The longlist for Australia’s most prestigious (and controversial) literary award has been announced – and last year’s short (all-male) shortlist has been followed by a long longlist, dominated (just) by female writers.
Tony Birch, Blood
Steven Carroll, The Spirit of Progress
Mark Dapin, Spirit House
Virginia Duigan, The Precipice
Anna Funder, All That I Am
Kate Grenville, Sarah Thornhill
Gail Jones, Five Bells
Gillian Mears, Foal’s Bread
Alex Miller, Autumn Laing
Frank Moorhouse, Cold Light
Favel Parrett, Past The Shallows
Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper
Charlotte Wood, Animal People
‘Critics will be hoping some of the longlisted women make it to the next stage – and that one of them wins,’ wrote the Sydney Morning Herald’s literary editor Susan Wyndham yesterday. She reminded readers of a statistic that has been cited often following last year’s ‘sausagefest’: a woman has only won 12 times in the 55 years of the Miles Franklin.
But debut novelist Favel Parrett, one of the seven women on the shortlist, Parrett, 37, told the Australian it was ‘disappointing’ that the sex of winning or shortlisted authors had become an issue. ‘Stella Miles Franklin would not want it to be about gender … It should just be about the best book, and this year there have been an amazing amount of books (by women).’
Chair of the Miles Franklin judging panel Gillian Whitlock commented on another trend in this year’s longlist: the prevalence of historical fiction. ‘The 2012 list reflects the strength of historical fiction in the contemporary novel,’ she said. ‘Entries this year include the third and final novels in the historical trilogies by Frank Moorhouse and Kate Grenville, fictional historical biographies by Steven Carroll, Anna Funder and Alex Miller and fictional narratives of World War II by Mark Dapin and Elliot Perlman.’
John Atkin, CEO of The Trust Company said it had been encouraging to see such a varied collection of books in the longlist and hoped the strength of the list would rouse debate in literary circles.
‘There are virtually no surprises or scandals worth mentioning, other than a few noteworthy absences,’ wrote Big Issue books editor and novelist Chris Flynn on Meanjin’s blog. He said:
it is surprising to see The Precipice chosen ahead of Rohan Wilson’s wonderful gothic nightmare The Roving Party or Wayne Macauley’s cutting satire The Cook. Similarly, some will be disappointed that Craig Sherborne’s The Amateur Science of Love, Geraldine Brooks’ Caleb’s Crossing and Steven Amsterdam’s What the Family Needed have missed out on spots, though those last two may have been discounted for not meeting the condition that books ‘must present Australian life in any of its phases’.
His punt on a winner? Kate Grenville.
John Franklin of Booktopia marked Malcolm Knox’s The Life and Kylie Ladd’s Last Summer as disappointing omissions.
Kylie herself, over on Meanjin, was ‘astonished’ that The Life didn’t make the cut. ‘Knox’s novel is incredibly original, wild, inventive and touching – a real game-changer in many ways, and most definitely Australian (on which criteria I was surprised The Street Sweeper got in).’
‘No matter which of these books make the short list, it will be one of the strongest in many years,’ says the Australian’s literary editor, Stephen Romei.
He declared it ‘perhaps the strongest since 2004, when the books in contention were Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake, J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, Peter Goldsworthy’s Three Dog Night, Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire (the deserved winner), Annamarie Jagose’s Slow Water and Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity.’
Romei’s bet on a winner? Frank Moorhouse’s Cold Light.
This year’s shortlist will be announced of 3 May. The winner will be announced on 20 June.
May the best book win!
Christine Gordon, bookseller and Stella Prize committee member, delivered our Lunchbox/Soapbox on International Women’s Day, to a rousing crowd response.
She talked about why sharing women’s stories is central to the success of feminism, reflected on some of the storytellers who’ve resonated most in her life – and explained why we need to give stories by Australian women their proper due. Here is the edited text of her talk.
There are so many options when talking on International Women’s Day.
I could talk about the history of this fine day. I could talk about gaining the vote, gaining the right to work, to education, to divorce, to have an abortion, to choose a certain lifestyle. I could talk about my anger – or indeed, the collective anger of women. I could talk about my pride in being a feminist, or the collective pride of feminists, for all that has been achieved and all that will be achieved.
But what I remember after listening to someone talk is not statistics, nor facts: I remember stories. That’s why I work in the book trade, as opposed to nuclear science.
Stories – my stories and other women’s stories – are what bring me here today.
Stories are what The Stella Prize is all about. The Stella Prize, an Australian version of the UK’s Orange Prize, will be an annual prize for the best book by an Australian woman writer published that year. The concept emerged following a panel held at Readings, on the 100th International Women’s Day, on the under-representation of women writers in our reviewing and prize culture. Conversations after the event led us – a group of passionate readers, writers and publishers – to begin the arduous task of setting up a prize to raise awareness of Australian women writers. We have some way to go, but we are determined; excited about both the process and the end result.
It seems right and just to me that such a prize should exist. Feminism – and International Women’s Day – is about sharing stories. Today, I want to reveal the journey of shared stories that led me here.
Growing up, I was one of those kids who read. I lived on the outskirts of Melbourne, on a hobby farm surrounded by paddocks. Some weeks, I would read a book a day. It was my transport. I favoured stories written by women; stories written by Australian women. Some of those books, some of that writing, stays with me now.
Puberty Blues: After reading it, Chris Gordon knew ‘that I certainly would not be jumping into the back of a van at the whim of some bloke who doesn’t even know the meaning of angst’.
Let me paint you a picture.
It’s 1981. I’m a relatively sheltered 13-year-old, catching the bus to my all-girls’ private school. I’m wearing a kilt and a blazer. There is a kerfuffle on the back seat. Sailing over heads, a tattered copy of Puberty Blues lands in my lap. Written by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette, it’s a proto-feminist teen novel about two 13-year-old girls from Sydney who attempt to become popular by integrating themselves with the ‘Greenhill gang’ of surfers. On that bus trip up the Calder Hwy, the back-seat tough girl (you know the one) grabs it from my lap with a snarl. ‘Give it ’ere,’ she says. ‘That’s mine.’
It took me another year to read the book, when a copy (that very same one, I believe) did the rounds of Year Eight. We schoolgirls talked about it endlessly. I had no idea people lived like this. More importantly, I had no idea why they wanted to live like this. I guess that was the whole point of the book.
I knew then that I certainly would not be jumping into the back of a van at the whim of some bloke who doesn’t even know the meaning of angst. Oh no: I was meant for better things. From that moment on, I knew I was a feminist.
It took me another few years to really work out exactly where I positioned myself. I found out mostly by talking too much – but in the end, it was by listening to other women’s stories.
Publisher Louise Swinn says she is ‘in this fortunate position of having people’s stories in my head all the time’. I appreciate what she means. Knowing other people’s stories (fictional or not) is a passport. One of the gifts Lette’s novel gave me back then in the early 80s was a love of the Australian woman’s voice; a voice that doesn’t bullshit. The Australian woman’s voice is the voice of honesty.
Sophie Cunningham’s Melbourne takes in the Melbourne literary scene, with frequent mentions of writers like novelist Helen Garner and historian Robyn Annear. Again, it is a gathering of women’s take on the world, to make sense of your own landscape and your own truth. Looking at a bookshelf is like looking at a person’s diary. There it is: all laid out; harbouring secrets and desires among the words of others.
‘What was impressive about Damned Whores and God’s Police was its call to arms – to join this vast, optimistic political movement.’
Towards the end of my high school years, I was given a copy of Anne Summers’ book, Damned Whores and God’s Police. It is the story of Australia and the women that helped shape it as the nation we know today. A missing chronicle of Australia. It drove me to preach out loud (and often) on my soapbox about the need for women’s rights. It gave me the anecdotes I needed when justifying my position.
What was impressive about Damned Whores and God’s Police was its call to arms – to join this vast, optimistic political movement. Summers taught me that being a feminist wasn’t just about saying no. It means engagement. I wanted that engagement. I wanted choices. And I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be part of a collective that stood up and transformed the environment we lived in. I learned you do that best by sharing stories and experiences. You can change the world by forming friendships – or indeed, by forming committees. Dare I say, The Stella Prize is a beautiful example of that.
The original cover of Monkey Grip: ‘I read this book because I was working out who I wanted to be.’
My memory of reading Helen Garner’s coming-of-age book Monkey Grip at university was actually all about the mutual analysis of it, the mystery and possibilities of the characters. I read this book because a friend gave it to me. It was the topic of conversation over many long nights. We couldn’t work out if we wanted to be playing starring roles in the novel or to be better, more smug, than those inner-Melbourne urbanites. (I was living in Brunswick at the time.)
I read this book because I was working out who I wanted to be.
The group of women friends I made in that first alcohol-fuelled year at university are the very friends I tried all of my beliefs on before I went public. They were the first to hear me read passages from Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, to dish politics, to wear purple for International Women’s Day. And they were always the first to hear me cry. Now, of course, we continue to swap books, TV shows, quips about our lives – and we do so with the knowledge that all of what we are now, all of our politics and meanings and quirks, can in some way be attributed to one another.
Monica Dux, in an essay for Kill Your Darlings, wrote that the difficulties people have had in judging the legacy of such a book like The Female Eunuch is that the personality of its author tended to get in the way. Does this happen to male authors? Are their personalities ripped apart and displayed with public glee?
‘It’s not easy to talk about so celebrated a publication without lapsing into clichés and banalities, and repeating the things that have already been said, not once but dozens of times.’
Monica knows though, that these accounts need to be told over and over, to all and sundry, because there is always a teenager, just over there, waiting to hear.
Kirsten Tranter is committed to supporting younger writers. In an article for the Wheeler Centre last International Women’s Day, she wrote: ‘I think the future belongs to the young women starting to shape the literary landscape, such as Angela Meyer’s super-sharp Crikey blog Literary Minded and the editors of the new magazine Kill Your Darlings.’ This is true. Different influences, experiences and histories must be recorded, must be reviewed, applauded and built on, for feminism to stay vital and current.
Every ten years or so, a feminist must reinvent, repurpose, or reinvigorate a belief. Being a feminist allows us to continue to be active and to give continual support to those striving for equality and respect.
There is an inspiring passage in Anne Summers’ introduction of the newly released version of Damned Whores and God’s Police:
‘I don’t want to wait until I am 98 to try and explain to a 25-year-old what moved me and so many of my generation to activism and revolt. I want, while there is still some chance of communicating, to tell you the story of the modern women’s movement. I want you to know how it started, what we did, and what it did to us. In hearing our story, I hope you will also learn something about yourselves, about where you stand in this great movement of change, and that it might just move some of you to reach out for the torch. It is time for it to be passed.’
To finish, I want to tell you another couple of tales about women who write about how it is.
Thea Astley’s Coda: ‘There are four ages of women: bimbo, breeder, babysitter, burden.’
I’m going to start with a quote from one of my all-time favourite books, Thea Astley’s Coda: ‘There are four ages of women: bimbo, breeder, babysitter, burden.’
Coda did not win prizes like Astley’s other work; perhaps because it is about an older woman. But did have an impact on me. Kathleen, the strong and funny heroine of the novel asks herself as she reaches the ‘burden’ stage of life, what am I going to do with myself? She wants to remain independent, but she also needs people to recognise that she now needs support. In her candid prose, Astley is showing us a woman who refuses to be invisible.
Thea Astley published her writing for over 40 years, from 1958. At the time of her death in 2004, Astley had won more Miles Franklin Awards than any other writer. She won the prize four times.
Miles Franklin: Her gender influenced the critical reception of My Brilliant Career.
Let me tell you another story…
It is about a woman called Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin: also known as Miles Franklin. Her best known novel, My Brilliant Career, tells the story of an irrepressible teenage feminist growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales. This heroine, Sybylla, is one of the most endearing characters in Australian literature; she obviously had much in common with Franklin herself, who wrote the novel as a teenager.
It was published in 1901, with the support of Henry Lawson. Remember, International Women’s Day was not even official until 1910. As Franklin had feared, her gender influenced the critical reception of My Brilliant Career. When her identity as a woman was made public, judgements about its literary merit were common.
After its publication, Franklin (who could not survive as a writer) tried a career in nursing, then as a housemaid in Sydney and Melbourne. It’s interesting to note how many Australian women writers have had jobs as teachers, nurses, cleaners to support their art. (Ah, women’s work: never quite done.)
While working in these roles, Franklin contributed pieces to the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald under the pseudonymns ‘An Old Bachelor’ and ‘Vernacular’. During this period, she wrote My Career Goes Bung, in which Sybylla encounters the Sydney literary set. The book, sadly, proved too hot to publish; it did not become available to the public until 1946.
Franklin was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature. She actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and writers' organisations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin is set to have still more of an impact on Australian literary life – Australian women’s literary life – through her actual namesake, The Stella Prize.
Let me finish with the words, the honest, no-bullshit words, of a great Australian author, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, from My Brilliant Career:
As a tiny child I was filled with dreams of the great things I was to do when grown up. My ambition was as boundless as the mighty bush in which I had always lived. As I grew up it dawned upon me that I was a girl, the makings of a woman, only a girl, merely this and nothing more. It came home to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy.
Here, on 8 March, 2012, on the 101st International Women’s Day, let us ensure, together, that this does not happen.
Christine Gordon is events coordinator of Readings and a committee member of The Stella Prize. This is the edited text of the Lunchbox/Soapbox she gave on International Women’s Day 2012.
The Age reported today that Lego’s controversial new line for girls, Lego Friends, has won Toy of the Year for its City Park Cafe.
Lego Friends was launched last December, with curvy doll-like figures, given names and distinct personalities, pastel-coloured bricks (including lots of pink) and playsets that include the Butterfly Beauty Shop, Andrea’s Stage and Mia’s Puppy House.
The Lego Friends Butterfly Beauty Shop
The product – which borrows elements from Disney Princess – is a response to the fact that Lego has appealed mostly to boys in recent years, especially over the past decade, with the company adding superhero and Harry Potter themed sets to its line. Lego CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstrop said they’re aiming ‘to reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children’.
Lego Friends has attracted outspoken enemies, with an active petition to ban it.
‘So, now we have boys’ Lego and girls’ Lego, instead of just Lego, a creative toy that all children could play with,’ says Monica Dux, Wheeler Centre regular and author of The Great Feminist Denial. ‘This development is symptomatic of the deepening gender divide in early childhood, a divide which is becoming ever more ubiquitous, and is being forced onto children at younger and younger ages. But where does this process end?’
‘Though there is educational value to playing with Lego, it’s just a toy company that needs to make money,’ said feminist website Jezebel. ‘Girls have already been conditioned to want pink and sparkly toys about ponies and princesses (though mercifully there’s no royal family in Heartlake City) and it isn’t the company’s job to change that … we’ve reached the point where girls see blocks in primary colours and think they’re not for them.’
Neuroscientist Lise Eliot, author of Pink Brain Blue Brain, also believes girls are put off Lego by social conditioning rather than any implicit need for pink and princesses. But she reluctantly endorses the Lego Friends range nonetheless. ‘If it takes colour-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.’
Penni Russon, author of books for children and teenagers and mother of two girls, recalls playing with Lego as a child ‘in a way that could probably be perceived as gendered’; she made houses and cars, and especially liked the doors and windows that opened and the flowers. But she says that although she probably would have played with pink Lego if it was around, she won’t be buying the ‘silly insipid girl version’ for her children.
‘I think we have all been conditioned by nostalgia to see Lego as something beyond a product and a corporation. Talk about lifelong brand affiliation! Nostalgia (and totally brilliant marketing) drives us to see Lego as some kind of vital childhood experience that enhances intelligence and creativity. But do kids really get more from Lego than wooden blocks, art materials, electronics sets etc? Is it so vital that every child find a Lego set that suits them?’
Writer and philosopher Damon Young is, like so many of us, a product of that lifelong affiliation. He’s been playing with Lego for 30 years – first as a kid, now as a dad. ‘Over the decades, Lego’s become more ‘boyish’: less smiling mini-figures in space-suits, and more snarling villains, stubbled heroes and licensed film tie-ins. More guns, tanks, missiles, fast cars and so on,’ he says. ‘Girls can play with all of this, of course – my daughter does. But they often don’t, because they’re taught that girls like pink, flowers, horses, fairies, nail salons, café chats and so on. Play is gendered very quickly.’
The curvy, pastel-clothed Lego Friends minifigures
He says the hyperfeminised Lego Friends is a problem; toys that reinforce traditional ideas about gender roles and make concepts like ‘girls talk and worry about beauty, while boys fight, die and save princesses’ make these stereotypes seem natural, rather than choices, among many available. ‘Toys clearly help to shape our gender identities.’
But he believes that girl-branded Lego, while ‘dodgy’, can still encourage free play that transcends the boundaries of its pastel boxes.
‘With good encouragement from parents, girls need not be stuck with traditional feminine characters and scenes. If pink bricks or ponies are first step, they are not necessarily the end of the road. Parents can provide primary colour bricks alongside the pinks and purples. They can prompt children to remake their café or salon, rather than keeping them pristine on the shelf. If a family genuinely cares about gender equity, and provides a home life of robust respect and reflection, Lego play – regardless of its colour – will reflect this.’
But Monica Dux remains sceptical. ‘If you think this initiative from Lego is benign, just look at the focus of their new gendered product. Girls get to play ‘cafe’ and hang out in Lego hair salons (!!!), while boys can do almost anything, from travelling through space to constructing cities, having adventures in a wide variety of worlds both historical and imaginary.’
‘If children do learn through play, which of these two lessons would you rather give your daughters?’
Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The Wheeler Centre will be marking the occasion with two free events.
At 12.45pm, The Stella Prize’s Christine Gordon will deliver this week’s Lunchbox/Soapbox on the topic Feminism is Personal.
And at 7.15pm, conflict reporter Eliza Griswold will talk about her journeys through some of the world’s most fascinating and divided societies in The Tenth Parallel.
On 22 February 2012, Kevin Rudd announced his resignation as foreign minister. The news, along with his challenge of Julia Gillard in an attempt to wrest his old job back, has dominated the media conversation of the past fortnight.
But there was another significant news story that day.
Legendary conflict reporter Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were killed when a ‘makeshift media centre’ was hit by Syrian rocket fire. Three other journalists were injured. This came just a week after Anthony Shahid, another internationally renowned conflict reporter, was also killed in Syria.
Marie Colvin, who died by Syrian rocket fire last week: ‘Total objectivity is a myth.’
On Twitter, Natasha Mitchell, host of ABC Radio National’s Life Matters, was just one of a small but persistent trickle of Australians to note the deaths. Amid all the speculation and gossip on K. Rudd and ‘faceless men’, Mitchell tweeted the news as ‘a sobering perspective’. She wrote, ‘What a sad confusion and juxtaposition a Twitter stream can be when a genuine international warzone tragedy melds with a domestic political saga’.
Colvin was well known for her bravery and persistence, as well as her humour and compassion. She has often been compared to her friend, pioneering female war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, whose stories focused on the impact of war on individual lives, families and communities.
‘Total objectivity is a myth,’ Colvin has said. ‘I am always moved by the people I encounter in horrific situations. But that is what war is all about. The mothers, the kids, the soldiers.’
The day before she died, she spoke to the BBC, appealing for the public to notice what was happening in Syria. ‘I watched a little baby die today,’ she said. ‘Absolutely horrific, a two-year old child had been hit. They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said ‘I can’t do anything.’ His little tummy just kept heaving until he died.’
She said, ‘These are twenty-eight thousand civilians, men, women and children, hiding, being shelled, defenseless. That little baby is one of two children who died today, one of the children being injured every day. That baby probably will move more people to think, “What is going on, and why is no one stopping this murder in Homs that is happening every day?“’
Colvin began reporting for the Middle East for the UK’s Sunday Times when she was 30 years old; she was 56 when she died. Her eyewitness accounts were often broadcast on CNN or the BBC, because she was often the last journalist on the scene.
In East Timor in 1999, she famously refused to leave a UN compound in Dili where 1500 people had taken shelter – as Indonesian troops closed in and the UN called for the journalists to pull out. After her foreign editor heard all the men had left (leaving just Colvin and two other female journalists), he berated her. She replied, ‘I guess they don’t make men like they used to.’
Her trademark eye-patch was a result of a shrapnel injury in Sri Lanka, in 1996. ‘Not many people know that she had post-traumatic stress disorder so badly after that she had to be hospitalised,’ said BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir. ‘So she was a person who knew what war was about. It’s not about glamour. It’s about people being killed. And that’s what happened to her.’
Yet Colvin was hesitant to claim such bravery for herself, recognising her privilege in being able to make choices about when she came and left the world’s trouble spots. She said she was ‘more awed than ever by the bravery of civilians who endure far more than I ever will. They must stay where they are. I can come home to London.’
In a prescient 2010 speech, she said, ‘It has never been more dangerous to be a war correspondent because the journalist in the combat zone has become a prime target.’ It has been suggested, but not proven, that the attack that killed her was a deliberate targeting of the media.
‘Imagine a real-life Katherine Hepburn heroine, but braver and funnier,’ said the BBC’s Paul Dannaher. ‘Marie Colvin was everywhere I was in Libya, only she always got there first.’
Another of the many things Colvin was known for was her access to Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, who she interviewed many times over 25 years. He was so taken with her that he is reported to have asked after her during interviews with other journalists. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that ‘a peculiar effect of her beguiling character and her journalistic talent was that tyrants were charmed by her and sought her out, even as she eviscerated them in print’.
There have been (deservedly) many tributes and retrospectives written about Colvin over the past week or so. Two of the best are the obituary published by her editor at The Sunday Times, which gives a wonderful overview of her life and work (sadly, now behind a paywall); and a conversation with two of her fellow conflict reporters about Marie’s legacy and ‘the inherent risks of bearing witness in dangerous places, and the particular challenges and advantages for women in war zones’, for New York magazine.
One of those reporters, Eliza Griswold (Atlantic, New Yorker, Harpers, New York Times) said, ‘Marie was ‘the best – not one of the best – woman in the field today. I first met her in a minefield in northern Iraq, eye patch and all. Stories about Marie’s courage, almost insane courage, precede her. She had her eye shot out when reporting on the Tamil Tigers, she married the same man twice – which is very brave – she wedged herself into Gaza’s tunnels.’
‘But she was in no way a gonzo crazy person – one of those, I hate to say it, mostly American war reporters (not women usually) who is all about themselves. She was about the people living and dying in the field, and it is in no way surprising to me that she died doing what she felt called to do. She was tough as hell, but not the empty bravado, bearing-witness-in-leather-pants type of reporter. For an entire generation of women, she was the best there was, and that there could be.’
Eliza Griswold will be speaking at The Wheeler Centre next Thursday 8 March at 6.15pm, about her journeys through some of the world’s most fascinating – and divided – societies and her book The Tenth Parallel.
So, K. Rudd (as he calls himself) has tried to wrest his old job back and lost, with just 31 votes to Julia Gillard’s 71. He has, apparently, resigned himself to ‘zipping off’ the national stage.
It’s a result that will surprise no one; his popularity rests pretty much entirely with the Australian public, who weren’t the ones voting. And within the labor caucus, who did vote, he never had the numbers. ‘This confirms that Julia Gillard can count and Kevin Rudd can’t,’ Mark Latham quipped to Sky News.
But what happens next? And – perhaps just as importantly – what the hell just happened?
Amid the maelstrom of media coverage over the past week, there were some gems that stood out for their insight.
David Marr delivered a devastating psychological portrait of the then-prime minister in his Quarterly Essay, Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd, which warned that his colleagues saw him as ‘a weird guy and a failing prime minister’.
David Marr: The euphemisms Gillard used to shield Rudd after she deposed him as leader ‘left her cruelly exposed’.
Last week, Marr wrote that Gillard and her supporters had been far from callous in the way they dispatched of him back in 2010; on the contrary, they were too kind.
‘Had Gillard said then, ‘I did everything I could to salvage the situation … to try to get the government functioning’, we would have liked her more and doubted her less. The narrative would have been about rescue not sabotage. The euphemisms she used to shield Rudd left her cruelly exposed. But their tact was Rudd’s cover.’
Indeed, at her press conference today, Gillard acknowledged as much, admitting that she and her colleagues should have explained more about why they deposed Rudd at the time.
Michael Gawenda, former editor of the Age, wrote on The Drum that many of the journalists covering the Rudd-Gillard fight are ‘in essence, lying to us’ by not disclosing that they have been briefed by Rudd and his supporters over the past six months or more. It’s part of the problem with the conventions of journalism: it’s customary not to reveal one’s sources, but what happens when the identity of those sources is an essential part of the story; one that remains hidden?
Michael Gawenda says, ‘At his two bizarre press announcements in Washington, Kevin Rudd spoke as if he was a total innocent, as pure as the driven snow.
Rudd and his supporters deny that they have run any campaign of destabilisation. Rudd and his supporters deny that they have regularly briefed journalists, editors and senior media executives. At his two bizarre press announcements in Washington, Kevin Rudd spoke as if he was a total innocent, as pure as the driven snow, morally virginal, having never ever been involved in the grubby politics of undermining, white-anting, wounding and ultimately destroying an opponent.
And reporters, some of whom knew that none of this was true, reported it all without comment, without letting us know that they knew, personally, that it was untrue.
With that in mind, it’s worth reflecting on Lindsay Tanner’s arguments in last year’s Battlelines that our journalism – and our politics – is failing us, with its focus on politics-as-sport, the details of political battles, and emphasis on packaging candidates as celebrities. He spoke to George Megalogenis about it for the Wheeler Centre last year.
And speaking of candidates as celebrities, it’s been interesting to watch the Rudd family’s call to the public to influence the leadership vote. Jessica Rudd, capitalising on her status as a novelist (and Q&A guest) wrote an article for former magazine editor Mia Freedman’s popular website Mamamia, in a direct appeal to her huge female readership. Jessica Rudd also appeared on Channel 10’s The Project – a popular news source for Gen Y and Gen X – with a similar message.
Jessica Rudd urged voters to lobby their MPs about the spill: ‘You might think Julia Gillard is the ant’s pants. Fab. Say it. You might think my Dad is ace. Cool. Write it.’
Rudd wrote on Mamamia:
We are their employers. My Dad works for me. I often remind him of that. He is my local member and I helped put him there. I walked into a church hall and in the privacy of a polling booth I put a one next to his name.
Tweet something. Rant on Facebook. Put a video on YouTube. Put a sign on your front fence. Have a chat with your neighbour. Tell your friends. Email your local MP. Ring them up. Stop them at the newsagent and make them listen. Call your local radio station. Have a rally. Vote in an online poll. Write a song about it. Get on Mamamia and say, ‘OMG she’s just saying that because she’s KRudd’s daughter.’
Why is Rudd – so reviled by his party – so popular with the public? Michael Duffy has an interesting theory. ‘He reminds them of people – or characters – they see often on the tellie, and they like that. Such creations are far more warm and interesting, after all, than real politicians.’
He says Rudd’s constructed persona, while a liability in real life, is an asset in the media. ‘I can’t recall a prime minister less capable of speaking simple English than Rudd. His attempts at the vernacular – the Vegemite and the sauce bottle – are gruesome. Often his sentences sound like they were constructed in some other language and turned into English by a cheap translation app.’
Michael Duffy: ‘I can’t recall a prime minister less capable of speaking simple English than Rudd.’
In an article for The Punch, Laurie Oakes shared the account of a Rudd government insider who said that Rudd was driven more by popularity – and honing his media persona – than by policy, despite popular perception of him as a policy wonk. This ‘was something we never, ever saw behind closed doors. His instinct was invariably for the politics of a policy problem. His most common put-down of officials and his own policy wonks was “That’s a fine idea, but how do I explain it on Today Tonight?”.’
And finally, as we leave Rudd behind and focus on Julia Gillard, it’s worth looking at Anne Summers’ article from yesterday’s Sunday Age, discussing the impact of gender on how she is viewed as prime minister.
‘From the moment she became leader in June 2012, she has run into the view that “being prime minister is a man’s job”,’ wrote Summers, who concludes that ‘this attitude underpins much of the hostile commentary on Gillard’. Summers canvasses a range of female politicians from both sides for their opinions, from Nicola Roxon to Julie Bishop.
Anne Summers: ‘Gillard is the first [woman] to run the entire country; she is in a totally different league, and one that evidently many of us are not entirely comfortable with.’
And for anyone who doubts that Gillard’s gender colours the political commentary, the Age has handily demonstrated Summers' point today, with an article that likens the split with Rudd to a divorce, headlined, ‘How a fine political romance ended in messy divorce’, and the first line: ‘Every first date is awkward, and it was no different when Kevin met Julia.’
Awkward indeed.
For some background viewing on the events of the past week, you might like to browse the following Wheeler Centre events:
David Marr talking to George Meglogenis about Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd.
Lindsay Tanner talking to George Megalogenis about Dumbing Down Democracy and Lindsay’s book Sideshow.
George Megalogenis talking to Lindsay Tanner about George’s Quarterly Essay, Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era.
And Michael Gawenda will be talking about ‘The Journalist as Betrayer’ at the Wheeler Centre for this week’s Lunchbox/Soapbox, this Thursday 1 March at 12.45pm-1.15pm. Free.
If you’ve been reading the Fairfax press (or surfing social media) recently, you’re probably familiar with the debate about writer and activist Melinda Tankard Reist – and whether she has the right to call herself a feminist.
Tankard Reist is the author of two books by Melbourne feminist publisher Spinifex Press, Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls and Big Porn Inc. (edited with Abigail Bray). She runs an activist group, Collective Shout, that works against the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls for commercial profit.
She’s also a conservative Christian who is anti-abortion (or ‘pro-life’) and spent twelve years working for Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine. [missing asset]
Tankard Reist has long been a controversial figure – particularly in feminist circles – but the current furore began with a front-cover profile in Sunday Life magazine on 8 January, nearly two weeks ago. The profile writer, left-wing feminist Rachel Hills, says she interviewed Melinda because she ‘thought it would be interesting’. She wrote on her website, ‘Like many journalists, I spend too much time thinking about what goes on in other people’s heads, and Melinda was a public figure I found particularly perplexing … I still didn’t “get” her. And I wanted to.’
This weekend, iconic Australian feminist Anne Summers argued that you need to sign onto certain principles in order to be a feminist – and abortion rights is one of them. ‘As far as I am concerned, feminism boils down to one fundamental principle and that is women’s ability to be independent. There are two fundamental preconditions to such independence: ability to support oneself financially and the right to control one’s fertility … To guarantee the second, women need safe and effective contraception and the back-up of safe and affordable abortion.’
She concluded of Tankard Reist, ‘Just because she says she is a feminist does not mean she is.’
In a past Wheeler Centre debate, Summers' contemporary Wendy McCarthy recalled abortion in the 1960s – before social pressure from feminists and others made it legal – as potentially fatal. ‘In my own experience, to get an abortion required furtive phone calls, 63 guineas (a large amount of money), cops patrolling up and down the road, hoping someone would give you advice when you left…’
Yesterday, Kate Gleeson said the most significant argument against Tankard Reist’s identification as a feminist is her involvement – through her work as Harradine’s adviser – in restricting the approval of the abortion drug RU486 and ushering in Australia’s adoption of the ‘global gag rule’ that dictates AusAID’s overseas family planning guidelines.
Gleeson said this had ‘profound implications for women’s access to contraception in our donor destination countries’, contributing to ‘the two-tier system in which Western women have mostly unfettered control over their reproduction, while those in the developing world are at the mercy of dangerous abortions’.
Today, Cathy Sherry takes issue with all those who’ve questioned Tankard Reist’s right to call herself a feminist. She says ‘I have long considered myself a feminist and been disturbed by the parts of the sisterhood who operate like the nasty in-group in primary school … I do not know Melinda Tankard Reist and I am not pro-life, but I defend her right to express her opinions, call herself a feminist and prosecute her own beliefs … The real test of tolerance is tolerating those with whom we strongly disagree. We will never have a right to express our own contested ideas if we do not defend others' rights to do the same.’
A somewhat baffled Rachel Hills (who says that the huge response to her profile – including five separate opinion pieces last weekend – has been both ‘a bit of a dream’ and ‘challenging’) reflected this week on what she’s learned from the experience. She concluded, ‘if you want people to listen to what you’re saying – whether you have a big platform or small one – you also have an obligation to engage in good faith’.
Hills’ approach to the profile was to avoid a hatchet job, but ‘to write something critical (in the sense of making analytic judgments) but still human’.
While perhaps not all the arguments being traded are useful (or indeed respectful), the broad debate is teasing out some big questions.
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