 Colleagues and friends, I wanted to just say a few words before we go into the next session, which is going to be chaired by Gaye Brodman, the member for Canberra, and I'm very grateful to Gaye for making time to chair this very important session with two of the leading practitioners of policy in national security and foreign policy in this country. Before I go to Gaye to introduce Francis Adamson and Chris Maraitis to you, and they need little introduction, I just wanted to really update on a few thoughts about the conference today. I've been speaking with the team, with colleagues, we've been listening, we've been learning, and I just wanted to share a few thoughts, a few reflections already, not even at the end of day one. Firstly, I think when we convene this conference with the National Security College, I guess we knew that there would be a lot to discuss. We're beginning to realise that we've really only scratched the surface, and so I think there's a strong sense of interest to continue next year with a sequel to this conference. So please watch this space with my colleagues at the college, and I know I have a few hard-working colleagues who will be ruining the fact that I've said that, but I think we recognise that there's really a vast appetite for what's happening here today. The other point I was going to make was the focus, I think in certain sessions, I think Valerie Hudson brought this out very eloquently at the start of the day about education and training, and so I wanted to announce that the college will be developing some new professional and executive development courses, particularly on women and national security, informed by the themes and many of the speakers of this conference. So if you have interest in more, if colleagues in the Australian public service or industry have colleagues or staff who are also people who you think would benefit from some of the perspectives you've heard today, please come back to us on that. We will be advertising those courses shortly, and for those of you who are not so familiar with the work of the college, we've taken the liberty of spreading a few booklets around your tables so you can learn a bit about the other courses we have on offer. Those were the key points I wanted to make so far, but I think we have a very hard working team at the college who are very much in listening mode and will be certainly taking some lessons learned from today to really, I think, keep developing the thinking and the practice and the practice that today's conference has informed. I'm now going to hand over to Gay Brodman MP, the member for Canberra, and of course also the shadow assistant minister for cyber security and for defence personnel. Gay, of course, is also a policy practitioner of great experience including in foreign affairs and trade and will bring, I think, a very deep perspective to proceedings today. Gay Brodman over to you. Thank you. Thanks very much, Rory. It is a great pleasure to be here today. It's a very exceptional day when you talk national security to a room 99% filled with women. As we all know, most of the meetings we go to and most of the conversations we have are it's you and possibly one other woman and then a sea full of blokes. Not that that's a bad thing, but that's what we're here today to talk about, how we can change that environment. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we meet on Ngunnawal country and pay my respects to the elders past and present and to congratulate Rory on getting this workshop together, this conference together. It's obviously a huge hit and all strength to you, all power to you for getting all these women, these fabulous women in one room discussing these very important issues. So congratulations, Rory. Look, as we know, there are very few women in this space. I mean, when was the last time you heard a woman talking about national security on radio or television? And I'm not talking about today where we had the fabulous Jacinta Carroll from ASPE talking on a range of issues, Russia and a range of counterterrorism issues. Or when was the last time you opened the paper, traditional media and read an op-ed that had been written by a woman? Now, publicly it would appear that national security issues are largely reserved for discussions by male academics, by former male ADF members, and by retired male armchair generals. Yet when it comes to practitioners, we know the women in this room know that the reality is quite different. That said, there is still much more that we can do to get women into this space as practitioners. So today we are joined by a very distinguished panel, a very, very distinguished panel, to discuss this issue, the importance of women in the national security and foreign policy space as practitioners. That is the issue. And today we're going to be talking about what perspectives they bring to our national security. Are they different perspectives? Where we are at now in terms of the numbers of women in this space? And most importantly, what are we going to do to get more women in this space? So it is my great pleasure to first introduce Chris Marat, as most of you would know of him, Secretary of the Attorney General's Department, distinguished and awarded career of 25 years in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and he's also served as High Commissioner. Over to you, Chris. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much, Gay. Thank you to the College for inviting me to this inaugural Women in National Security Conference. It's by all accounts been a great day and some great ideas floating out of this and some great thinking about the future. Gay's already acknowledged the Ngunnawal people, so I won't repeat that. But let me just say again how delighted I am to be here and actually I feel quite privileged to be sharing the floor with such distinguished leaders in the space, but also colleagues across the board. I can see colleagues from AGs, colleagues from old days in DFAT and colleagues I haven't seen for over 10 years who are working in the UN. And so it's really heartening to see that, to see this forum. I actually know how it feels to be a woman in a man's conference, and this is what it's to be like for most. So it's a real moment of awareness for me. So thank you for that in itself. I think my thesis today will be about the progress we've made. I'll take it from the perspective of my role as a male champion in the context of the Attorney General's Department. So bear with me as I go through what I need to say and want to say here this afternoon. We have made some progress. We have a foreign minister, a defence minister, secretary of foreign affairs, and leadership across the board in this space. In my portfolio, late last year we were very happy to appoint the first woman director of public prosecutions, first time ever. And I took a singular pleasure in telling Michalia Cash that, and it was a great moment. And for the record, or off the record, all the shortlisted applicants were women, which is a great achievement in that field. And some of these experienced women in this field of being prosecutors and others have done some pretty significant trials in counterterrorism space, going back the last 10 or so years. So I can say that the glass ceiling is cracking. I think conferences such as this help that happen, and hopefully we can have ways to shatter that. As a secretary of a Commonwealth Department and as the head of a portfolio with key national security responsibilities, I'd like to share the experiences that we've had in striving towards significant and also sustainable improvement in the representation of women in our portfolio. Now, as I said, you might be wondering why is a man here talking about these issues and the importance of women in national security? That's the very point. The answer is very simple. Men need to get on board here with the agenda and to step up beside women to share responsibility on this very, very important issue. About 18 months ago, as I said, I became a founding member of the male champions for change organizations, which Elizabeth Broderick has set up. Through this group, I've joined with other male leaders from the corporate sector and from the government sector, where we use our individual and our collective influence to promote gender equality in senior leadership and indeed to take real action and sustainable action to accelerate change in this space. For me, it's been an opportunity to reflect on my own leadership style, to learn from the experiences of some key leaders in corporate and government sectors of Australia and to work together as a group to identify and to implement actions which actually make a significant difference and disrupt the status quo. It's through this prism of being a male champion of change that I'll outline here what's imperative and the imperative of women practicing in national security and what we've done in the Attorney General's Department and more broadly in the portfolio to achieve that. So the first question is why it's important to have women in national security? First of all, people say increasing women's participation in national security has been repeatedly framed as the right thing to do ethically or morally, but I'd say it's a strategic imperative for any organization, not least AGD or anyone in our portfolio. It is the smart thing to do. In truth, the imperative for increasing participation of women is equally applicable in national security as any other sector, corporate life, government life in the non-for-profit sector and elsewhere. We know that tapping into the whole talent pool allows innovation to flourish, increases collective intelligence, produces better financial performance and that's been proven, enhances decision-making and accountability and ultimately leads to improved outcomes. The list goes on and on and on. In the national security context, we face, the reality is, an increasingly complex and increasingly dynamic security environment that throws up new and challenging and diverse challenges day in, day out. In our department, for example, we work on a range of challenges ranging from legal advice, legal policy, as well as many, many operational activities involving a whole range of portfolios such as the AFP, ASIO, criminal intelligence and a whole variety of areas touching on national security. For example, recently we've been responsible for reforms which allow operational agencies to powers and resources necessary to combat terrorism. As a department, we lead efforts across government in the counter-violent extremism space, the CVE, so-called space, which is a devilishly complex area where there's no easy answer. And as we also go through that space in CVE, we're dealing with the digital reality of life and as threats indeed become increasingly digital, we're playing in the department a key role supporting the whole of government effort under the cyber security strategy. So that's a snapshot of some of the key issues we're dealing with, which are a novel, there's no textbook, there's no playlist, we've just got to really think creatively and practically about them. Many of these issues also have, not just a domestic focus, but they have international implications. So we have to work collaboratively, not just with our partners and stakeholders nationally, but also with our key international partners, whether they're the traditional Five Eyes, as we call them, the UK, the US, New Zealand, Canada, but also with our regional partners, most significantly, of course, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, the list goes on as well as in the near Pacific. So as we navigate all these issues and all the dynamics of these relationships, traditional ways of thinking and doing, showing their limitations. And it's clear that we need to leverage all the talents available to lead in this challenging security environment. Now, I refer to CVE and I give that as a tangible example of what we can do in this space. I can pick other examples, the work we're doing in the Pacific, closer to home for me in PNG and what we're doing with domestic violence and gender equality, which is, you know, you could put it one way, it is a national security challenge because the sheer dimension of domestic violence and violence against women in the Pacific is of a scale and an immensity which I still can't fathom 10 years after being first confronted with it. But let me just focus on CVE, countering violent extremism. Now we know that in order to develop a very comprehensive approach to this challenge, we need to understand the positive role that women can play in the design and delivery of CVE initiatives. In the Attorney General's Department, our team is involved in developing initiatives to empower women as powerful voices against violent extremism, extremist propaganda, in the recruitment of members of families, of communities and of radicalised groups. Programs have indeed been built in AGs to help women's capacity to identify early signs of radicalisation in communities, in families, in groups, more broadly in this sector. When we develop these programs, it's only common sense that women working in CVE leads to a more rounded understanding of the impact of our interventions and enhances our ability to communicate with these communities. Now let me be clear, I'm not suggesting that we perpetuate a stereotype that women assume to possess inherent nurturing traits, so-called characteristics that mean that they are better at communicating or more compassionate and engaging with families, rather than very simply, when women lead or a part of the team, they bring experiences and perspectives that would otherwise be absent. The net sum of the contribution in the totality leads to a better result, a better outcome, a better way of thinking and a much more inactive and agile way of developing solutions. I'll quote Camilla Bogno from the OSCE, she said recently, when security bodies fail to achieve gender balance and gender sensitivity in their own ranks, it compromises the credibility of the authority's intentions to safeguard women's security and rights, and indeed in that in that conclusion she also said, a security sector that overlooks half the population cannot be efficient, not going to be particularly effective in promoting and protecting rights and human rights in particular. So to achieve change on the broader international scale, we need to first take action within our own spheres of influence. Now how do we go about that? For me, increasing the number of women in areas such as national security will lay the building blocks for a department and a portfolio that represents the community which it serves and is better able to tackle the diverse challenges that we face. So the question is how we get there, and this is the more difficult question, and we need to achieve as I said effective and sustainable, that is meaningful change. So how do we recruit? How do we train? How do we promote? How do we support? How do we motivate and empower women to fully participate in the national security sphere? I don't believe this is an issue isolated to national security, so whatever I'm saying is pertinent to all aspects of other sectors in government and as I said in the private and other sectors. The first thing I think is the quality of leadership. Leadership is a key, it is in very least I'll say it's the necessary condition of any success in this space. I can say that the public sector is trying as best as it can in this area. The APSC has done some really good work and you're probably all familiar with the gender equality strategy which sets a number of actions to address gender imbalance in the public sector. As the strategy acknowledges, implementing change is difficult. It requires agencies to look internally and to determine how we can do things better. The point of difference in my view is when agency leaders shift from raising awareness about the issue of women's representation to actually giving it the same treatment as any other key business objective and imperative. So it is actually a critical enabler of success. So that's why I've made diversity and gender equality in particular a key priority of my engagement as secretary. It's something that I raise with my staff in almost every communication I have with my staff. I've committed to action personally things like the panel pledge which I think I'm safe to say I've achieved in the course of this afternoon the panel pledge the forum pledge in fact by far and I think this sort of stuff panel pledges and things like this actually enhance the quality of the discussion allows women to achieve roles and leadership roles and to achieve the goals that Gail was talking about getting people out in the domain speaking as leaders in this area. I also have to acknowledge that I've used my role as a secretary of a department but also of a portfolio to leverage my position as a male champion of change to advocate for participation of women more broadly in the portfolio. I'll give an example. Last year I arranged for the deputy commissioner of the AFP Leanne Close who is head of operations to be seconded to our department to take on the role of deputy secretary of criminal justice. The amendment I wanted two years but Andrew Colvin and I had to negotiate it was 12 months but this provided Leanne with I thought a great opportunity to expand on her extensive operational experience by gaining exposure to the policy making side of criminal justice and Leanne's just returned to the AFP and she knows I'm referring to her experiences and she said it's been a very positive experience. It's a way that we've actually thought about it as a portfolio about broadening and preparing women leaders in the national security space not just in operations or policy or vice versa policy and operations thinking through the opportunities and thinking laterally and I must acknowledge the contribution and role of Commissioner Colvin who's a great colleague in his space and who I commend as commissioner for his fourth great leadership in driving cultural change in the AFP. I also want to talk very quickly about assumptions challenging these assumptions in the biases. A clear barrier to women progressing in leadership positions in any sphere is the need to challenge deeply entrenched deeply held biases and assumptions. Now you could say that national security continues to be perceived as well by some if not by many as a blokey field of work characterized by hard issues hard issues hard talks where typically male traits are rewarded. So I think it's incumbent on all of us and me and my male colleagues to break away from these stereotypes actually to break these stereotypes and promote national security to women for what it truly is a high priority area that is rewarding and makes a difference to the lives of Australians. I believe we can do this and I believe we've started to do this. In our department we've challenged the entrenched biases through pros and eviction and through promotion. For example we have three deputy secretaries and we could say in that space we've actually turned the gender stereotypes around. Women lead our national security emergency management group, women lead our criminal justice group and a man leads what would truly be considered a softer field of things like family law, human rights and corporate enabling services. Within the past year alone if I may say so women have headed up our countering violent extremism division our cyber security area and our intelligence and security divisions. But of course every organisation comes with this from a different perspective. The gap between the number of women participating in national security within policy agencies such as AGs and operational agencies such as AFP and others is evident. I've got to acknowledge the fact that in AGs the overall representation of women is about 67 percent in national security areas is about 58 percent and this is a historical trend now for about 10 or so years. Partly it reflects the fact that a lot of the graduates if not the majority of graduates from law schools are women and it's an AGD is blessed to be the recipients of that cultural change in the tertiary sector. So by comparison with other areas such as policing defence we were actually starting from a good baseline but that's no reason to be complacent about it. So obviously in the operational context we should be we can and should be doing more in this space and I gave the example of Leanne Close and her leadership role in an operational environment and what I hope will be the benefit of her experiences in AGD. We can learn from other areas as well. I think there's a discussion tomorrow about the sciences and cyber and I think you've got Eleanor from the ANU and Chris Jenkins from Taylor's who are talking about cyber. I just want to touch on the fact that there's a lot going on in that space on STEM. I'm interested because we do cyber security, cyber crime and we're in a big campaign to recruit cyber security experts and the reality is history and the demographic has not been good. There's been a lot of reports by various organisations not least the chief scientist about the role of women in STEM, about the career progression of women in the ICT space, how it declines through university into the early years of the profession and certainly in the space of cyber it is a big challenge. We acknowledge and welcome the chief scientist focus on this in STEM space and we'd like to see some good progress in the ICT and cyber space where we actually do have women leadership, female leadership in that area and women working in the cyber security space. I should acknowledge the work of PM&C. They recently had inaugural women in cyber mentoring event which inspires younger women to pursue cyber security careers but I think more needs to be done in the science and particular cyber space to actually develop a dynamic career path. I think training, I think seminars, conferences such as this provide women with a confidence capability and clarity around well posted career pathways in the national security space. I should also say that mentoring a network is an important part of any organisation's attempt to develop a culture which is propitious to developing female leadership in national security. I could just share an anecdote speaking to colleagues in the department, female colleagues about their experiences in national security. They shared with me this fact that it was 9-11 actually that brought about a bit of a shift in thinking. It was a real catalyst for change in this space, breaking down the barriers for women in the national security space, you know, literally overnight. If you think about the time back in 2000 and 2001 this became a priority all hands were needed on deck to begin with women often faced being the only woman in the room but once women established themselves they discovered the numbers, the number one asset for succeeding in national security was not any particularly gendered trade, not subject matter knowledge but actually developing productive working relationships and team building. Women who wouldn't otherwise have dreamt of working in this field were then able to make serious inroads into leadership positions because of the skills that they had to offer and as a result they've paved the way for other women to follow in their tracks and perform the role of mentors. We also know from experience and from studies that self-selection is a problem. Research tells us that women are more likely to undersell their capabilities in some areas even though they're equally as effective as men delivering value for their organisation. This is where role models networking and mentoring are coming to the fore and where mentors need to nudge outcomes in the right direction. This is why developing formal and informal networks can help to build the confidence of women and demystify the culture of national security. In the law enforcement sphere for example there's the women in law law enforcement strategy which offers a 12 month mentoring program which provides female police officers with the opportunity to enhance leadership capabilities as they prepare to move into the senior executive roles in those areas. I think this could also be useful in the national security space more broadly that is a formal mentoring program because I think having the right support in place and networks across the system allows the mystification of the culture around national security and assists women to self-select into the national security space. Could I also say something about organisational barriers as an organisation such as AGs? One of my early decisions as secretary was in response to requests from our women's network in fact it was to commission a cultural order to identify if, whether and how unconscious bias manifested itself within our department. The findings actually highlight for us that the workforce is highly professional, highly committed, but it also revealed that our cultural norms valued responsiveness and achieving outcomes which meant that our talk around flexibility and inclusion was not really aligning with the practical realities of work pressures and this is a very practical issue. It was it's not a philosophical issue it's just a practical issue. The culture particularly in areas like national security meant employees were working long hours in times of crisis in areas of heightened operational activity. This obviously led to a lot of issues in the senior executive and we had to find ways to deal with it. So in response to this we thought about some key ideas and the key one was mainstreaming flexibility and we achieved that through a whole variety of mechanisms if not why not and this is where we landed. We wanted to make sure there's an enlightened approach to workforce practices and even in the national security space this is possible and we have to acknowledge and it's a fact and we highlight the fact in our department that a high proportion of our senior executive women work flexibly including in the national security space and women coming to work in national security space bring their flexibility with them from whichever area they've come from and so that's where we've worked in that area worked on engaging on parental leave to make sure that the organization is seen to be an organization which welcomes all officers and their needs and requirements around parental leave. It also requires us to focus on middle managers directors and others to have the skills and capacities to deal with these challenges. We also need to also think about the culture basically embedded as a culture within the organization not something that's just an area for HR to focus on. It's an area where everyone is engaged including our group leader on national security Catherine Jones who is also our female champion women's champion and is indeed an outstanding role model and champion for all officers in our department who wish to work in the national security space and we're also working with agencies across the portfolio and more broadly to learn from each other but I think to sum up we have a long way to go there's lots to be done we continue to evaluate and to improve and I think we're going to learn from our failures but we're going to try to fail and fail early and then improve on that. I hope it's brought a bit of an insight into what we're doing as a department what I've tried to bring highlight the fact that we really need to have all our human capital to use the HR term engaged to optimize the performance of everyone and to optimize the organizations culture to make it as receptive as possible to these challenges to break down the idea of men's work and women's work and we need to require encourage strong mentors and role models in this space and to allow flexibility. We need to have broad leadership and we need to work with whatever base we've got to build on it. We can do better and I think the discussion hopefully will find ways for me and others to see what we can do better as leaders in organizations. We want to take the successes we've achieved and to build on them further and to recruit, promote and nurture and develop women who can be true leaders in the national security sphere in our department and I hope we can do as much as we can in that space. Thank you very much. Thanks very much Chris. We'll keep it moving because we do want to open up for discussion after this session rather than a Q&A session. We actually want to pick your brains on how with you think some improvements could be made. So it now gives me great pleasure to introduce Frances Adamson, a woman of first, a very distinguished Australian woman, first woman to head Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, first female to be Australia's ambassador to China, chief of staff to a range of defence and foreign affairs ministers. It's a great pleasure now to introduce Frances Adamson. Thanks very much indeed Gaye and thank you Chris too. Look I've put aside my prepared remarks because I want to speak very briefly and I'm delighted to see Anna Oldmeadow my former executive officer here in the audience and she's going to stick up her hand and wave it at me when I get to the five minute mark and then we're going to have a discussion. All right so I'll try and be really brief and Chris and I hadn't sort of cooked this up beforehand that he would talk about all of the positives and I would challenge them and that's not my natural role particularly but I think it's probably a worthwhile thing to do today. So yes we've made tremendous progress and I think in many respects that progress is very visible today and while I'm very happy to acknowledge Rory as head of the National Security College I really want to acknowledge Marina at service whose idea this was and Marina came and pitched it to me towards the end of 2015 early last year when I was in the Prime Minister's office I said as one would that sounds like a good idea I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be such a good idea. Can I just ask an apologies if you've done this I've read what the Defence Minister has had to say to you but obviously I haven't heard everything that's been said by everyone. Can I just ask the women in the audience please to put up your hand if you are currently doing or have done in living memory a job that has never been done by a woman before anyway so you've got to put up your hand you've got to put up both hands all right so look that that's a that's I would say I'm gonna come on put them up really high that's you know that's a reasonable number perhaps not quite as many as I'd expected and I can see some women in uniforms hands going up as well too which is good but one of the things I guess I want to say is good is not good enough gay was kind enough to refer to some of my firsts and I must say 32 years ago when I joined the public service it never occurred to me being amongst the first group of DFAC graduates where a majority of women it never occurred to me that I would be doing anything for the first time as a woman and what I would say about that is make the obvious point how wrong I was to me and I can see that there's a camera there but to me it is simply not good enough that there are only two female ministers at the national security committee of cabinet it's simply not good enough that there is only one female secretary who serves in a permanent role on the secretary's committee of national security it's not good enough to me as DFAC secretary that only 26 percent of our heads of mission our ambassadors high commissions consuls general are women it's not good enough that we've never had a female head of mission in 105 years of our diplomatic representation in London it's not good enough that we've never had a female head of mission an ambassador in Washington or in Tokyo or in Jakarta and Penny Wensley of course served as our first female head of mission in a number of roles including if I'm correct in Geneva UN UN New York and New Delhi and actually Hong Kong and I spotted I haven't I've looked across the audience but I see Ruth Pierce over there as well who served as our first female head of mission in Moscow and possibly in some other roles as well Ruth but that's the one that springs to mind Prime Minister in a cyber context often talks about hardware software and warm wear and although it's not a perfect analogy to what we're talking about today I think there are elements of hardware you could say I mean this is a metaphor on the run but you could say it's UN Security Council resolutions it's the SDGs you could talk about software being the policies that we that we have including in Australia's case our aid program you could talk about warm wear as being all of you and you could also talk about warm wear as being the way each of us the women in the audience and then we're going to get specific about this behave in certain circumstances last year last week sorry for the first time ever we invited all of our heads of mission and post overseas to come back and and join us for a global heads of mission meeting 28 women were there including some austere colleagues we had a photo on the very first morning eight o'clock foreign minister Julie Bishop minister stood in the middle of the room colleagues gathered around us around her I stood on her right I thought nothing more about it until I looked that night at the sitting wanting her her old photograph of that group and and it was the bit that came up on my iPhone was the central bit let's just say the 40 or 50 people around the foreign minister guess what and I can see a number of you because you must have noticed this too it was overwhelmingly my male colleagues there were not a quarter women standing near the foreign minister the women might the hands waving the women were moving off to the side many of them not terribly tall so they were near enough to the front but they were not in that central frame that was shocking to me and it tells me is one of the reasons I think we've got a lot more to do so I want what I want to do because she gave me a 30 second warning what I want to do is to challenge each of you and I think it's a reasonable thing to do in this setting to take on in the next five years a job in this national security and foreign affairs space if that's the area that you're in which has never been done by a woman before or for those of you who are not who've taken yourself out of the job market or aren't as engaged as you'd like to be to help another woman do that I think that's a perfectly realistic request I'd like Marina if you're going to carry on doing this in glory to make a note of it and to see whether because a lot of what we're talking about why is there are there only two women ministers at NSE why is there only one woman member of scones why why why why it's because this is difficult you know it's difficult there are a whole range of reasons why it's difficult and Chris referred to a number of them and also what the public service is doing about it but it's not good enough there are many many firsts there are way too many firsts still to be undertaken by women and I'd like to think that every woman in this room has a realistic prospect within the next five years of taking on a role that you may not think is within your reach or you may actually think you're well and truly qualified for and why hasn't that happened so that's my small challenge to you I'm going to move this back will this move back and then sit down and we can do a panel discussion we've now got by my watch 22 minutes of genuine discussion so thank you we want to throw it open to you to get your thoughts rather than as I said doing a traditional q&a session we want to get your thoughts and some of the questions that have emerged from the presentations from Chris and Francis I'm throwing out here how do we get more women into the operational space how do we recruit more women in the national security space how do we motivate them how do we empower them how do we break the stereotypes all issues and questions that Chris raised in his presentation and as Francis has mentioned I mean what more needs to be done or what needs to be done to make getting into this space and staying in this space and achieving in this space and succeeding in this space to make it less difficult so we'll throw it open to you and Chris and Francis can respond to your thoughts or your comments but please over to you it's a completely interactive session so we've got Susan here and then this so Susan you're first my name is Susan Hutchinson I'm from the Australian Civil Society Coalition for Women Peace and Security and I'm a PhD scholar here at the ANU um I thank you both for really fantastic presentations and gay for chairing a great session um I spend a lot of time in this space I work in women peace and security and it's not often I feel that inspired so that was really great thank you um my question ties in somewhat with Chris what you were asking about how do we about the role of men in this space um and also how do we change culture and it's it's almost the inverse of the question of the challenge that you've set us Francis my um which is a great challenge by the way thank you very much my question is about rather than changing workplaces for women my question is about what can be done in terms of and what is being done I have some understanding in the defense space to make okay a key policy that can be done parental leave for fathers and encouraging of of a culture that supports flexibility in the workplace not just for mothers but for fathers so I'd love to hear some responses to that please can I what do I start first up I know it's addressed to Chris but just let me talk very briefly about DFATS women in leadership strategy and what's being done across the public service and Chris will be able to complement that I'm sure from an AG's perspective I mean I hear your question and I say we have and we do whether we do enough of it is another thing but DFATS relatively recently moved to flexible and remote working available to men and to women because we recognize that this is not just an issue for women and where it's an issue for men it's often linked to an issue around a woman and a continuity in a woman's career so we've actually had quite a substantial take up of that we've got now some women amongst accompanying spouses accompanying you know men or women overseas on postings working out of our missions back to home departments in Canberra which might not which might not in fact be DFATS we've also got as far as parental leave goes I mean it's pretty much indistinguishable I think we can in DFATS at least and I think across the whole public service I mean it can be taken by either the father or the mother or you know interchangeably in combinations and and we encourage that so I think you know those those sorts of structural things are important more important in a way or as important are the attitudes around them and the genuine encouragement and support that comes from you know supervisors and others in the workplace so we haven't yet we don't yet have although I know that the Swiss ambassadors in Canberra do a job share arrangement for heads of mission they they share the the mail is the ambassador accredited to Australia and resident here his partner is takes up all of the other accreditations overseas and they work both work part-time to do that we are in the business of being prepared to do that we just haven't done it yet but there are a whole range of flexibilities encouragement to be flexible and then people seeing that you take that flexibility and you are not penalized for it Penny Wensley not Penny Wensley Penny Williams and other PW the most recently promoted a DFAT deputy secretary has just been on three years leave accompanying her partner overseas while she was there she did some really interesting things she was came through a competitive selection process and that proves you know in a very compelling way that it can be done that we will support women who do it Chris you know you've hit another one on the head there I didn't touch on that point that you raised but that's an interesting part of this discussion we've had in AGD and through the male champions when I first started discussing the issue of flexibility was focusing on women's flexibility and then it emerged very very quickly including my engagement the MCC context in the private sector they're already onto that and so one of the things I did in the last two months is actually had three focus groups with men about taking leave and I got the advantage in my organization that with the Australian government solicitors being brought into the department they're at 28 30% whereas in AGD it's actually much lower so I actually have a model within my own organization of how you can achieve men taking leave as well and so it's a case of the system and the structures there's even the terminology of asking for leave it's pretty you know fraud and the men told me their experiences was actually quite interesting so that's all been well we're trying to fix it secondly making it very clear through projecting a story in the culture of the places this is flexibility for everybody and thirdly just learning from the private sector in fact there's actually a focus group in the MCC which is about this very issue about flexible working arrangement for men not just about women and I use my own experiences and others and we've tried to tell the stories that way how to really build to build it and as it comes back to this issue of our ER ones and twos were the managers having the skill set to manage it's literally practical things like who's day off and how do we how do we do it and as I said AGS have done a really good job maybe it's the nature of the legal practice you can do that but I think we can do it also in AGD so that is actually something we're working on right now because you can't do one without the other it's got to be a holistic thing and that's a really good lesson from the MCC context let me just also say also the work that it's been done in DFAT with Francis and Peter it's been amazing I used to run HR and corporate and I was a coup in DFAT and I remember the days when an officer who got had a childhood post all deals were off almost it was almost like this negotiation whereas now it's just brilliantly forward-looking and forward-leaning and I think we're learning from each other all the time I steal from DFAT, DFAT steals from PM&C PM&C steals from Commonwealth Bank, Commonwealth Bank learns from us it's that's the way it should be that's what I'm saying it's got to be an engagement at all levels and that's one of the great things about the stuff that I've learned through the MCC process Thanks Chris and congratulations Francis on Penny Williams that appointment because fantastic woman but that sends a very powerful message a very very powerful message it's a kind of game-changing message I think now there's a woman over here you've got the mic terrific thanks my name is Anna Stapiro I am a PhD student at the National Security College and my topic is around cyber security so cyber security is similar to the discussion today in the sense that there aren't a lot of women in in the industry in any of the streams really and one of the topics that often gets brought up is gender quotas so in my experience and from my research I've gathered that on some small scale particularly in the private sector there have been instances of successful gender quotas implementations I'm just wondering about your gender problems sorry gender quotas in the sense that you get a hard number of quotas quotas quotas yes um so I'm just wondering whether that is feasible at all um on a broader scale whether that's even you know on the table um yeah I'm interested in your thoughts on that or anyone in the audience really I don't think it's a question of quotes I think it's actually a question of supply that's my take out from what I've read about this issue um it starts at the the secondary level starts at the university then continues into the university stage even in the statistics I've seen when people are engaged women are engaged in the ICT sector then along the cyber sub sector the period of of staying in that workforce is two to three years you saw some recent controversies about women's involvement in some American social media companies and how they were they were treated in that space I won't go there in terms of you know really obnoxious behavior and you find a lot of women's engaging from the sector so I don't think even quotas quotas is great but I'm actually concerned about the the supply side of it all because I'm finding that supply is actually coming through I was very lucky I had a head of cyber who was you know went to work at a promotion to another department in communications that's great I'm actually looking for a person to run our side of area if it's a woman it's great but I'm just saying supply is not there that's what really worries me and hopefully the discussion tomorrow can explore that a bit further if quotas helps that's great but I think it's more about supply and the culture at the secondary tertiary and in the professional stages and it's a very competitive environment I know that but we need to really wrap it up in supply so that's my view perhaps I can come in it's not I mean you asked a specific question about cyber but I think there's a broader question about quotas or targets or you know so let me approach from a broader perspective because I think if we can get the broader perspective or if we can use the broader perspective then that creates opportunities within more specialist areas Chris mentioned my predecessor Peter Varghese and I want to acknowledge he was a male champion of change too I can't be a male champion of change but I'm an advisor to the male champions of change and everything that Chris said about that organization I would endorse but as part of DFAT's work on developing a women in leadership strategy they reached the conclusion that at the leadership level and that's where the focus of it was and leadership being at senior leadership level we could not make really measurable and desirable from all sorts of perspectives progress without targets so Peter did a lot of work on that and as he handed the baton to me he explained that these targets would be almost impossible to achieve I like a challenge but after six months I can see that they are very very difficult they're not on the face of it the the targets don't sound overwhelming the target for band three sorry for band two is to have 40% women by end of 2020 we currently at 30% and we've been able to increase from about 26.3% over the last few months but if you think about it you can only really do that through promotion rounds and even if you get 50-50 outcomes through promotion rounds which we almost did because you've got a bigger pool of people that that lifts you a bit but it doesn't you know getting another 10% in two and a half years going to be very hard at the band one level the target is 43% we're currently at 33% and again we've made some progress we've got a big band one promotion round going at the moment we had 540 applicants for it which I hope says something about DFAT and the the challenging nature of the work that we do and the the satisfaction that it gives people internally though we had 122 female applicants and 123 male applicants which I was delighted about because in the weeks leading up to the deadline I'd encouraged all all senior colleagues across the board to tap good women and good men but to really think about tapping good women on the shoulder because so many good women are waiting to be tapped on the shoulder and not willing yet to put themselves forward in a way that appears that they're doing this or not realizing that they're ready so I to be perfectly honest I didn't think I'd need to be dealing with quotas or targets I now embrace our targets and I'm using them and DFAT is across the board because it can't just be about me if I fall under a bus tomorrow or in a year's time or two years time it's got to be sufficiently entrenched and across the whole organization and supported and encouraged so you know our last round of head of head of mission head of post scene and senior appointments across the system I actually had four more letters of complaint which I was really hadn't expected very pleased to receive from very senior male ambassadors who were complaining that including because of language training requirements years out we were not giving them a sufficient number of senior women coming through the pipeline because any ambassador any post manager any deputy secretary faz branch head in whatever organization you're in knows that a diverse workforce and a reasonable sort of balance mix male and female and a range of other backgrounds as well is really important to to be able to do the job as well as we can do it so when I have people complaining that we're not able to deliver we've got the numbers of people almost got them we'll need some more too but but I you know DFAT is embracing targets and I think as we embrace them all of the things that need to be put together including things like you know renaming our meeting rooms after after women who've made substantial really outstanding contributions to our diplomatic history that's part of it you know hear it from the female heads of mission we had several hundred staff listening to female heads of mission last week we've got a leadership photo boards that are all about what women in the place and across our network are doing as as a clear counterweight if you like to the 39 portraits of male secretaries and the 40 or so portraits of male ministers because there's got to be something we celebrate our history but we've we've got to give people a different sense of the future and a realistic appreciation of the present just on targets I know that in the Labor Party there's been a very useful mechanism in terms of focusing the mind and getting women out there and getting them up the ranks so they are a very useful mechanism in the political arena now any comments or questions over yes thank you so much that's been very interesting I just wanted to make a comment from my project which I had introduced earlier the de-radicalization project I'm a psychologist there are mostly girls who are working as psychologists there what is very interesting is when the young boys are apprehended the first thing you ask them what do you want to do in the future the first thing they would say is become a soldier an army man and to me that's gun addiction having dropped one kind of gun they're ready to pick up other guns I do believe that it is because there are female interventionists that today most of them are in helpful professions like psychologists like doctors like physiotherapists like nurses male nurses and I think it is because there were women who projected that role to them that they have taken that on so I do believe women should be right out there in de-radicalization projects thank you there's just behind that a word on that sure it's okay I mean did you want to comment on the microphones on its way to you yeah just I mean the work on de-radicalization countering violent extremism is tremendously important what our prime minister often says is that not all disrespect towards women ends in violence but all violence against women begins with disrespect and and the number of you in the audience I can hear is he nodding he's he's regularly saying this on a whole range of occasions and it puts the onus on I mean men and women but on mothers in encouraging respect in their sons for their sisters and their female relatives and a lot of it does get down to be very very personal that cv is a whole I mean you could have a two-day conference on cv on its own and there are some very good conversations happening between experts and between leaders but ultimately when you look at it when you chase it back it gets to a very personal level and often from childhood hi I'm Natalie I'm from the New Zealand High Commission um thank you so much for an amazing discussion miss Adamson I really wanted to ask you because you kept talking about how important is to strive to be the first and um how there's a lot of a lot of things that haven't had a first woman for example but actually can we have a discussion about how hard it is to be the second or the third or um having a you know sustained woman presence in a certain field because I feel like there's all this amazing enthusiasm for people who are the first and then it kind of dies out in fizzles and you don't have as much support sometimes or maybe that's wrong um so I just wanted to open up that that question or conversation well that's a fair point this is the first time I've made a point about firsts I normally don't at all so it's not something that you would necessarily regularly hear and the reason I do it or the reason I decided to do it today was because our overall situation is not good enough so how do you get from a situation which is not good enough into something that's better well by definition almost logically there've got to be some firsts involved in that and if we could get everyone doing those first we could then have a more informed and I suspect actually a lot of the discussion around seconds and thirds would fade away because it wouldn't be necessary it would be the norm the numbers would be there in the norm a female prime minister would not be unusual and and so I think part of it almost takes care of itself but I've never been one to do things for the first time for the sake of it and and as I said I I really hadn't expected or consciously thought about going after firsts and I haven't done it in any of the roles that I've had although Gay didn't mention it but my very first first as we're on the subject was as captain of the Adelaide University boat club another August institution of 103 years that had been well served by male captains and not by women so it doesn't have to be in the sort of thing that we're talking about but this is a national security women in national security conference and I think uh let's first things first and then we'll then we'll see what happens next but but look it's a fair point of course and and something you might want to discuss amongst yourselves um Kiorana Te Pairu Herman from the Cook Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration first of all I'd just like to thank say thank you on behalf of my delegation for the invitation from DFAT and the Ministry of Defence to participate in these um conference it's certainly been a huge learning this morning for for us uh in terms of the issues being discussed um our relationship with Australia is very much conducted through the Pacific Islands Forum um so this has been quite uh quite an eye-opener in a lot of ways and certainly plenty of food for thought for us as we reflect on our own national context and on the regional context in terms of some of the issues being discussed I wanted to take the point um you made Francis about the importance of women supporting women coming into leadership roles um I'm the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Immigration and my own experience was that there were a number of times where I thought um perhaps female colleagues could have perhaps been a a bit more helpful and I and I do think it is one of the realities that we women in senior roles uh perhaps shouldn't necessarily have to to face um the other point was to perhaps share that my own view is the Cook Island context and and I think this is one of the things to keep in mind when talking about security issues globally uh the context and the realities vary from country to country and I feel very blessed to live in a country where perhaps our realities and our opportunities for women have been perhaps better than in some other countries and I was thinking about mainstreaming of gender issues and our own experience over the last 50 years and um and wondered perhaps whether in the Cook Islands context it hadn't been as much a talked about issue but rather um perhaps the social cultural issues are values that the Cook Islands prioritized has enabled us to to better support women come into leadership roles we're very small foreign service but our headquarters and the two overseas officers are headed by women one of the challenges actually I think for the Cook Islands going into the future is um we perhaps will not be bringing through in enough numbers our our boys and our young men perhaps such has been our advocacy of opportunities for young women we've neglected a little bit our young men but thank you ever so much for your insights it's been a huge learning experience for us thank you thank you can I just say thanks very much indeed for that comment and can I just say how delighted DFAT is to be supporting this conference and delighted that there are a number of women joining us from from other countries we know and and one of the reasons there's such a strong gender theme running through the government's foreign policy and our aid policy I'm sure you would have heard from Locky Strawn this morning about our human rights council campaign and various other things is because for all the reasons that apply here in Australia apply equally to countries in the South Pacific in terms of being able to get the best out of out of the populations we know that there are real issues big issues including around domestic violence violence against women and children in every country in the world but but we have a particular responsibility I think and want to work very closely with Pacific women and we have a very a number of ways of doing that so I'm really pleased to hear thank you very much for that comment and and encourage other delegates and participants to engage actively with visitors from overseas if you can join with me to thank our fabulous panel Francis Adamson and Chris Maritus for the contribution today and it's been very useful and I hope it's will contribute to the next session that's on the same topic but from different perspectives so please join with me in thanking Chris and Chris. And again if we could join with me in congratulating and thanking Marina for coming up with this fabulous concept and Dana.