Misogyny Unbound

Julia Gillard was Australia’s twenty-seventh Prime Minster and the first woman to hold that office since the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia on the first day of the twentieth century. Her time in office – just three years – was not uneventful. She withstood a concerted attack on her tenure and person mounted by an Opposition that believed it had been robbed of a quick return to power after a humbling defeat at the hands of her Labor Party Predecessor, Kevin Rudd. The attack was fast, furious and relentless. It was also viciously personal, as only women in politics can appreciate. Her gender was the subtext that often broke out into open and unmistakable misogyny. And yet, through it all, she was successful in leading a minority government that passed an almost unprecedented raft of legislation into law. And, like other uppity women in politics, she suffered denigration and ultimate defeat, replaced by the man she had displaced three years before.

Gillard migrated to Australia as a child from Britain in the mid-1960s. She grew up in Adelaide and moved to Melbourne to complete her law degree. Working as a lawyer for a well-known firm specializing in labour law, Gillard trod the familiar path into Labor Party politics, first as an adviser to the Victorian Premier, then as the successful candidate in the safe federal seat of Lalor in Melbourne’s Labor heartland. She moved quickly into the shadow ministry and within eight years of entering Parliament was elected as Deputy leader of the Parliamentary party. This meteoritic rise owed much to her membership of the left faction of the party and a deal with the right faction to keep a watch on their new leader, the factionally unaligned Kevin Rudd. The latter inevitably sparked suspicion from those in the organizational arm of Labor due to what was seen as his Napoleon complex. Labor politics in Australia has always been deeply tribal and Rudd, convinced of his superior judgment and talents, sat uneasily outside the usual boundaries of leadership. Gillard was regarded as a safety check on Rudd’s tendency to ignore his colleagues and lead through the media and his self-professed direct connection to voters.

A year later Gillard was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and Social Inclusion. These portfolios covered three key policy arenas marked out by Australian Labor’s flirtation with third way politics. It placed her at the centre of the Rudd government’s attempt to reboot the trajectory of public policy away from the previous conservative government’s neoliberal program that had led to growing economic inequality and social exclusion during a prolonged period of rapid economic growth driven by a booming mining sector. As so often before in Australian history, voters turned to Labor at precisely the moment the good times ended. Like 1929 and 1972, within a year of taking office, Rudd’s government was faced with major problems, this time due to the repercussions of the global financial crisis. As other Western democracies faltered and fell into recession from which some have never fully recovered, almost alone Australia weathered the storm. This had much to do with strength of Australia’s increasing export reliance on China’s double-digit growth, a fortunate outcome of its mineral wealth. It also followed from the prompt fiscal stimulus pumped into the economy by the Rudd government. The major plank of this program was a nation-wide program of new school buildings and infrastructure funded under Gillard’s hand. This placed her at the centre of domestic politics as Rudd sought to enhance his role in foreign affairs, notably in a quest to lead the international attack on climate change that he dubbed ‘the greatest moral challenge of our age’.

The downside of Gillard’s prominent domestic role was that she quickly became the main target of the conservative parties’ attack on the Labor government. Prominent conservative politicians who had been in government for eleven years under John Howard found it impossible to accept that the Rudd-Gillard victory in 2007 was anything other than a mistake on the part of voters misled by a slick salesman (Rudd) and his leftwing, union-dominated deputy. The long-held belief among conservatives that they were the natural party of government, nurtured through the long tenure of Australia’s most successful Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, and the successful constitutional coup against Labor in 1975, reared its head again and convinced the Opposition under Tony Abbott, their third leader since electoral defeat in 2007, to engage in a concerted guerilla campaign of intransigence against any government policy and personal denigration of its leaders.

This proved to be a remarkably successful political tactic, aided by Rudd’s spectacular loss of nerve following his failure on the world stage to engineer a binding international agreement at the Copenhagen conference on climate change in 2009. The Rudd government had also proposed a Resources Super Profits Tax on mining companies that galvanized a well-funded and very successful counter attack by the giant multinational mining companies and their wealthy majority owners. The final nail in Rudd’s coffin came in the wake of evidence of waste in rolling out the stimulus package, in particular the scandals concerning widespread inefficiency and corruption that accompanied the attempt to retrofit existing dwellings with insulation to improve environmental performance. Several tragic deaths of untrained and unsupervised workers in cowboy insulation businesses put a human face on policy failure. As the multiple pressures on Rudd mounted and the opinion polls on the government plummeted, factional leaders in the federal parliamentary party began to look around for a new leader. This process of rising disenchantment is a familiar feature of democratic politics. Voters forgot that swift government action had averted economic catastrophe in 2008 and 2009; the focus was on what can you do for me now. The fateful moment for Julia Gillard had arrived.

She was placed in the invidious position of either being disloyal to her leader or disobeying the directive of the factional power brokers within her party. In a few hours of high-tension drama, so beloved by the parliamentary press gallery, she opted to desert Rudd, informing him that their colleagues no longer had confidence in his leadership. In due course, she was elected as his replacement in June 2010. The manner of her ascension to the Prime Ministership quickly assumed centre stage in the long drama that dragged out over the following three years. The Opposition under Abbott, egged on by the newspaper moguls, engaged in an unending depiction of her as Lady Macbeth. She had “blood on her hands”. She had “assassinated” the people’s choice as Prime Minister. She was the bloody tool of “the faceless men” of the Labor Party (this last insult harked back to heady days of the Menzies dynasty fifty years before).

The insults and innuendo rehashed every trope, every prejudice heaped on women who aspire to power, who have the audacity to challenge men in their natural sphere of domination. Why was she unmarried? Why didn’t she have children? Good heavens, she didn’t even want to be a mother. Why had she been so disloyal to her (male) leader? Why, why, why. She was blamed for instigating the only case of a sitting Prime Minister being dumped from office. This claim, of course, would now be called “an alternative fact”. Gough Whitlam was dismissed in supercharged fashion by a conspiracy that emanated from the then conservative Opposition and reached all the way to the Palace. Prior to that a conservative Prime Minister, John Gorton, lost his position as his ambitious successor deadlocked a vote on the leadership that Gorton regarded as an effective vote of no confidence and resigned. That party’s longest serving Prime Minster, Robert Menzies, saw off a number of challenges through cunning stratagems that made Abbott and company’s pious concerns expressed for the attack on the office of Prime Minister simply laughable.

That was not the way that Rudd saw matters. He fully agreed with his previous political opponents. He had been illegitimately removed by a scheming deputy. Hell hath no fury like a narcissist spurned. He had single-handedly brought Labor back from the wilderness and defeated the second longest serving prime Minister in Australian history. How dare she spoil it all. This self-narrative conveniently ignored the political fact that Rudd’s leadership had become increasingly unpredictable and dysfunctional during the second year of his government, clearly reflected in the polls and the success of the Oppositions tactics and attacks by powerful special interests, above all the miners. Rudd quickly became the Opposition’s most potent weapon. His media savvy and contacts kept alive the stab-in-the-back myth. That his incompetence in office might have contributed to his political demise simply did not figure in his account of what had transpired, then or since.

Seeking to end the chaos of the post-leadership change and to secure a mandate of her own, Gillard called an early election. This provided a focus for all the negative attacks on the government and its new leader. Rudd added to the pressure by churlishly refusing to lay to rest the feud with his successor. In a well-publicized photo opportunity their unwillingness to meet eyes became a recurring theme in the campaign, one that the Opposition and media played up as symbolic: how could a party that couldn’t govern itself govern the country?

The result of the 2010 federal election was indecisive. Neither major party won a majority of seats in the Lower House. The balance of power was held by six independents. In the negotiations that followed Gillard proved herself to be a more adroit politician than Abbott. She managed to attract the support of four of the independents and form a minority government that lasted the full three-year term. During that time, she was also able to navigate legislation through the Upper House in which the balance of power was held by a different and larger group of minor parties and independents. Two of her signature achievements were the Clean Energy Act and introduction of a revised minerals resources tax. Both formed lighting rods for conservative opposition. The carbon tax was intended as an intermediate step in the move to an emission trading scheme along lines being pioneered elsewhere internationally. The latter was aimed at clawing back more of the proceeds from Australian minerals extraction and export flowing to foreign shareholders of the large mining companies. These dual measures sparked large public rallies orchestrated by the corporate and media backers of the Opposition. But this was not just the normal expression of the power of dominant interests. It was also a deeply personal attack demonizing Julia Gillard. In this context Abbott distinguished himself, both in Parliament and by fronting many of the public demonstrations. The image of him standing in front of degrading misogynistic placards is deeply embedded in the public memory of this time.

That Abbott’s tactics and behavior were ultimately successful in winning a landslide victory at the 2013 election says much for the character of politics in Australia and the Australian character. In spite of major advances in gender relations over the past decades, Australia remains a society in which the sins of misogyny run deep. The deeply ironic cast of Donald Horne’s characterization of Australia as ‘the lucky country’ still resonates.

However, what the conventional account of the political rise and fall of Julia Gillard obscures is the very real achievements of her tenure in the top political job. Not only was she the first woman to get there. While there she succeeded under almost impossibly difficult circumstances to make a real difference, something her conservative successors have failed to date to emulate. No Australian leader since Gough Whitlam’s visit to Communist China in 1971 gained such international attention as Gillard’s ‘misogyny speech’ in Parliament on 9 October 2012. In it she famously skewered Abbott by declaiming “I will not be lectured on sexism and misogyny by that man. I will not… Not now, not ever.” The image of Gillard pointing to Abbott and uttering these words flashed around the world and galvanized a massive wave of support in Australia and internationally. Hilary Clinton subsequently publicly endorsed Gillard’s stand, as have other prominent public commentators. Following her retirement from politics Gillard has been in international demand as a speaker and adviser almost solely on the basis of this speech and its impact.

But beyond her moment of global fame and her skill as a leader of a minority government, it is important to recognize the real achievements of her government. These include setting up the Royal Commission into the institutionalized sexual abuse of children and the Gonski Inquiry into the funding of schools. The former, which finally resulted in a bipartisan public apology in the Australian Parliament in October 2018, has uncovered a register of incredible crimes of adults against children in organizations like the Catholic Church and Salvation Army, rendered even more shocking by the decades of cover up and continued victimization of survivors by the leaders of these organizations. Depending on what reforms result from the Commission, it may prove to be her most lasting legacy. The latter promised to reform school funding to ensure that Federal funds were directed on a needs-based model in order to reduce the inequalities in educational outcomes that underpinned wider inequalities of opportunity in employment and life chances. Unsurprisingly, subsequent conservative governments have worked assiduously to undermine the Gonski reforms, although in a partial about-face, The Turnbull conservative coalition government introduced a watered-down version – ‘Gonski 2.0 – with the help of independent cross-benchers in the Senate.

Beyond these areas her government allowed introduction of a private member’s bill that would allow same-sex marriage, a reform that was defeated in 2012 but which eventually came to fruition against continued last-ditch opposition by conservative interests on both sides of politics. Although initially personally opposed, Gillard in retirement came around to supporting marriage equality, as do a majority of Australians, as demonstrated in an unnecessary and flawed voluntary postal vote not binding on members of Parliament in late 2017 and the eventual passing of enabling legislation in the months since.

Facing the full weight of personal and policy attacks, the Gillard government faced imminent defeat in 2013. Her colleagues, spooked by the failing polls, engineered the return of Kevin Rudd to the Prime Ministership, in the hope that he could limit the electoral damage. This he managed at the margins, but nevertheless Abbott’s conservative coalition secured a landslide win. Ironically, he was only there courtesy of an earlier Gillard-style coup against his previous leader Malcolm Turnbull while in opposition. The irony continued. Within two years Turnbull engineered a Rudd-style return as Prime Minister. Neither he nor his supporters seemed to appreciate the irony nor repeated their earlier horror at the thought of unseating a first-term Prime Minister elected by the people. Only Tony Abbott saw the parallel. While steadfastly promising not to undermine the new government he remorselessly did just that at every opportunity, again reprising the tactics and intent of Kevin Rudd. Both the demise of Abbott and the attack on Turnbull give truth to Marx’s famous putdown – it is a classic case of history repeating, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The final act saw Abbott’s conservative rump ousting Turnbull but failing to get their man up, thus ensuring that the political whirligig will continue to spin.

Since her retirement in 2013 Gillard has been showered with honours, including Australia’s top national gong, Companion of the Order of Australia, a clutch of honorary doctorates, at home and abroad, visiting positions at universities and prestigious think tanks and high-profile invitations to lecture. She has continued to work for the improvement of opportunities for women and children and figured prominently as a supporter of Hilary Clinton’s run for the US Presidency in 2016. Gough Whitlam made a significant commitment to the work of UNESCO. Bob Hawke’s aspirations to become a global media celebrity crashed on the refusal of other celebrities to be interviewed. John Howard wisely faded off into obscurity, to be occasionally wheeled out to energize the faithful. However, not since Robert Menzies’ retirement has an Australian Prime minister been so feted internationally and in his case the adulation exclusively emanated from Britain. Just as Menzies faithfully expressed the spirit of his age, Julia Gillard can be said to have personified many of the tensions and achievements of today’s pressing concerns. In one of those nice ironies of life, the remorseless and vicious nature of the attacks by the hard right ensured her global impact and iconic role as Labor’s most recent light on the hill.

Note: This essay was part of a collection on key movers published in my book, The Spirit of the Age: Biographical Sketches, available at:

https://www.mikeberrywriting.com/book-the-spirit-of-the-age/

Postscript

The political demise of Malcolm Turnbull and unexpected rise to the top of Scott Morrison unleashed a storm of anger at the treatment of women members of the Parliamentary Liberal Party. George Orwell’s famous essay, Politics and the English Language, pointed to the way in which politicians mangled and misused words to fool voters. In his later novel 1984 he went further and used the term ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ to describe how what they say means exactly the opposite – irony without the irony. We can see this tendency in recent debate over ‘the woman problem’ in the coalition parties. In fact, what we really have is – of course – the man problem. There are too many men in senior positions and in Parliament to represent all genders in Australian society. And some engage in behavior that if repeated outside the chamber would be seen as deeply offensive if not downright illegal. This is particularly obvious on the conservative side but also figures across the aisle in the Labor Party and Greens. Preselection – especially to safe and winnable seats – is heavily tilted to men across the board. Whereas the centre-left have introduced quotas and other measures to boost female participation, the right continues to deny that there is a problem. What the change of Prime Minister has made crystal clear is that those women who are in Parliament feel under siege, bullied, harassed and denigrated. Julia Banks (Liberal), Emma Hussah (Labor) and Sarah Hansen-young (Greens) have all suffered from outrageous personal attacks over the past few weeks and no doubt for much longer before. But unlike earlier times when such behavior by their male colleagues was considered normal, even obligatory, they’re mad as hell and are not going to take it any longer. They are speaking out. Four of the independents on the Lower House crossbench are women who have formed an unofficial caucus, a ginger group to give the men hell. Their number includes Kerryn Phelps, the high-profile candidate who knocked off the Liberal party in one of its strongest seats, the one recently vacated by ex-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, throwing the government into minority.

As new PM Scott Morrison strives to maintain control on the deck of a badly listing ship, his crew continue to indulge in self-obsessed struggle to control the agenda. It appears that business as usual will win. Morrison is still stymied by the forces who tore Turnbull down, still wedged by the impossibility of addressing majority voter concerns over energy and climate change policy, gender equality, economic inequality and anger at the behavior of the banks, churches and – above all – politicians.

2019 is going to be very interesting!