 Thank you for joining us here for International Women's Day as we honour the legacy of the late the honourable Susan Ryan. I'm really happy to see that we managed to coordinate the venue with its purple seating with International Women's Day and Feminist Colours. My name is Michelle Ryan, I'm the director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership here at the ANU and I'm so pleased to be co-emceeing this event with my colleague Fiona Jenkins, who's the convener of the ANU Gender Institute. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. We are in the Cambry precinct here and the name Cambry was gifted to ANU by our Indigenous community and I celebrate and pay tribute to their elders past and present and all Indigenous people joining us tonight. I also want to acknowledge that this land always was and always will be Aboriginal land. To kick off proceedings, please join me in welcoming the Vice-Chancellor to the ANU, Professor Brian Schmidt to say a few words. Thank you Michelle and thank you everyone for coming out on this raining evening. Michelle, thank you for your acknowledgement and I too would like to celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands and airwaves we are meeting tonight and I pay my respects to elders past and present. Tonight, ANU is honoured to host the first ever annual Susan Ryan oration, our flagship event for International Women's Day in memory of one of the university's greatest pioneers for equality, the late Honourable Susan Ryan. Before I start, I'd like to ask each of you to imagine the world. For some of us remember the world, we lived in before Susan's work to quote Susan herself. It was not unlawful to sack women who married or became pregnant or just because they were women. Maternity leave was scarcely available. Women could not get home loans. Girls' education was restricted and fewer girls got into higher education. Much of our community thought all of this was just okay. Thanks to Susan, the Australia we live in today has moved well beyond just allowing women to work, have access to parental leave or to get tertiary education. We are now a society that demands structural changes to ensure that every woman and girl is given every opportunity to succeed and lead. Susan's pioneering work in bringing about anti-discrimination and equal opportunity legislation whilst also blazing a trail as first female senator for the ACT and being the first female to hold a cabinet role in the Hawke government, those are just a few of the reasons we continue to honor her legacy. She has left a remarkable mark on our world and I can say on our university as well. She is an active member of our alumni community who generously gave her time to share her knowledge and her views. Tonight I am so pleased that Samantha Maiden will deliver the inaugural oration. This continues Susan's legacy and drives the important conversations which she helped ignite. Samantha is herself a trailblazer. As a distinguished journalist operating the hallowed halls of the Australian Parliament, Samantha consistently and superbly holds to account our most powerful figures and amplifies the voices of ordinary and extraordinary Australians through her consummate reporting. It is great to have you with us here Sam and I'm very keen to hear what you have to say as it's always interesting and always provocative. I have no doubt you would have made Susan proud as our first orator for her oration. I must now take a moment to thank Rory Sutton, Susan Ryan partner and it was always a pleasure to welcome you back to our campus Rory. It's especially important tonight as we honor Susan's memory together and the indelible mark that she left here at A&U. I also extend a warm welcome to many of Susan's friends and family here in the front row who have joined us tonight and throughout the audience. Thank you all for being with us on this really important occasion. Tonight Rory would like to say a few words so everyone please join me in welcoming Rory to the lectern. Thank you very much Vice Chancellor. I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the Nangamal people of this land and pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging. I'm here on behalf of Susan's family, siblings Judith, Terry and Carly together with her nephew Tim and his wife Susan, my partner Edna and Susan's adopted add-ons Mark Rowan and Mark and Rowan rather plus her close friends Danelle Wheeler and Derek Abbott. In particular I want to thank the A&U and Vice Chancellor Schmidt for establishing this oration in Susan's name to coincide with the International Women's Day. Education was a priority for Susan and it was at this university that her affinity with literature and the arts was more broadly fostered. The other day I was walking up William Street in Sydney I fear to mention that name but anyway Sydney when I encountered a serendipitous moment emblazoned on a somewhat dubious shopfront was the quotation, if you want to achieve greatness then stop asking for permission and that seems to be a great motto for today. It is a quote that resonates with me and says so much about Susan. From her earliest days at her convent school in Maruba when she refused to play with dolls to defying Mother Liguri over a maths exercise Susan always had a strong sense of self. Indeed it was Mother Liguri who exclaimed Susan you're not merely bold as brass you are brass personified. Notwithstanding her innate rebellious inclination something to do with her Irish background I think Susan regressed to be head of head girl at her school a leadership pattern reflected throughout her life and it was her Catholic upbringing that entrenched her desire for justice and equal rights for everybody. Apart from family as I mentioned her great passion was for education. As she saw it education is key to equality for all and is one of the best investments that a country can make for itself. Imposition rather of fee structures such as Hex portended the end perhaps of her parliamentary career but she kept on going pursuing careers in publishing, superannuation and as the first age discrimination commissioner with the Human Rights Commission. She fought also vain gloriously perhaps for a Human Rights Bill and an Australian Republic. What I remember most about Susan as a public figure is her generosity always she made it clear that her achievements were team achievements. Her political strength was based on persistence she acknowledged that her 1984 Discrimination Act had its flaws but created a platform for advances in the future. The all-or-nothing philosophy was anathema to her. For Susan it was always about just keep on going. Again thank you Vice Chancellor for this initiative in honouring a remarkable and beautiful human being Susan Ryan. Finally I have to say there can be no one better than Samantha our Golden Walkley Award winner for 2022 to launch this oration thank you. Thank you so much Rory for being here tonight and for your kind words and thank you Vice Chancellor for introducing us and now on to our inaugural speaker Samantha Maiden. As a political editor for news.com.au and as a veteran press gallery journalist Samantha has been at the forefront of breaking news for more than 20 years. She's been awarded Kennedy Awards and Walkleys for her work and just over a week ago won the 2021 Gold Walkley Award for her coverage of Open Secret the Brittany Higgins story that rocked Canberra and our nation and you can still feel the reverberations from that work. Samantha has carved out a stellar career and reputation having worked at the Australian and news called Sunday Papers but her career began in South Australia where she edited Adelaide University student newspaper in 1992 and covered state politics something to note for any budding journalists, student journalists in the room. She's also an author with her first book Party Animals published in 2020 and many of us know her from her insightful and thought-provoking commentary and analysis on ABC insiders and the project as well and we can't let this one go. She states that one of her career highlights includes being called a Mad Witch by Peter Dutton. So please join me in welcoming Samantha Maiden to give the inaugural Susan Ryan oration. Thank you that was quite the rap. I should add there was actually an expletive Prince of the Mad Witch but we'll leave that out because this is a family show. Look I would also like to acknowledge our traditional owners and pay my respects to leaders emerging past and present. Look I'd like to begin tonight by telling a story about Susan Ryan that I really enjoy and I suspect that she really enjoyed it as well because she was still telling it quite recently to journalists and others right up to her untimely passing. It's a story that takes place in Canberra after this missile about not quite 50 years ago but around about the year 1975. Many many Australian expats are outraged by what has occurred. They want to come back and help and do whatever they can to help the Labor Party avenge this outrage and one of those people is Germaine Greer. Germaine Greer wants to know what she can do to help. So she comes back and depending on who tells the story she either just asks Susan Ryan what she can do or is pestering the Labor Party about what she can do to assist. Finally a job is found for Germaine Greer. That job is baby sitting Susan Ryan's children. Now the baby sitting was more than one off because my understanding is that she actually moved into their house at Aranda. Can you imagine? What an au pair. Extraordinary situation. And on one blessed day Susan Ryan goes out to campaign. There's some sort of suggestion it was some sort of our graspy event and returns home to find her beloved daughter Justine having a absolute winging with Germaine Greer in the family kitchen. They are at war. They've had a huge fight over how to bake a cake. And Justine has apparently pulled out a white wings box which is how she baked cakes. Germaine being quite the domestic goddess has expressed a view that this is outrageous, disgusting. Did your mother even teach you how to bake a cake? Let me tell you how to bake a cake, young lady. And it's a proceed to give her a long lecture on how to cream the butter. But I should add because I spoke to Justine today in the preparation of telling this story to get the facts right. She said that Germaine Greer's cake sucked as well. And this was one of the reasons why Germaine was so incredibly cranky. Now I don't pretend that this ridiculous story that I've just told you is particularly revelry in any way. But I do believe that the juxtaposition of Justine going head to head with one of Australia's best known feminists over how to bake a cake is a glorious and beautiful story. And it's a lovely juxtaposition with what I think is one of Susan Ryan's greatest qualities that I observe as someone who is, you know, I'm basically the generation that's old enough to be her daughter. I was born in 1972. I think, you know, six or eight years after her daughter is the incredible modernity of Susan Ryan. You know, if you think about what Susan Ryan, her speeches, what she achieved, her general outlook, it's hard to find anything where you think, Well, that's incredibly old fashioned. I don't know if you've noticed that. But if you look at, you know, all of the ideas she had and the way she approached things, she seemed to approach things in such a practical way. And her ideas just seemed to me to be so clean and almost timeless. It was almost as if she was someone from another time in the future who was accidentally dropped into that period of time. And she just had such, I think, you know, clean, clever, smart ideas. Now, as Rory points out, she was prepared to start and build. She wasn't someone who said, If I don't get everything I want, you know, I'll stop right there. Thank you very much. But I think it is fascinating to think of the things that she achieved, some of which in an incredible short period of time. I mean, one of her other massive achievements was lifting school retention rates for students in Australia. This was something that obviously didn't just affect women, although it was very helpful for women. In an incredibly short period of time, she managed to get Australia away from this idea that everyone left school in year 10 to really increasing people to sticking around for year 11 and year 12. Education was obviously very important to her. She was the first person in her family to graduate from university. And I always like the fact that I should add, I know that there may be some people here forgive me now that are wincing with horror at the idea of a journalist giving their speech in relation to Susan Ryne. But I should just point out that as her memoir reveals, she did actually flirt with the idea of becoming a journalist. And she even spent some rather boring by the sounds of it time in the Daily Telegraph Library, where she was cutting out stories and research. But apparently the women there basically said, don't stick around here because if you stick around here, she was quite keen on becoming a journalist apparently. You'll end up writing the social pages or you'll be stuck here in the library cutting things out. And so, of course, she moved on. Look, I don't know the answer. There'd probably be people in this audience that have a better idea than mine about why her ideas were so modern and where her feminism came from. Reading her speeches and reading her book, I do have my own sneaking suspicion if some of this may be the fault of the nuns. So she did obviously attend a Catholic school and, you know, there is that streak of matriarchal society that runs through Catholic communities in a certain way, right? I mean, like, obviously, the Catholic Church has been capable of some things in terms of the prosecution of the rights of women, but perhaps aren't as modern as Susan Ryan would have liked. But nevertheless, there is a real tradition of having really strong, powerful women. And I think what comes out of her book is that even though there was obviously some nuns that she had some good old run-ins with in the style of Germaine Greer and the great white wings cake packet debacle, there were also women that encouraged her to, you know, think in a very incisive and thorough way. And there's another great story in her book, if you get a chance to read it, of one of the nuns flying into an absolute rage about the royal family because they weren't Catholic. And then someday, I don't know if it was a picture of Prince Charles or what it was, but someone brought this into show and tell. And the nun apparently theatrically just tore this photograph to pieces and said, don't bring any more pictures of these royals into my classroom because she didn't want any more of that nonsense. Now, in terms of like having a look at Susan Ryan's career in politics, one of the other things that I found joyful and entertaining was just the sort of matter of factness that she went about entering into a very male dominated environment. And she obviously had actually quite a got of fun with some of these blokes that were kind of dinosaurs in their own ways. And one of the stories that I always quite enjoyed was her interactions with with Mick Young, who she obviously had a great relationship with, who Mick Young also used to constantly for women in the Labor Party is boilers. It's not very nice. But this became some sort of running joke between them. And it was of course Mick Young who encouraged her to stand for the front bench. But I just wanted to read, if I may, a little bit from her book, which I found quite enjoyable, that when she indeed, I think it was in December, 1977, put a name forward for the front bench. When they did the vote, there were actually two women that ended up on the board in the first vote. And after the first count of the ballot, Jean Mills's name was up on the blackboard as well as mine. Not two boilers yelled Mick in tones of horror. Now he was, of course, joking. Everybody laughed at this. But subsequently, this became a bit of a running joke to the point where everyone, according to Susan Ryan, including herself, referred to themselves as the boilers. Mick acknowledged that there were young boilers as old ones, and then would ask the boilers what their opinions were. What do the boilers think about this new means test? Where would the boilers line up on this? He would inquire. A top boiler was a reference to incredible party worker Sussie Carlton. And her own daughter Justine was referred to as a knockout of a young boiler. Now look, of course, there would be many people these days would be completely horrified by this, but it seems to me fairly obvious that Mick Young was actually a huge supporter and an encourager of Susan Ryan's Susan, Ryan's, Ambitious. Then, of course, we come to the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act. Those of you who have enjoyed, I don't know how many of you have watched it, probably a few, I suspect, Annabelle Crabb's documentary, Misrepresented, will remember the fantastic story that is told in there about the abject horror at the idea that the sex discrimination reform agenda would lead to truck drivers leaving their wives. There was a great deal of concern that there would need to be co-drivers sleeping in the cab, the men would be tempted, and this would be a terrible state of affairs. I also enjoyed the fact that the sex discrimination bill was no longer referred to in that matter in many instances. It was simply shortened to Susan's sex bill, which sounds like something that you would want to vote for, but I don't know if it was really that helpful. Now, look, this speech is not about me, but I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself so you knew a little bit about where I'm coming from and how the ideas of Susan Ryan have, you know, played a role in my own upbringing, in my own university, career, and all the rest of it. So I'm from Adelaide originally. I was born in 1972, when of course the Whitlam government was elected, and there's an absolutely chilling and quite creepy story that's told in my family that at the age of three, when presumably I couldn't read, but I must have been able to hear conversations on the bus, that on the day after the dismissal, on the days following, there were all these, you know, headlines saying, you know, goff out and Fraser in, and I apparently sitting on the bus in Adelaide said to my mother, does that mean Mr Fraser's the Prime Minister now, which prompted some woman quite rightly to turn around on the bus and say, that's a very unusual child? Because, and you could say it was my first political news report at the age of three, not a very good one. Like, I think I just had big flappy ears and I was listening to people on the bus, but nonetheless, quite entertaining. So I went to university in Adelaide. I grew up with all of the stories of the fact that women of my mother's generation had to give up their work when they were married, or certainly when they were pregnant. And so I do remember hearing the story of my mother and my mother's friends. She worked as a bank teller and at that stage, I'm not sure if the rules have changed slightly. Like it seemed to me that she did keep working after she got married, but as soon as you were pregnant, you absolutely had to go. And so there was a lot of, I suppose just getting a bit fatter and fatter and fatter and then trying to sort of leave it as long as you could before you actually confirmed what was going on. And it's extraordinary to think about the fact that those things were happening, you know, even in the early 1970s and the late 1960s, because I think most of the people in this room, like fine wine or a certain vintage and so nothing, this will come as a terrible shock to you. But I think that there is a younger generation of women and men who would find that quite extraordinary and quite amazing. So I attended university in Adelaide and that was really my first interaction and exposure to feminism and a proper dose of activism. Now, one of the things that I always remember, and I've actually thought about in recent years is that early on in my career, well my studies I suppose I should say more accurately, there were two things that occurred. One was that I was friends with a lady called Amy Barrett who was the women's officer at Adelaide University. And she was raising concerns that during orientation week, we had these things called O-Week camps. I don't know if they still have them anymore. And there was this sort of running issue where there'd be a lot of alcohol and a lot of fooling around. And you know, like there's nothing wrong with that to some extent. But it became really apparent that the O-Week leaders who were largely men were using these O-Week camps as a bit of a sexual happy hunting ground. And Amy Barrett came up with the idea that perhaps was it really so unreasonable that was it a crazy idea that we as terms of the Student Services and Student Union owed these young students some duty of care and that there should be a rule that basically the O-Week leaders should, can they keep their hands to themselves for four days? Well, this caused like an incredible outrage. We were like the fun police, right? We were told that this was so outrageous. I mean, today it seems completely normal, but I still remember this gross outrage at this suggestion. And I remember saying to some of these boys because they were boys at that time, I remember saying, look, if it's the love of your life, I mean, I don't think they're really necessarily looking for the love of your life, but I said, look, can't you just wait like four days? Like, I mean, you can go and take them to the uni afterwards, but they were thoroughly horrified and outraged by this. Nonetheless, our reform was enacted. Now, the other thing that happened around the same time was that I was unwittingly involved in branch stacking of a women on campus group. I didn't mean to. It was a complete accident. I'll explain how it occurred. So during that orientation week period, there was a group on campus, the main women's group called Women on Campus. We had the best rooms in the cloisters. It was down in the basement. We had like a kitchen and a whole region study. It was like an entire bunker, a ladies' bunker. It was really good. And during our week, it was suggested to me that some of the older women were kind of bored at sitting on the desk where you sign people up. So I was dispatched to go sit there. Now, I just had no agenda whatsoever other than I thought that I should smile at people and try and get people to join up, right? Because they were paying, I don't know if it was 50 cents or a dollar. So anyway, I kept smiling my head off. And at the end of it, we had hundreds of new members, which I'm not sure if they completely agreed with, but it was fine. Like, we didn't expect everyone to turn up. But as a result of this, it was foisted upon me that I should become the convener of Women on Campus, which I was properly horrified by, but to some extent, but agreed to do. And the interesting thing about that, I'll come back to this later, is that one of the women that we were involved with at Women on Campus was actually Kate Thornton, who some of you will know was the woman who came forward with the allegations in relation to the former attorney general, Christian Porter, that obviously he denies. So she was actually one of our contemporaries at university, as was a whole group of women that will come as no surprise to you these days, Penny Wong, Natasha Stott-Dispoyer, Jay Weatherall, who became the South Australian Premier, Christopher Pine and so on. And it was during this period that there was another gentleman that came to our attention, who later became the treasurer in South Australia, and his name was Jack Snelling. And he came to our attention during Oweek because he decided that in the interest of prosecuting his beliefs in terms of pro-life and anti-abortion, that he should roam the cloisters of parliament, of not parliament house, I should say, Adelaide University, with replica fetuses. And look, there's always a bit of a debate, obviously, about protests and the right to protest. And obviously I do support the right to protest, but a lot of the women who were on campus at the time also had the concern that female students, male journalists, male students as well, had the right to be able to go about their business and go around Oweek without having this literally shoved in their faces. So anyway, four art crimes against humanity for raising this idea. Amy Barrett, who I referred to earlier, the women's officer, was invited to appear on a program that was quite a popular program in Adelaide at the time, a bit of late night listening. It was the Father John Fleming show. And the Father John Fleming show was run by this Anglican priest who later became Catholic. There are a few of those. And basically, Amy sort of decided that she was gonna go on, but she was gonna debate this gentleman called Jack Snelling, who 20 years later became the South Australian Treasurer, who was the one running around university with the babies. And she sort of said, well, this is two against one, right? Like, I need to bring a friend. So she said, can you come in and hang out with me and debate Father John Fleming? And I went, oh, God, okay. So I went on the Father John Fleming show and the charming end to this story is that, henceforth, we were described in Festival of Light Literature, which was a conservative organization at Adelaide at the time, not as pro-choice, not even as pro-abortion. We were referred to as abortionists. Now, look, I just wanna say that if there's any ladies in the audience tonight that have any gynecological questions, I will absolutely do my best to answer them. But I just wanna make it very clear that I don't have a medical practicing certificate, despite what you may have read in the Festival of Light Literature at the time. Look, the other reason why I'm here obviously tonight and the reason why I told that story was to kind of give you a bit of an arc of the story of how I became involved in the Brittany Higgins story, which is obviously one of the reasons that I was asked to attend and give this speech tonight. I think what's really fascinating is to think about the fact that without Susan Ryan and without the Sex Discrimination Act, we wouldn't have a sex discrimination commissioner, we wouldn't have a Kate Jenkins, we wouldn't have a Jenkins report that was commissioned and then called about Parliament House. And of course the treatment of women, it goes much more broadly than Parliament House. But I think the reason why Brittany Higgins story was such a lightning rod for debate was that there really was this concern about if that can happen to that person allegedly in that forum, what on earth is going on and why weren't a greater protections put in place to help that person after that accusation was made. I need to say as I say in every instance of this that a man has been charged in relation to this matter, he has pleaded not guilty and obviously I don't want to say anything tonight that would interfere with that process, justice needs to take place and we'll see that unfolding over the coming months. The only thing that I would say is this, which is I think it is going to be very confronting for a lot of Australians and I'm not sure if people are ready for this in the sense that for many, many years we have become used to the idea that sexual assault trials are run in a manner in which the alleged victim is almost a ghostly figure, right? Anonymous, not known, you don't know their face. Now that is absolutely their right but it is also dehumanizing, right? Like they're kind of this person that you almost can't see as flesh and blood and that is one of the long-term aspects of the fact that we still see in some ways rape and sexual assault crimes as something that is to be hidden or something that is to be shamed in some way. Now I still think that people who are the victims or the alleged victims of these crime have absolutely the right to anonymity but it has been really fascinating to see this new generation of women, whether it's Grace Tame or Brittany Higgins or the sexual consent work that Chanel Contos has done, really sort of throwing that cloak off and saying I want to be able to speak my truth and discuss what happened to me and there's a lot of challenges that arise for that in terms of the justice system and how to manage that and we're going to see that played out in real terms in real time during the trial. The final thing I would like to say is a couple of things in that space. The first is that I think there probably would even still be some people in this room that would be surprised to learn all those years after Susan Ryan introduced the Sex Discrimination Act that it didn't apply into MPs and why is that? Well, I write about that in my new book which hopefully might be out later this year, we'll see. But a lot of it relates to parliamentary privilege and so people traditionally think of parliamentary privilege is about the right to basically defame people, get up in parliament and say things without the risk of defamation action. But parliamentary privilege, of course, also extends to the right of MPs to go about their business without being threatened or sort of stopped from speaking their mind and going about their business and so there'd been this traditional idea that oh, you couldn't possibly allow staff or people to make allegations of that nature about MPs because people might blackmail them or people might use it to threaten them or to bring them down and of course all of that is entirely possible. What it meant was that there was just this group of political staffers that had far less industrial rights than most normal people would in most normal workplaces and that is something that is also being exposed and prosecuted by women like Rachelle Miller who is the woman who came out and said that she had had an extramarital affair with Alan Tudge. She's a good example of how the system is very tough on women that come out and make those allegations. She's had a really rough time. She had that report come out recently where she didn't participate in and the leaking of further texts to newspapers that actually weren't even part of that report to basically paint her as a bit of a disgruntled lover but I think that she really deserves respect for the fact that this was a conversation that she helped start and this was also a conversation that inspired interestingly enough Brittany Higgins to come forward because even though Rachelle Miller was not making any allegation of sexual harassment, watching the way she was bad-mouthed when she came out on that Four Corners program and revealed what had happened to her and the fact that she felt that she was sort of managed out of the system and managed out of a job when she came forward with those allegations. I think really radicalised Brittany Higgins in a way. Today is of course International Women's Day and in the last couple of days there's been quite a high profile campaign released that features the very well-known faces of Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame and Chanel Contos and in the last 24 hours there's been quite a strong critique of that from the journalist and activist Nina Finnell who said that she doesn't think... It made her embarrassed about feminism in this country, not criticising those women specifically but making the point that feminism should be more about... You know, not just about women in power suits as she described it, you know, Instagram filters, the hierarchy of survivors and victims, as she put it, that can sometimes elevate people that are regarded as inverted commas, good victims. Like, this is a really rough discussion to have because obviously all of the women involved in that have experienced trauma. But I think it is worth having that discussion as well and I'd welcome any questions in relation to that. It's also a reminder, though, of just the note that I'd want to finish on, which is this, which is that the stories of Grace Tame and the stories of Brittany Higgins' alleged rape are very inspiring to a lot of women because they have shown incredible bravery and courage and they've decided to speak out. But I don't think you should ever underestimate that the huge burden that places on those women, the fact that it is very traumatic to speak out, I think that sometimes a younger generation can see it in almost a very airbrushed way. You see the front page of Marie Claire magazine, you see the Instagram pictures, but I don't think you see the unrelenting trauma of providing your trauma as some sort of blood sacrifice on the road to change. And I think as we go on, we've got to find better ways of achieving change than putting that burden on those women as powerful as those stories are. It's hard to resist them because they look at what's happened in the last year. They have driven incredible change, but I don't think that you can underestimate the burden that it places on those women. And so we've got to find ways, I think, to support those women more. Thank you. I hope that that was informative or useful or provided some avenue for questions. And if I've said anything that offends you or you think is horrific, please stand up and let me know. Thank you. That was a wonderful talk. Well, it's up to you. I can just stand here. Stay here? Okay, cool. All right. Hello, everybody. I'm Fiona Jenkins. I'm the convener of the A&E Gender Institute. And we're now going to move to the Q&A part of the evening where you get to ask Samantha anything you like, pretty much. So if you want to ask a question, please come down to the front. There's a microphone there. And while you're thinking about your question and coming down, I'd like to begin with a question. Samantha, I was wondering, when you were breaking these stories around Parliament House and what happened to Brittany Higgins and so forth, did you have a strong sense that the time was right for those stories? And how do you have a sort of sense of the time being one in which that's going to be heard in a way that's powerful and doesn't just become a kind of backlash against the individual involved? Just have this for now. We'll sort that out. Oh, that's my fault. Can't take me anywhere. Look, I'd love to say that there was like some huge strategy in relation to the Brittany Higgins story, but there wasn't. There was a lot of work that went into it. I mean, she basically came to, started talking to me in early January of 2021. And I sat down and did a very long interview, about two and a half hours at my house in O'Connor, just around the corner from here, in mid January. And then I basically said to work, and you can't underestimate what a big deal this was for me to say to work, because I work obviously for a digital news site where you often write multiple stories a day. I basically said, look, I really need to take a week off to go through and completely do this transcript. And there's a lot of potential angles here to pursue. So they were really supportive about that, and that was really good. But like we just thought it was an important story. And I remember the most, the biggest memory I have of those early days was her sort of saying to me, do you think anyone's gonna care? Like, will anyone pay any attention to this? Like, will it be a fissure? And so it was quite shocked. Like it was like being in the middle of a cyclone when it all went off. And part of that was to do with, you know, there was all these new revelations and we found out things about them cleaning the room and this long list of who knew what and when and this idea of did they have a don't ask, don't tell culture and why the prime minister wasn't even told about it over the three days that we were negotiating with his office for answers. And it just sort of blew up. But I mean, I think at the end of the day the reason why it blew up was because women were like, had this white hot anger. And for some reason that story kind of just ignited the flame. Yeah, no, it's really such a powerful story. And can I ask you to just address briefly as well the questions around the sort of trauma that's carried then by people who bring those stories forward. How do you engage with that as a journalist again? How do you do that responsibly? Well, I took up smoking. And I hadn't, I hadn't really, I had smoked a little when I was writing my first book, but I went out during the first week and I thought, gee, I'd love to buy a packet of cigarettes. So I got a packet of Marlborough ice blast and I start, I just smoked a lot and drank a lot of Diet Coke. So real, really sort of positive, healthy things. And look, I've sort of tried, I'm usually pretty good. But I'm a bit of an all-or-nothing person with that sort of devices. And so when I'm into it, you know, I go hard, but like this year I've sort of thought I need to stop smoking. But who knows, I might go past the server on the way home. We've got a question. Sorry, that is really bad and I don't recommend that. But yeah, just being honest. Katarina. Hi, Samantha. I was just wondering as one of the most senior women in the press gallery, whether you had any reflections on your time there, working with other senior journalists and your approach to the vitriol that is sometimes thrown at you in the cyber world, in your reporting and the commentary that you get from, yeah, from trolling and things like that. Look, I'm so glad you asked because you've just reminded me that there was this funny story I was gonna tell that I forgot to tell when I was speaking and now I'm gonna subject you to it. So, look, in the broad, look, it's really hard to explain because maybe it's not hard to explain if you're female, but it's not like I've ever felt like discriminated against, but then that's kind of a lie, but I'll come to that. But what I always felt, and a lot of this was sort of internalized when I got to the press gallery, was first of all, I thought, right, you've gotta learn to shout at press conferences, right? Because you've got all these men and they're all yelling and different Prime Ministers have different approaches, like Morrison is very controlling and he, can you imagine? And he basically likes to, actually, I think, seriously mess with your head by like picking people up, this person, this person, and you're going, oh, I got a question. And he's like, no, no question for you over here. And like at the end of it, sometimes you actually just wanna gently kill him. But basically, when Howard was the Prime Minister, and that's when I kind of arrived during the Howard years, you had to learn, first of all, Howard was like, you didn't ask a dumb, if you asked a dumb question, he would like, murder you on the straight with a look. But you had to learn to shout. So anyway, so I learned to like, right? And you've gotta learn to like, like keep going, right? Like, so if other people are shouting and you just keep going and you've gotta like, thunder over them, right? And that's what you have to do. Well, that's what I thought you have to do. Anyway, when you learn to do that, that's when they start thinking you're a real bitch. And then, you know, it's like, oh my God, like she's so intimidating and she's so loud. And what does she think she can ask all the goddamn questions? So I don't know, there was a bit of that. But the funny story I was gonna tell was that, so when, it's the only time that I remember sort of feeling pretty kind of like, bruised was after the birth of my first child because I told work that I was coming back to work relatively quickly because it was an election year, it was 2007. And everybody reacted with complete horror, right? Like, and also sort of laughter, right? Like kind of like, oh, you have had a baby before. Like, you won't be back. And I was sort of in the end, had to sort of say to people, I'm not sure if you understand, like my partner's taking a year off, I'm taking four months off. And if I don't come back to work when I say I'm coming back to work, I will be homeless, I won't have an income. But anyway, no one would really believe me and they didn't take me seriously. And then as soon as I came back to work, it was completely obvious that I'd been gently kind of shoved into the weeds. And one of the things that happened that I always remember, which was this absolutely lovely guy who was the chief of staff and he was the nicest man. And unfortunately, Christine Wallace is gonna probably know who I'm talking about. But anyway, he was so lovely. And he basically, when I first got back to work in the first week, he said, oh, God, you know, like you're coming back to work very quickly. He goes, I hope you're breastfeeding. And I said, yeah, I am, but like, oh my God, how bad would I feel if I wasn't? But the punchline to this story was that despite the enthusiasm for some of the blokes in my, you know, the press gallery to check that I was breastfeeding, there wasn't much kind of regard for how this would be practically achieved. Now, at the time there was nowhere to like breastfeed or express milk or whatever. And so, and you kind of internalize the idea that this needs to be hidden, right? And so, sorry, you should sit down. I'm sorry, I'm going on and on and on. And so, but basically what happened was I went to see the nurses at Parliament House. And I said, is there somewhere that I could like strap myself to an electric, what a mental image, breast pump, right? And they were like, yeah, you can, like there's this storage room out of the back of the nurses. You can go out there. So I go in there with the plug myself in and you know, and then like, basically I realized that it's like this chipboard's living a proper wall with like the tea room to the security guards. And so they can't see me, but then they could probably hear this, vroom, vroom, you know, but then I can hear them all lunchtime going, yeah, what about this and that and expletives flying. And then what would happen like clockwork about 15 minutes is the very nice man who wanted to check if I was breastfeeding would call and he would say, Samantha, where are you? You're not at your desk, you've been going for, and I was like, I'm just downstairs, I'm getting something done. And he'd be like, are you, you know, like, what, you've been gone for 20 minutes, so when are you coming back? And the really weird thing was that for some reason, because I internalized this whole idea that like, they were really dark on me coming back, that I didn't feel able to say, well, I've got my tit in a breast front pump mate and I'm pumping milk, isn't that what you wanted? Well, it's happening. So, you know, I didn't feel able to say that. So anyway, that's what I said. But on the social media stuff, look, I know this is not a very popular view and it probably reflects very poorly on me, but I could not give a shit what people think about me on the internet, right? So people, like, yeah, so people say all sorts of the normal things you expect that like, I'm fat and I'm a bitch and I'm a cow and I'm ugly and all the rest of it. And I'm like, thank you for identifying yourself, you're blocked. And then I just never think about it again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Samantha. Thanks very much for a fantastic presentation. Thank you. I suspect that you and I had children at the childcare center at Parliament House at the same time. I hope my child did never bite yours. I do not have any memories of that. Give them hand and foot disease or something. I would like you to look into your crystal ball, gay crystal ball, please, and think about whether what's happened in the last year is likely to have any impact on this year's federal election. So do you think that as a consequence of a massive march, two massive marches, all of the media coverage of Brittany Higgins' Grace Time, all of the allegations, all of the 28 recommendations of Kate Jenkins, that's going to have an impact in terms of how Parliament will change and whether voters will think about that when they go to cast their ballot? Well, in terms of whether it's changed Parliament like it already has, right? Like, so there's been legal changes and there's now independent complaints mechanisms. So there's no doubt it's changed that. And that's important. But I mean, it's also one workplace and it's a workplace largely populated by highly educated, fairly affluent, well-off men and women. I'm not saying all of them are, but to a large extent they are. I think the interesting thing with the election campaign is this. There's obviously like a fairly large, rusted-on of people that are kind of Scott Morrison haters, right? They're never going to change their vote. They clutched onto that because they think it's evidence that he is malfeasant in some way. And that's not going to affect the election campaign. I think the more interesting thing that could affect the election campaign is this kind of golden thread that runs through the criticism of Scott Morrison, whether it's in relation to Hawaii and the bushfires or the matter of Brittany Higgins or the vaccine rollout. And that pertains to competency, right? So in the case of the bushfires, there was this idea of like the boss pissing off in a crisis, right? It was like, we are literally on fire and you're sipping a mai tai in Hawaii. Like what is your deal? And then he says things like, I don't hold a hose, sort of suggesting that, you know, he can't make much of a difference. And so in that instance, I think some people would go, what are you doing that job for, right? Like, why aren't you out here? No one's asking you to hold a hose. People are asking you to run an emergency management response to this matter. Now, in the case of Brittany Higgins, again, I stress, you know, these allegations are before the courts and it will be decided in that forum. But I think there was a lot of questions and concerns about how that matter was handled, right? After the allegation was made. And people were like, my God, like you can't even look after your own staff. So once again, it goes to a question of competency. And I think there was a bit of annoyance with some of his kind of, you know, daggy dad responses to various things that people thought were a bit tone deaf. And then obviously the example of the vaccine roll out once again that people thought that that lacked competency. So that's where I think that it will have an impact. I mean, like we did a story today on polling in the seats of independence where there was a much higher proportion of women that were backing female independence and that there were a much higher proportion of women who thought the government wasn't very good on these issues. But once again, you know, I think there's four or five high profile independence running a bit surprised if more than, you know, one to three got up, maybe only one. So we'll see. Hey, great lecturer, it's fantastic. Oh, hello, I know you from Twitter. Twitter, a great place to network. I have two questions. One, you're talking about different prime ministers and how they, I guess, treated the press conference. I'm wondering, did you notice any difference in the toxicity of parliament house depending on the prime minister or in the press gallery depending on the prime minister? And my second question is, I mean, I've been researching sexism in politics for nearly a decade now. So my whole adult life. And I was quite shocked at what happened last year. Were you shocked? Were people in the press gallery shocked? Oh, you mean when the parliament minister got up and sort of made this allegation that I'd been chasing people around in toilets without saying my name? I was like, what? Is that what you're talking about? No, in terms of 2021, the so-called reckoning and quote marks. So I've got PTSD. I thought you were talking about something else. I'm just wondering, like, I guess, you know, we all knew it was bad, but did we all know, like, did you guys know it was that bad? Like both in the press gallery, but also just in parliament house? Well, I think it's a bit darker than that. I think we thought it was normal. Oh, God. So, yeah, like, I think that there were things that weren't great, but I think we kind of accepted a lot of them. I know that's probably not the answer you're looking for. No, it's heavy. But yeah, like, I mean, I had observed, you know, like, you gotta remember that there was a group of labor women that came out and they had a Facebook group and talked about the treatment of women in labor ranks, right? And it's sort of fascinating that it's the liberal party women that have come out in broken ranks and spoken out. There's not as many labor women that have done that. And I think there's a variety of reasons for that. One is I think that the labor party, not always, but can be a bit better looking after people after they manage the amount of jobs at parliament house. The liberal party is, you know, they'll find them a job, you know, because sometimes people moved out of political offices through no real fault of their own, right? Like the MP just, this goes to the lack of industrial rights. The MP just decides that they don't want that person or there's a factional shift or they get rid of them. I'm not saying this always happens, but the labor party is a lot smarter at saying, well, we'll find you a job in a union or we'll look after you. And so you're still kind of in the system, if that makes sense. And there's obviously good things and bad things about that because it can be silencing as well. But I think that the liberal party tended to just throw these women on the scrap heap a bit more. And so they basically decided they didn't have anything to lose and they would just kind of speak out. But like I had observed myself, and I do write a little bit about this in my book, that, you know, I thought there was a real period during the Rudd-Gillard years, which were obviously incredibly stressful and like hung parliament and all the rest of it and multiple leadership challenges and just emotional disturbance and people, just a lot of drama, right? That I think they're, I'm not saying across the board everywhere, but there was I think a culture of a lot of casual sex, right? Where sometimes that's fine, right? Like it's consensual, there's no problem with it. But I felt, and the women did write about this in the Facebook groups, I felt there was an era, there was a certain period in time where I felt like some women were really kind of being treated like sexual meat in the labor party, right? Like that, there was just a really gross culture and I suppose, you know, like some people are allowed to, you know, if they're working in those environments, right? Like where else are they gonna meet someone to some extent? But I think that if you get to a point where there's just lots of kind of sexual interaction between these people that are working in this hot house environment and then sometimes those, sometimes men and maybe sometimes women too, but sometimes men are being quite sort of dismissive of these women afterwards and sort of, you hear stories about men having sex with women who were labor staffers and then just like not even looking at them when they walked past in the hallway, right? And, you know, that's relatively, that's like 10 years ago. So, yeah, I think there's some stuff that went on that was a little unhealthy. I mean, I don't wanna sound like a prude or anything, right? Like, but I just kind of, I don't think it was always a very good environment for those women. Thanks. One last question. Good evening, Samantha. My connection to you is... This is terrifying. No, it's not, honestly. This afternoon, I picked my, I took my grandson to a music lesson and I said, oh, I've gotta get home, I've gotta go to the ANU to listen to Samantha Maiden and he said, oh, her son's in my science class, I think it is, at high school. So that's a bit of an obscure connection, isn't it? But what I wanna say is, and ask about is I attended that, I've been to a lot of, in my lifetime, I've attended a lot of protests and I went to that March one and I was getting ready to go and a friend who I go to the football with and have never really talked much about politics with, she said, are you going to the protest? I'll meet you down at the bus stop near the ANU and we'll go in and we got on the bus and then there was this really frail lady on the bus and she tentatively asked, were we going to the protest? And I said yes and she didn't know where to get off. I said, look, I'll take you there, I know where to get off and how to walk up. And we got there fairly early and my question is, and I haven't heard any comments about the number of older ethnic women who were at that protest. Did anyone observe that? Yeah, I went to that protest to cover it obviously as a journalist and look, I didn't necessarily notice large numbers of older ethnic women but what I did notice was incredible generational spread. So there were children there, there were teenagers, there were women in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s and there was a huge contingent of more senior women. And yeah, I wish that I fully understood why that story exploded in the way that it did. But I still don't really understand, right? Because the awful thing about it is what Brittany Higgins actually spoke about in her speech at that rally where she talked about the banality of it, right? That she talked about the fact that this actually happens all the time. That's the truth of it. Now, I think that has some connection clearly with the fact that so many women came out, right? But it was just a very powerful experience and it felt like there was something quite sort of electric and it felt like you were in the middle of some sort of natural weather pattern, right? Like it really did feel quite incredible and I still don't really have the answer for why that story in that moment at that time, obviously it had something to do with the fact of the building and what should occurred. But I think that it did have a huge impact that sort of transcended politics. I think most of the time, people don't really pay attention to politics, but for whatever reason, women got really angry and women you wouldn't expect got on that bus with you or got on that tram and went to the rally. Well, from my own experience, I would suggest that I could name how many, I wouldn't name, that there'd be so many people in my life who I could never have told on and it seemed like that Brittany Higgins was that mouthpiece for our generation where you just couldn't say, the ramifications for saying anything were just too great. Yeah. You just sucked it up. Yeah. That's how I feel about it. Yeah, that's really interesting and I think that it was the bravery of her in doing that that was just, it's not inspiring, it was like a release, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Great, it was an amazing opportunity to start to talk about things in a much more collective way. Which I think was really good, but again, as I said earlier, I think that it's also a huge burden to put on the shoulders of a couple of women, yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Samantha. Thank you. Please go and if you'd like to. No, I'm sorry about that too. No, no, do stay up here because we want to thank you. We want to thank you. I don't know about that. Don't disappear, don't disappear. I've been jabbering on for long enough. No, I want to thank first of all, hang on. Thank you so much for that very powerful aeration and all the wonderful stories that you told and just a sense of your incredible journey. I mean, I think you present it, you're obviously an incredibly strong person, but some of the things you've done have been very brave and very challenging, I think. And that's an amazing kind of persistence that I think we really need to recognize and honor in women who really push the boundaries of the worlds that we inhabit and really change cultures in that way. I also want to thank our Vice Chancellor and Susan Ryan's family for their vision in inaugurating this annual aeration and everyone who's been involved in organizing it. Thank you. It's been a wonderful discussion and evening and thank you, Michelle, for opening our proceedings tonight. I just want to conclude with some of my own reflections on what we've just heard and just the extraordinary debt that we owe to Susan Ryan and the fight that she had to get the Sex Discrimination Act through federal parliament in the early 1980s, which really was the beginning of a kind of cultural war that we've kept returning to this evening because it sort of end a world in which things were normalized, as you put it. You know, routine sexual harassment was deemed to be the price that women had to pay in order to simply enjoy the privilege of being at work, which was deemed to be a male domain and the strength of those kinds of norms and the kind of violence that attached to policing them is really, you know, in many ways, what we're still living through, what we're still fighting. Even at the same time, as it's very hard for this generation to even understand a world when a woman could be legally sacked for being pregnant or being married or just for being a woman. I mean, that seems eons away and yet this kind of culture war that we're within still continues. And I just want to recall Susan Ryan's leadership and her fighting spirit working beside many leading lights of her generation. We thank her for that first round, as it were, of the fight. And I want to thank you, Samantha, for your role, along with others of your generation and this up-and-coming generation who are so willing to have the courage to speak out and report and open these battle lines up again and recognize that the fight isn't over. This is often, you know, a very tough battle and one of the things that Susan Ryan said was that my skin never grew thick enough. But nonetheless, she persisted. She continued with the fight. And I think persistence, as you have mentioned and has been mentioned by Rory as well this evening, is a feminist lesson. There are practices that we only learn through persisting in the company, hopefully of some allies, in sharing stories, in listening to uncomfortable truths, in holding the powerful accountable. And all of those things, I think we thank you very much for Samantha in your work. Of course, sometimes an avalanche comes along and clears some of the path. And I think Susan Ryan, obviously, as you said, did not act alone. She was working in an alliance with all these very powerful feminists who brought huge cultural change to Australia in the 70s and 80s. And perhaps we're seeing something similar happen today with that, you know, as you said, a kind of the climate of the Women's March for Justice, which is such a powerful expression of women's anger at what has been happening. And indeed, just here on ANU, forms of abuse and violence that were seen as normal, that were passed over and ignored just a few years ago are now being reported, are being spoken about, are being acknowledged and people are held accountable for what they've done. So although all of these incidents are very disturbing and I mark what you say about the trauma there and so important to remember and recognize that, we also should acknowledge the institutional change that comes with a willingness to listen and to hear these stories. And we are hopeful that the kind of cultural change that we have seen come about will keep moving things along, will keep us moving in the right directions. So on behalf of us all, I would like to thank Samantha very warmly for her inspiring words this evening and the challenge to take further action that I think she has put to all of us. Please join with me in showing our appreciation.