
Having more women in parliament? No question.
Mary Crooks
Okay. Ramona, what about you
Ramona Vijeyarasa
Building off that that quota is not a dirty word anymore. I mean, the quotas have been around for decades scholarship shows, it’s the biggest way to bolster the number of women and to sustain it. So we’re acknowledging how hard they are to get and how hard they are to implement, I think we get a quota in place. And the second, which I really think we can see from the discussion on this panel, is that women can represent and speak to a greater diversity of women’s experiences. I mean, there’s been so many more issues on the table today, than is often in conversations about women’s issues or equal pay older Women’s pensions, housing, security, safety. And so I think in 10 years time, we’d have a really robust basket of women’s issues, and a gender lens across all legislation and policy that’s being discussed.
Mary Crooks
Judith, what about you? Yes,
Judith Troeth
I would hope that it’s no longer a matter of comment of a woman’s age, her occupation, her experience, people are entering parliament, anything like that. It’s what she can bring to the parliament. That will will be one of the major determinants of whether she becomes endorsed by her party.
Mary Crooks
And Samantha,
Samantha Ratnam
I hope we get less people I often hear from women who are following politics, who will say Oh, I see the social media comments that you get on social media and see how you’re treated and I would never enter that world and it makes me so sad when I hear that. And I think what I would hope that we have a move past is, you know, not seeing the intersection that women are intersection of issues that women bring to the table when they’re in late positions of leadership. So the intersections of gender of ethnicity of class all interact, when people with, you know, from diverse, more diverse backgrounds enter the political stage and the decision making table. And that difference is met often with a lot of resistance and hostility. And the type of vitriol is kind of magnified based on that intersection of the racism and the misogyny, and the classism all, you know, coming together and it turns a whole bunch of people off. And I hope that when we recognise that intersection, and what that does to women’s experiences in politics, we’ve redress it, and more and less people are turned away because they see women being treated equally and respectfully.
Mary Crooks
Thank you. And Fiona.
Fiona Patten
Yeah, obviously, there was Samatha, about that just took the words right out of my mouth on that, on that exact point, having both of us experience that that over the last few years, but I would also say that what I’d like to see and is, is the the power and the influence of some of the religious organisations that are still walking our hallowed halls and are still impacting on progressive policy.
Mary Crooks
Okay, okay, look, what a fantastic discussion I do need, sadly, to bring it to a halt. I think, by way of thanks to our panellists, to Judith Troeth, Jenny Macklin, Samantha Ratnam, and Fiona Pattern, and our recent author, Ramona, Vijay Arousa. Thank you for coming together for being a superb panel. I don’t think it’s an accident that you have been able to deal with this panel demand with such respect, and collaboration, and thoughtfulness and wisdom across across the aisles. I think all of you, including Ramona, but from a political perspective, the four of you, especially I think, in my view, give politics a good name.
Mary Crooks
Now, I seriously believe that and, you know, it is a pity at times that politics is does come under the hammer in his demeaned, because clearly, as today has shown so much hard work so much guts, courage, imagination, across the aisles, private discussions, and tenacity, is what you’ve also evidenced as politicians. So thank you for making the time today to to the VWT tea staff, to thank Ali and Sala, and Maki, Tarik, for providing the backup and technical support today, thanks to Kasey captioner, who’s been able to caption this discussion, so that all can actually follow it. And I’m happy to say that we will with the panellists have given permission for it to be recorded. So we will have a full transcript and a video. And as soon as that great VW T technical team can recover from today and produce that in the next week or so. So thank you again. And it’s interesting that, on the eve of that we’ve had such a good attendance from the panellists and also from our online audience before cup day before the holiday tomorrow. And I did ask Ally before was it ethical for me at the Women’s Trust, to make a couple of chips available to you for tomorrow? I’ve decided it is ethical, it’s entirely appropriate. I think in terms of the interest of gender equality, then you have to look a horse called “Without a fight”.
Mary Crooks
But without a fight. It’s not going to be achieved. And in deference to do to truth and I. Growing up on Gunditjmara land down in western Victoria, I have to nominate Charlie Rose, who’s also Amir, also trained in wonderful. And finally, for some reason, there’s something incredibly, if we were giving our panellists to give today, if we’re in person, we would have given them a fantastic bunch of native flowers. Each, we haven’t been able to do that. So my third tip is the realm of flowers, another mere So thanks to everyone for a really quite brilliant panel, and I look forward to seeing you all again and good luck to Fiona, double barreled personally and electorally, and good luck Samantha good luck with your big ideas research and writing Jenny Macklin. Good luck with all the continued activism you do Judith and great strengths Ramona, and may have many occasions to publicise your wonderful book “Woman President”. Goodbye, everybody.
Judith Troeth
Thank you Mary.
