 My name's Petrina Skiavi. I'm the secretary of the National Foundation for Australian Women. And I'm delighted to warmly welcome you all here to the 2023 Pamela Danoon lecture. The Pamela Danoon lecture is Australia's longest running and most prestigious feminist lecture. And I'd also like to extend a special welcome to members of the Danoon family, Christine and Gordon, who are here this evening. I'd also like to acknowledge and welcome friends of Pamela who are in the audience. I would like to commence tonight's proceeding with by acknowledging and paying my respects to the traditional custodians of country, the Nanawal people, and recognize their connection throughout time to its lands, seas, skies, and borders of which we live, work, and benefit from today. I would like to pay my respects to elders, past and present, and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. Sovereignty has never been ceded. This was and always will be Aboriginal land. The National Foundation for Australian Women supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart and supports a yes vote at the referendum. We accept the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart to walk together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a movement of the Australian people for a better future. I'll just quickly turn to some housekeeping now. A reminder to everyone to please turn off your mobile phones. Secondly, to let you know that this event is being recorded. So we have a video recording that the ANU is kindly doing and also ABC Big Ideas is recording this event tonight. Toilets, if required, are out there and to the left of the lifts. And I'd also like to please invite everyone if you've got your wine glasses with you, if you kindly return them to the table out there as well. I'd also like to thank everyone who found the building because I know it was a little bit difficult. And also if you'd like any information for accessibility for leaving and getting back to your venue, we're happy to assist. So please come and to get back to your cars. So I know that some people had trouble sort of finding the lifts and finding the most direct way to get back. So please let us know. Tonight's lecture features Mari Coleman, AO, PSM, on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Mari will be in conversation with Jane Madden, president of the National Foundation for Australian Women, with reflections on feminism, past, present and future. I would like to extend my gratitude to the ANU Gender Institute and Fiona Jenkins, especially for sponsoring this event and for all their hard work in making it happen. Before I introduce Mari and Jane, I would like to tell you a little bit about the Pamela Danoon lecture and its origins. Pamela Danoon worked tirelessly to promote equality for women and was the national coordinator of the women's electoral lobby from 1982 to 1984. She actively lobbied for women's rights in Canberra during the 1980s. Pamela was supported by a group of dedicated feminists who looked to establish a durable body to administer funds to promote the ideas and policies for women's movement in Australia into the future. By the time of Pamela's death in September, 1988, the idea of the National Foundation for Australian Women as a body focusing on research, policy formation and communication had been formed and was set up from a bequest by Pamela. The Pamela Danoon lecture was inaugurated in 1989 as a tribute to the memory of Pamela Danoon and as a reminder that the gains that have been made by women over the years have only been possible because of the enormous dedication of women like Pamela. The Pamela Danoon lecture aims to inspire and motivate women to find out more about issues for women in Australia and encourage some of them to get involved in a local organisation that works to promote women's rights and other major women's issues. We are fortunate to have one of the founding members of the National Foundation for Australian Women, Mari Coleman, giving the Pamela Danoon lecture this evening. Mari will be in conversation with Jane Madden, as I mentioned, and it is my pleasure to introduce them both to you. I'd like to introduce Mari by giving a quote from her. For me, the love is of good public policy, not politics. And somehow, I seem to find the energy to keep arguing for it. Awarded an AO for Distinguished Service to the Advancement of Women, Mari Coleman's name has been synonymous with the women's movement in Australia for the past 60 years. She maintains her indignation at the gender pay gap and has championed everything from universal access to childcare to paid maternity leave. A lot of these issues take tremendous persistence, she says. Mari was the first woman in Australia to head a statutory authority when she chaired the Whitlam Government's Social Welfare Commission in 1973. She had a long and distinguished career in the public service, being awarded a public service medal in 1990 and a centenary medal in 2011. Mari was a founding member in 1989 of the National Foundation for Australian Women and chaired the Social Policy Committee until early 2020. The Social Policy Committee of the National Foundation for Australian Women plays a leadership role for women's organisations nationally in the research and analysis of the impacts of policies on women. She is also a committee member for the Australian Women's Archive Project. Mari has been inducted into the Victorian Parliament's Honor Roll of Women and the ACT Honor Roll of Women. Jane Madden is the President of the National Foundation for Australian Women. Jane is the founder and principal of a Canberra advisory firm, Brickfield Insights, specialing in strategy, capability and international business development and also works as an executive coach to private and public sector leaders. She has held positions at the most senior levels of the Commonwealth departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Industry and Prime Minister and Cabinet. A former Deputy Secretary in the DFAT portfolio, she led a highly successful diplomatic career including as ambassador to UNESCO Paris, councillor, Australian Embassy Tokyo and assignments in Asia, Africa and Pacific. Throughout her professional and personal life, Jane has been passionate about the role of women in society and in the workforce. Jane is also a highly regarded non-executive director with over 15 years experience as chair and member of boards and committees across government, business and the not-for-profit sector. As well as serving as president of the NFAW, Jane is the global chair of the Fred Hollows Foundation and is on the boards of Australian business volunteers and the Canberra Institute of Technology and a number of startup ventures and advisory committees. I'd like now to warmly welcome Mari and Jane. Right. Thank you so much, Petrina. And what a joy and privilege it is, Mari, to be in conversation with you as we hear of your reflections on feminism, past, present and to the future. Can I say on behalf of us all, firstly, happy birthday. Happy 90th birthday. I also want to say happy 50th birthday because as Penny Wong reminded us this week with International Women's Day, this year, this week marks 50 years since Mari became appointed as the first Australian woman to lead a Commonwealth government agency. In 1973, as head of Whitlam's Social Welfare Commission, 50 years, half a century. That is also worth a round of applause. As well as Penny Wong, this week, we've had salutations across so many parts of Australia on the occasion of your birthday and these anniversaries. And this afternoon at the National Press Club, Sam Moston also saluted you and that's worth catching on eye view as well. But really, turning to you, Mari, I think we're all keen to tell a little bit about the early years. Tell us a little bit about your early life and the beginnings of this incredible journey and incredible career that you've had. Thank you. Oh, well, how early, Jane? I had the very good fortune to grow up in rural Australia, not as part of the established rural and the gentry. My father worked for the New South Wales Government Railways and we travelled extensively because that was... First of all, it was extremely fortunate in the Depression to have a job. Secondly, to have a job with a government entity which even in the worst years paid them. They continued to employ my father but they were paid once a month, one week and four. So, and my father being of Scots heritage and my mother, whose family were of mixed Irish and Yorkshire, were dedicated to the proposition that one studied and one worked and with any luck got out of this. So, from an early age, I was encouraged to study it. So I did... My early years of education were with the... what was then called Black Flyers Correspondence School, the New South Wales Education Department. And I would go down to the train station with my father and wait for the train to go by that would drop the bag with my work for the next week but also pick up the bag which contained my work for the previous week, yes. So it was an interesting way to deal with education. There was, of course, no telephone, no other kind of communication other than that. So that was the start of my education but I did finish up at rural high schools. Right. And when did your interest in quality, in gender equality begin to emerge? How did that manifest, please? Oh, look, that's hard to say. I can remember having a heated argument with a schoolteacher when I was about 14, I suppose, on the issue of equal pay. Right, 14. So this is the 40s and he explained carefully to me that were women to try to get equal pay, they would never be employed. I'm glad you've pulled... you showed him wrong. But so, look, I thought I would put that down as an elemental concept of fairness rather than any awakening feminist theory at that stage. Right. Marie, you've had in this journey so many amazing firsts and achievements. Can you share what have been perhaps some of your proudest movements, perhaps the appointment in 1973 as the first agency head might be one of them, but perhaps reflect on the achievements and then I'm also going to ask you, of course, as we women know, some of the challenges behind those things. Well, I have to say, I was surprisingly innocent when I landed in Canberra. That is to say, I had been very actively involved in Victoria in arguments, discussions around various aspects of social policy. I became very involved with Ronald Henderson and the people around him at the Melbourne University Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and with people like John Button and Race Matthews and others who were active in the Fabian Society in Victoria at that stage and the Victorian Fabians were producing a lot of interesting policy papers through the ages of Race and John so that I was involved in the discussions with them about health insurance and aged care, a whole lot of issues like that and particularly engaged after my friends Dick Scotton and John Diebel produced their seminal paper in 1969, I think it was for the Australian New Zealand Institute of Sociology. Anyway, it's 1969, nobody here is going to bother, on a proposal for a national health insurance system which was, of course, the system that ultimately Whitlam adopted in opposition so I had been very involved in the public debate about that and I think that was why I was approached by Hayden and Whitlam to come to Canberra. Without wanting to do a book launch, a sneaky preview, some of Mari's tales of that time are in a book which will be launched next month, Women and Whitlam but that's for another occasion. So back to those firsts, you know, relisting some of those things and perhaps being the only woman in the room some of those discussions, those important evolving policy developments, how did you find those, how challenged were you as a woman in some of those circles, both before Canberra and then of course as you came to Canberra? I found it tolerably easy in the Victorian system to be involved in those debates and actually had quite good relations with some of the liberal coalition governments in Victoria. I often used to have lunch with the Minister for Welfare, a gentleman called Ian Smith who was such a sweet Tory and he used to be so mortified if I offered to pay for lunch I can't describe it to you but I got on very well with Robert Hamer who became Premier and so forth and had a prickly relationship with Henry Balti who once asked me when I went in on a delegation whether I was with Victoria or for them in Canberra. He thought that way. Interesting man. The Canberra situation was very different. I had never been a public servant. It's something of a disadvantage suddenly finding one's self-head of an agency in the public service and I tended to make unfortunate jokes very much the result of some of my daughters such as I never thought I'd meet a permanent head and now anyway it turned out that this was a really bad joke and I was more or less the age of the daughters of most of the blokes who are the heads of agencies so they were as bemused as I was and the additional problem when it came to the Department of Social Services as it then was was that Bill Hayden who was my minister was very keen to introduce a number of new measures which were absolutely inimical to the very conservative values of some of the senior blokes and it was, I mean an archetypal example which is discussed in that book where we fight over a payment for single mothers and some of the arguments which were advanced in the Department were ludicrous. I recall a deputy secretary saying something to this effect if we were to give single women a payment that is greater than the rate of agricultural laborers payment in Tasmania it could lead to homicides and I said it's a non-secretary but it was that kind of talking past each other was very difficult on a lot of stuff. And while you're treating these boards you're also balancing family life and I want to salute Murray's family in the audience and that must have also been a very difficult challenge. We had talked as a family about me taking up the position and the idea was that I would commute between Canberra and Melbourne each week and that I would have a housekeeper and that sort of worked but unfortunately the excellent woman who had been recruited by my family friends, the Cullens, Peter former advisor to Goff and they lived at the end of our street. My children grew up with the Cullens. She suffered a family bereavement and that arrangement broke down and the consequence was that the two younger daughters came to Canberra. It's interesting when we think about child care too today so much was also established in terms of the architecture in the 70s and you were the inaugural director setting up the Office of Child Care in 1976 looking back on that how do you think it set the pattern for families going forward in the last few decades of Australian light. It was an extremely interesting time. When Fraser came in he had a I think lots of people thought Fraser was an absolute ogre. They subsequently learned that worse was to come. He was an educated man who had educated family and he actually quite approved of child care which was quite surprising. Margaret Whitlam became the minister responsible and I think she was initially rather surprised at how enthusiastic Malcolm was about child care. I'll tell you an anecdote one of the first cabinet meetings which I did attend a group of women, one of whom led by a woman who had been quite a good friend of mine running the women who want to be women whoever thought it weren't had come to Canberra to congratulate the Prime Minister and they promenaded to the Parliament and into the cabinet room with a cake on which they had embroidered that a woman's place is in the home. They're not embroidered, they decorated and I can tell you that that was one of the first times I became aware of how Margaret Gullfald's neck stiffened as did her jaw to say that she was not happy and underestimates it. But at that cabinet meeting the minister I'm going to have to try to remember his name, he was known as the little leg spinner from down in one of the southwestern areas of southwestern gentry in Victoria introduced the proposition that the child care act of 69 had been introduced by a liberal government and obviously that was what we were going to support and there was a general comment around the cabinet office, cabinet room that even though most of these gentlemen didn't have the faintest clue what child care was if it was a liberal policy and a liberal act then it was good, good go, good to go. So we began the task of trying to use the act and at the same time it was also my duty to completely wind back common wealth funding for preschools which was a bit against the grain but what one is charged with doing is one does, provided of course in current circumstances that it's actually legal. Well taking some of those battles we know that the Productivity Commission even now is being asked by the government to do another inquiry into child care. So moving to the current times I'm really interested because your passion for policy is always to think of further reform and how things can be improved. What do you think should happen with early child care today? Well it's also worthwhile noting that the South Australian government has Gillard doing a Royal Commission there into early childhood which I think is extremely interesting. One of the characteristics of the 70s was a general passion for things being run by the community at community level. Now that's great under certain circumstances. It was clearly a revolution against excessively bureaucratic management of all sorts of things but it did mean that when it came to establishing child care we were talking about individual little services with no coordination structure, no opportunities for staff training, development and career options and I think we're still seeing the bad consequences of that. I think I did a review for the South Australian government of early childhood in 84 it was and did help to set something in place there which made the state government do much more to bring child care and early childhood education services together and I think that would be an important thing that I'd hope the Productivity Commission is taking into account at this time but I do think when we're talking about the problems with attracting and maintaining staff in any of the care sectors child care is a particular example. We do have to take account of the fact that if people are left in atomised services there's often a limited amount of career opportunity and there may be great problems in simply trying to address staff retention and attraction and solely through wages. I think there are other aspects which I hope the Commission is going to take into account. Thank you. Looking more broadly at policy reform that matters to gender equality and thinking about the Albanese government today what's your assessment of their early days and their approach? Well great expectations in a time of budgetary constraint which is a very complicated time obviously the government has decided that they're prepared to back such issues as improvements to paid parental leave and Marion and I know what a challenge that has been to get it even in let alone thankfully beginning to see improvements they're committed to a massive expansion in child care. They've also committed to massive enhancements in residential aged care but again today I hear that the residential aged care sector is talking about a seven to eight thousand shortage of nurses by the end of the year now you can't conjure seven to eight thousand competent aged care nurses out of the woodwork before the end of the year there has simply been totally inadequate attention given over the past decade or so to the issues of recruitment and education opportunities I could go off on a rift about my views about the stupidity about privatizing the tape sector but we might leave that for another time but unless we want to keep on having crises about inability to move good policies forward then we have to have forward looking really solid commitment to training education and maintenance of people in these areas Yes thank you. Yesterday International Women's Day Minister Katie Gallagher mentioned the government's first status of women report card which is a very welcome initiative from NFAW's perspective but the data in it is very sobering one in two women in Australia sexually harassed over 55 year old women the fastest growing group of homelessness in this country and so on and so forth it's a very shocking read in many respects and yet 30% of Australian men consider that gender equality doesn't exist so let's hope like some report cards it gets better over time because God forgive it it gets worse your reflections on why after all these inroads and we've just taken childcare as one example but there's so many other areas where great strides were made why are we here in 2023? Well I was watching ABC TV for Sam Boston's speech today regrettably the just as she was getting onto the question of the reluctance of some blokes to come to grips with equality the ABC cut away to an interview with the Prime Minister in India and a cricket match so I didn't get the benefit of Sam's observations on that but I do think there is a solid group of people who have always argued that there is no such thing as a gender wage gap and we had a Prime Minister not so long ago who enunciated on International Women's Day the proposition that he was not opposed to women advancing as long as he didn't mean some men losing well if you see equality as a zero sum game then you're always going to have that kind of opposition in some quarters I think and I don't think we have achieved a total change in general attitudes I don't know whether we're going through another wave but I know that there was a lot of enthusiasm about opportunities for women and growth in the Whitlam period even though in the Hawke period when Susan Ryan did such a splendid job introducing affirmative action and so forth we were still seeing by the second half of the series constant media discussions about is feminism over does the women's movement still exist and in fact it was that kind of discussion which was one of the triggers for us establishing the National Foundation at that time and I do think some parts of the women's movement who had been vigorously active in the 70s had moved into the arduous task of running women's services and therefore weren't necessarily out arguing the general principles and so we went through another period of people saying women's movements all over now I think we're back we've sort of climbed back a bit we've done quite a lot of work against some times very adverse circumstances I think the work that Kate Jenkins has done has been absolutely terrific again I think we're at a time where a lot of people say well you've done so much I suppose we must simply live with the fact that there will be waves of enthusiasm and waves of achievement and then periods of hopefully not going backwards thank you well I had the pleasure to be in the room with Sam and her response actually struck quite a similar chord and talked about you know gender equality not being a zero sum game you know everyone can benefit and the rising tide can carry many boats and I'm not exactly paraphrasing but there was a similarity in her comments to you today Murray you made reference there to women's movements and of course you know with my role in NFAW I'll have to ask you what's your perspective on the role of the diverse women's movements and any sort of advice or guidance to us and others in the room and more generally goodness persistence I think just bloody minded persistence is the name of the game quite frankly and not losing sight of where one hopes to move things that's just it but persistence, persistence always persistence and aren't you the absolute embodiment of that looking to the future if I may are you optimistic about gender equality if we maintain that steady persistence that you're urging us all to do so I remember years ago perhaps it was Elizabeth Reid I'm not sure making the observation that a woman who sought to achieve equality lacked ambition look women I mean if one looks back over the broad sweep of history it's not easy to find a time when there has been equality and I think when one looks at the resurgence of certain kinds of extremely conservative religious beliefs for example I'm not trying to pick on any particular faith here but I'm just observing that there aren't very many who promulgate ideas of equality and we do seem to be in a time of increasing emphasis I read news out of the United States with increasing depression but that's not the only place that depresses me I only have to read about what's happening in Iran or one or two other places to again be equally depressed about what's happening to the rights of women the Taliban preventing children, girl children from school we live in some dark times but I think it's extremely important that we continue to keep an eye on where we want to go and that we continue to have in the country like Australia not only domestic but also foreign policies which respect women's rights for you personally do you have any particular aspirations? I just wish I could find somebody who could help me with weeding ever practical Maori well look it's since I broke my hip my balance is improving but I cannot get down there no practical look I am slowly withdrawing from very active roles although I snipe from the side in ever articulate fashion so no I am delighted to see successive generations of increasingly well educated girls coming through young women coming through I mean I was one of a very small cohort when I went to Sydney University in 1950 and I can tell you that in the economics faculty it was an even smaller cohort so things are changing and women are going through tertiary education at a much greater rate than they ever were and I think I retain the view that education is an invaluable tool in progressing women's equality we're going to have the opportunity for one or two questions from the floor so if there is one or two people and I haven't prepped please can you come and stand up near the microphone so that we can pick up the recording don't be shy questions please to Murray not necessarily comments we'll have time for those later on Murray with those aspirations and reflections do you have any advice to do your former self that you could perhaps share with us to that young Murray Coleman in the economics faculty of 1950 Sydney University or back in the country Victoria well there we go perhaps it would be just to generally say don't be so nervous it might be okay right confidence confidence and persistence okay we have I think a question coming forward please do so very interesting thank you very much Murray as many of us in this room know working in the public service is a series of wins and losses two steps forward three steps back shuffle sideways etc but reflecting back on your time what would you see as the greatest success and what would you see perhaps as a missed opportunity or something which with the perspective of greater wisdom you might have done differently and come out better well without trying to grade some of those things it is absolutely true I remember talking with another senior officer at one year and observing that it was very hard for people who were hopeful that all of the women who were at senior level were going to achieve things to get it across that so much of our time was spent preventing things the brilliant savings options of course we've just had some recently very distressing examples of savings options that should have been prevented I'm finding it hard to answer that question in specifics I do think of missed opportunities I remember the work that Meredith Edwards did in bringing forward a proposal in the hawk government for an extensive taper for sole parents which would facilitate gradual increased transition into the workforce but while still maintaining economic security Meredith that's a very short version of what you had proposed and I think now of how that was distorted with the rubric of mutual responsibility and how a job is better than any kind of welfare we have seen over the last decade an astonishing reversal of the philosophical base on which the wartime established post war reconstruction and the basis of the modern social welfare system where the idea was a dignified life and a system of entitlements now within that rubric the idea was that people were entitled to a certain level of payment no more and no less but nevertheless it was there as an entitlement I think the greatest disappointment to me has been to watch the extent to which that sense of a legitimate entitlement for the citizen who's paid taxes has evaporated in this rubric of mutual obligation which doesn't seem to evolve doesn't seem to be very mutual and has led to a very very punitive attitude towards people who are entitled to support from the taxpayer I don't think that's answered your question I'm sorry but that's a general observation Thank you and we're saying this of course in the midst of the robo debt inquiry which you alluded to there We have another question coming forward thank you Thank you ladies Thank you for your lecture and well my question may be not that suitable because well I noticed that there are some radical action and well thoughts about women rights so when we are fighting for it some people it may be some radical because it is still at the beginning and their thoughts about women rights is like teenagers so they have seen it but maybe they may be radical or not that suitable and I think it's reasonable because we all encounter some discrimination or some insult in our life so it may arise anger or some so but someone think it's not reasonable because others will look down upon people who fight for women rights because of these radical thoughts so I'm wondering whether my thinking about it is reasonable is right or do you have some advice because I'm really confused about it thank you very much and so the role of radical feminists that's really at the heart of that wonderful question well I think it's very interesting to read the work of Professor Wright I'm trying to think of her first name the historian who's published a couple of years ago Claire Wright yes a wonderful book about the feminists of the federation period in Australia and they were very radical they were very radical I think the young woman from Adelaide who took herself to London and devised the idea of going up in a balloon and throwing feminist pamphlets out of a balloon as it went across London was absolutely astonishing at that time the definition of what's radical keeps on changing you know and people get used to certain kinds of things and it stops being seen as radical when I was a university student to talk about access to reproductive health was dangerously radical dangerously radical these days we're still having arguments about it but we're now talking about whether or not access to reproductive health services should be available but why isn't access better what's radical changes from time to time my dear is what I'm trying to say don't be frightened at any stage if somebody says that your ideas are radical that's a reflection of them out of you wonderful words we have time for one more question I think thank you hi I think your reflections on your policy career are amazing but you alluded a bit I guess to you know when you spoke about being the age of the children of some of the other heads of departments I wanted to know a bit more about your experience in the workplace we had I attended a session at my work today which is a heavily male dominated environment about what we could do to better support women in the workplace and a lot of people were stumped I guess with concrete questions about how the men could make very good useful productive changes to support women in the workplace and I wondered about your reflections on that I had the unusual experience of being head of an agency which meant that I employed a lot of women now that did lead to a certain cadre of Canberra journalists deciding to continually attack me as only employing women even though we were very very equal opportunity and I think it was sort of 49% to 51% or something like that I had excellent young men working for me some of them have done very well like Andrew Podger for example yes that's the public service joke I had good young men working with me and good young women and I didn't find that frankly a problem a lot of other people did when I went to the Office of Child Care again I found that the public service board was doing extremely interesting and useful things which meant that I was able to organize for some of my women staff permanent part time which had not previously been available and that was extremely valuable to several of my staff who had child rearing responsibilities didn't want to not have a career but again that was essentially because I was in a position to do it now I think this comes back to female leadership in the public service and it's whether or not you want to support other women or not and I don't wish to reflect on any of the current senior women at all but I think that's a very serious issue that unless you have leadership which is about equal opportunity it's very hard to get anywhere that's not much help to you is it she's nodding she's saying it is conscious of time Mari I was wondering just any final reflections or parting words you'd like to share on this your 90th birthday celebration week look I think what I need to say is that yes I've had a long career which has had its ups and downs but I have always had the opportunity to work with some absolutely splendid people whether they were people working for me when I was in the bureaucracy it's worthwhile noting that I've had longer out of the bureaucracy working on community projects than I actually had in the bureaucracy that happens over 50 years people like working with Mari and others on the campaign on paid parental leave you know it was wonderful and we had such a sterling group of academics working together on that sort of project the people who volunteered their time in the social policy committee the fact that we've been able to put together really terrifying documents for the last government on the gender lenses on the budget all with volunteer women one or two volunteer blokes but mostly volunteer women means that my career has only been possible because of other excellent colleagues and excellent colleagues people like myself and others stand on your shoulders Mari so I think even in her parting words we've seen that generosity of spirit that you have with those kind and wonderful words what we might do now is pass to Professor Fiona Jenkins who's the convener of the ANU Gender Institute and our wonderful host tonight I would like to just in passing to her though thank you personally for the leadership you've provided not just to NFAW over so many years Mari but to the women's movement generally and for your beautiful memories and reflections tonight and to acknowledge to Professor Sally Moyle who should be here who was the organiser she's the vice president of the NFAW but sadly is tending to her mother in hospital so we thank her and above all we thank you and to you Fiona thank you well it's time to wrap up this fabulous discussion and I must say Mari I feel you represent an Eurofeminism that was marked by so much audacity you know by wit as well as wisdom and I think that's a wonderful lesson for us to take this evening those things really matter as well of course as bloody minded persistence that's very very important so thanks for sharing all your thoughts on how to do it look I want to thank a few people first again Pamela Dunoon's family this lecture has run for many years in the late Pamela Dunoon's honour and every year it is a wonderful way of bringing together people who share aspirations and dreams for a feminist now or a feminist future and it's a great opportunity to celebrate a life that was dedicated to that ambition so a wonderful institution and we're delighted to be hosting it here on this very beautiful evening and I hope you've taken a chance to look out of the windows it really is a radiant evening to be having this lovely event of course I'd like to thank very much the National Foundation for Australian Women for all the work you do together with the work you've done to organise the event this evening I thought that was very elegant chairing Jane, thank you very much for chairing and leading this conversation this evening and thanks to the ARV who stepped in at the last moment to perform introductions and of course we send our best wishes to Sally Moyle who would have loved to have been here this evening I'd like to recognise the behind-the-scenes work of the ANU Events team who stepped in to help us at the last minute as well and Isabelle Bremner who's been my admin assessment on this job and has been doing a fabulous job remotely from Sydney so just to prove that thanks to the ANU Media team who are recording visually this evening and are in big ideas who are recording for the radio please join me in thanking again a feminist legend who at the age of 90 is still showing up and showing us how it's going to be done Mary Coleman, you're amazing, we salute you thank you