SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
LAUNCH OF ANNE SUMMERS' BOOK, " DAMNED WHORES AND GOD'S
POLICE", SYDNEY, 24 JANUARY 1994
E& OE PROOF COPY
Anne, if I had of known you were this popular I would never have let you leave
my staff. You must accompany me more often with this guaranteed turn out of
media. Well, it is a great delight to be launching the book for an old friend, as Anne is,
and to be doing so where it is recognised that of all her great achievements, this
is perhaps one of her greatest, probably her greatest, because this book has
been continuously in print for nineteen years and it has sold more than 60, 000
copies. That must be a real feather in the cap for Anne, and for Penguin and
now as Bob says the book has been revised and Anne has written a couple of
new chapters at the beginning and at the end, and revised the work in its
substance. One of the things which I thought touched me in the book, she says it is logical
that the generation which launched the movement will have to see it through.
There is a certain weariness about that statement, which I well understand.
Anne is a baby boomer, and so am I, I was in the middle run of the baby
boomers born in 1944, when I turned 50 the other day I knew that all the Peter
Pan notions that we baby boomers have had, because we have resisted ageing
as no generation before us has resisted ageing, and that basically it is a losing
battle, a losing battle.
But we are still in there punching away, putting our views about, trying to reform
the place, moving the debate on. Anne is in that classic tradition of the activist
baby boomers of Australia. So here she is with her famous publication doing it
again, after having returned to Australia from a very exciting and interesting
period abroad and re-establishing herself here and doing things, further things,
for the Australian women's movement and for the status of women in this
country. Now, this notion of hers, she said it was logical that the generation which
launched the movement will have to see it through. And the other interesting
thing she said when saying that, she said that when she was editor of Ms
magazine in the United States the staff came to see her about the management
of the magazine and some of its content. And the presumption was by Anne and
her partner, the staff would be pretty much wanting to see things the way she
had seen things, and to be committed to, if not just simply the same ideals, the
same vision, particularly for the status of women and women's issues. And they
said to her, we are here to say that we did not want to be and don't want to be
like the editors. In other words, the debate had moved on, and the success
which women had had, particularly feminists in the ' 60s and ' 70s, with women's
issues, changing the status of women, had been so profound that the next
generation of people to follow them were in fact living in a different epoch and
that their vision and vista and their objectives were not the objectives of those
who had been the pioneers of change and of the movement.
With some basking, I think, in the success which they had brought, Anne was
then, as you know, running and editing a magazine where the staff were looking
from a position for some plateau in the change of the status of women. In ways
which were different to Anne, which drew upon the strength of the changes
which people like her had made. And she said that we now have to, in making
that statement which I said has weary overtones, have to start thinking about
things like being frail and elderly, and the lack of economic independence. Well,
she is not frail and elderly yet, but there may be some baby boomers who are
frail and elderly. So in other words, the issues change, and we are going across
the life cycle of a generation of women who started this at university, started
these issues, being involved in these issues at university and have gone on to
see the changes through.
One of the things I thought was most telling, and she makes reference to it in the
book, was the survey which was conducted in 1992 amongst Australian women
about the attitudes of women to the changes which have taken place in society.
And Anne was on my staff at the time and we considered the survey results very
closely. Women were pleased with the changes in their lives, with the increased
opportunities, with the greater freedom, with the independence coming from
employment, the much higher participation rates in education in fact the
dominate participation rates in education. They valued the choices which the
changes of the ' 60s and ' 70s and the ' 80s had brought to them.
And so one of, I think, Anne's conclusions upon returning to Australia from the
United States was that women's lives have changed enormously in Australia
across the course of the ' 80s at least, if not the ' 70s. But the changes were not
only here to stay, but women were rejoicing in the changes and enjoying the
choices and opportunities and that one of the frequent subjects of discussion
was the role of men in coming to terms with the changes in their lives in their
new relationship with women, their wives and partners, and that being part and
parcel of the current debate.
Now, I think it is true that those changes have been profound and that they are
widely enjoyed by Australian women. Because there is no doubt, if I look at my
political life, over 24 years, the status and opportunities of Australian women
today are nothing like they were when I became a member of Parliament in
1969. And a large reason for that is because of the pioneering work which has
been done by those interested in the status of women, the feminists, and by
people like Anne Summers.
Now these changes are very real, and I just mentioned a moment ago the
participation in schools and in university, now there are of course, more women
graduating from universities than men, in technical and further education this is
also true, we have got a higher participation rate in secondary school now
amongst women than men. And all of this has meant a dramatic change in the
opportunities for Australian women.
Now, we have had a lot of talk in this country in the last year or so about
reconciliation between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal Australians. The word
reconciliation has been used a lot and used with all of the meaning that it
deserves to be used with. But one of the great reconciliations which is underway
now, is a reconciliation between men and women and the lives they now lead,
with the changed role of women, the changed opportunities of women and it will
be, I think, many a long year before that reconciliation is complete, if ever.
But the progress and opportunities underlying it I think are fairly profound. And I
think most men understand that and they are adjusting their view of life and
society and opportunity, in terms of the changes which have taken place, and
the reconciliation which is required of it. It's a major adjustment by men to the
new order of life which has come about because of the efforts of many women
like Anne.
One of the things she talks about is domestic violence, and she laments the
prevalence of it as we all do because there was a lot of violence against
women in the early days of this country, and it's more the pity that it's still a partand-
parcel of Australian life. It's something I think we all have to be conscious
of. It's something which I think we all have to try and remedy. As much as one
can make public policy remedy it, the Govt remains very interested in the subject
and determined to do something meaningful about it. But again, it's something
which only societal change and education and understanding can, I think, really
make the difference in terms of that issue.
One of the revelations in the book -Anne said of course she needs to bring it upto-
date, and in a sense she's sort of admitting she's brought herself up-to-date
by saying that she's now a fervent pragmatist. Now, these are words Anne
would never have uttered not so many years ago. I could have saved her a lot of
anguish if she'd asked me 19 years ago, but I'm not quite sure she would have
been taking that kind of advice from me then. If even now. I know a lot of
people think there is a great contradiction between pragmatism and ideals,
between pragmatism and vision and the words become one which is overworked
and, of course, misunderstood. But pragmatism is not cynicism. It is
about learning the lessons of things, and seeing how one can advance visions
and objectives. A lot of my public life in the years before were managed by
ideology. We had the largely competing polarities the ideology that
intervention by governments in society was the appropriate way society should
run and then the competing ideology that the more unfettered is life and society
from government intervention, the better. We've seen that pendulum swing over
the period between the Calvin Coolidges in the US and the Richard Nixons and
the Ronald Reagans. Then on the other side, the planned economies of Eastern
Europe and less so the social democratic parties' interventions in policy over the
course of the century. These have been the competing ideological things. But
what's happened, is that ideology has faded as in fact communities demand
changes from governments and those people who are given a role in managing
society. And so one looks for if you like visions and then objectives within
those visions, and the going about of getting those objectives, and in the doing
of it materially advance the welfare of people, of men and women. I think
Anne's confession to being a fervent pragmatist, is that when she looks at the
women's agenda in this country from the late 60' s onwards and so much having
been accomplished when one compares Australia to other countries, not just in
Australian terms, but it in international terms, so much in terms of the change in
the status of women having been accomplished in this country she's seen
being put into place like building blocks. One block, on top of another block, on
top of another block the foundation, a structure and one moves on. In other
words, it can't all be done instantly. And while it's idealistic, if it's simply
ideological it probably won't happen or wouldn't have happened. The changes
needed to be engineered by interested people who knew what they were doing,
who set for themselves objectives at the time, and went and pursued those
objectives and brought them home.
Now, this is very much a commentary on life in general and certainly in
government and something which I've very much subscribed to myself. One
has a broad vision a big canvas as I've often called it -and then one sets up the
objectives and goes after them, one after the other, until there is a coherent
whole and when one reaches a plateau with a firm set of foundations, one
builds on further and goes on further.
Now, if that's called pragmatism, that's what's changed Australia from an insular,
frightened society one not prepared to get out and trade, and to deal with the
rest of the world in its own terms in the 60' s and 70' s to now a burgeoning,
outward-oriented and confident society and economy. It's been done by that
method. So too, have the changes in the status of women in this country been done in
that way. That is, those achievable things are understood to be achievable, and
those committed to their achievement go after it. It's sometimes called
pragmatism, but it's very effective and it's the effectiveness which I think Ann
recognises and nominates. Let me just give you an example. She came back to
Australia, to. join my staff, and then set about feminising me which she knew
was basically a hopeless task. But really what she set about was what she
always set about -and that was how next to try and improve the lot and status of
Australian women. With some other very committed people on my staff and in
the Prime Minister's Department, and in the Office of Status of Women and,
need I say, with an enlightened Cabinet we put together some changes which
have been very material just over the course of the year, in further improving the
status of Australian women. Child care, an issue which went to opportunity in
work, was advanced by the Government announcing and setting into policy, the
payment of a generalised child care rebate making this an area of availability in
the normal course of the Government's disbursement system, an opportunity for
women to join the workforce. It's something which we'd never had before, even
though the Government extended child care opportunities with child care places
we'd never had a generalised rebate for child care. It's there now, and of
course we announced further extensions of child care. The other change which I
think, amongst many, which was notable, was the cashing out of the dependent
spouse rebate into a home child care allowance which evened up some of the
benefits and incentives of the tax-free threshold and income-splitting and
recognised the fact that the primary chair at home had the responsibility and that
there are payments to be made. Rather than simply a rebate for dependents,
they were paid as cash by the Government to the accounts of that person
mostly of course, the woman, the Mother, at home. That I think is going to
change forever, the way in which we regard support for dependents in the
Commonwealth, and the way in which we will support and make available to
women in the main those direct payments, and the capacity that change provides
to do other things in policy. It was a landmark change, and the women's
movement have been arguing for it for many years and Anne was there at the
key time to bring the enthusiasm about and to get support for and to drive it
home. She's a great networker, she's a great talker. She's tremendously energetic and
everyone who has known her, can only marvel at the depth of energy she's
always been able to bring to bear on any subject, and the enthusiasm that she
has. As well as that, she has that other glorious quality, and that is she has a
great sense of humour. There are enough bores in the world without us needing
to be burdened further all of us particularly in important areas of policy, by
people who've got the blinkers on and are so serious, that it just becomes such a
leaden issue that one can hardly deal with it. Anne's always had that lightness
about her, that sense of fun, of joy, and I think this has made her so much more
effective, and has given her a sense of balance on life which has been terrific
for her and everyone associated with her.
Now I know her Mum's here today, and Chip's here, and all the people who are
close to her are friends to rejoice in the fact that this celebrated work by this
very celebrated person, has been re-written for another generation of
Australians men and women. It's a standard text now in our tertiary institutions,
and as a consequence Penguin has a been on a winner for a long time, and it's
likely to stay on a winner. So, could I say to Penguin, congratulations again
first of all on supporting Anne in the first place and encouraging her through the
years, to update this seminal work as the status of Australian women has
changed. And congratulations to Anne, for putting, her mind again to this
important work, which has traced over time the evolution from 1788 to the
present, the threads of exclusion and oppression, the threads of
misunderstanding and misrepresentation, the threads of prejudice, of
victimisation, of the threads of violence. It's there, written tightly for all to read,
recording the changes as we've made them. Congratulations, Anne. It's a great
pleasure to be associated with you again on this happy occasion, and to launch
if it needs launching again your seminal work Damned Whores and God's
Police. Thank you.