CART (2)20/10/2016
‘A beaut bird’
The Margaret Whitlam Memorial Oration
Fund-raising dinner for Hon Tanya Plibersek MP
Sydney
Thursday 20 October 2016
Good evening everyone.
I am so honoured to be here and to have the opportunity to pay tribute to the memory of Margaret Whitlam – and to support the work of my local member, the deputy leader of the federal Opposition, the Hon Tanya Plibersek.
I have called my remarks, ‘A beaut bird’ which is a description given to Margaret Whitlam by the Age newspaper. These are words you don’t hear much these days. We no longer use ‘beaut’ as an approving adjective. And of course we totally disapprove of calling women ‘birds’. But back in 1972, when Margaret Whitlam became the First Lady of Australia – not that that term was used back then! – calling a woman a ‘bird’ was meant to be a compliment. So, my title is a tilt towards those times.
It is a total cliché to say that Margaret Whitlam was a remarkable woman but what I would like to do this evening is to remind us of some of the ways in which she was so different from her predecessors (and even most of those who succeeded her).
I was privileged to have a lot of contact with Margaret Whitlam from early 1973 until her death in 2012. I would not say we were close but we were friendly whenever we ran into each other.
I often saw Margaret at Sydney Writers Festival events or at the Opera or the theatre. As they got older, and both became reliant on walking stalks, Gough and Margaret Whitlam were quite the grand couple as they slowly made their way towards their seats, often to audience applause.
Their affection for each other went without saying but they liked to josh and joke about all sorts of subjects, including each other.
‘I don’t what will happen if I go before he does, Margaret once said to me. ‘The silly old bugger doesn’t know to work the washing machine’.
WHEN Gough became Prime Minister in December 1972, Margaret suddenly found herself, after years of political widowhood in the western suburbs of Sydney, living in Canberra at the Lodge – with servants, with a husband who came home every night and with the expectation that she would be a public figure.
Susan Mitchell’s excellent biography of Margaret Whitlam[1] published ten years ago gives us an insightful picture of how she dealt with this massive change in her life.
At first, Mitchell reports, whenever the First Couple was at a function and reference was made to the Prime Minister, Margaret would giggle and poke Gough in the ribs: ‘That’s you, they’re talking about’.
However long they had fought for this political prize, winning it took some getting used to.
Margaret was not used to the spotlight being shone on her but she did not shy from it. Soon after becoming First Lady she gave a press conference that lasted for almost two hours and at which she gave frank answers to a range of questions.
Equal pay – yes, she was in favour of it
Women’s rights – ditto
Drugs – marijuana should be legalised
Abortion – should be legalised
Marriage – not necessary unless a couple intended to have children.
The press was ‘gobsmacked at her open and forthright answers,’ writes Mitchell, ‘instead of the usual evasions and “you’ll have to ask my husband” answers.’[2]
Margaret Whitlam also broke precedent by writing a regular diary in Woman’s Day in which she described life at the Lodge and what it was like being the Prime Minister’s wife.
After their first visit to the UK, Margaret wrote the following:
You can’t imagine how relaxed and human the Royal Family are. When the Queen is away from photographers and pressmen she is so amusing and also easily amused. We’ve all heard about Princess Margaret’s talents as an actress or mimic, but I was enchanted by several take-offs Her Majesty permitted herself – mostly gentle send-ups of people around her – even her own Mama. (Yes, she calls the Queen Mother either Mama or Mummy. The late Queen Mary was always referred to as Granny.) You would have loved the sight of the sisters sitting side-by-side on the deep-piled, cream sheepskin rug we gave Her Majesty for her birthday. They looked like ‘the Little Princesses’ on either one’s teenage birthday.[3]
Margaret copped a lot of criticism for this column – and for similar ones about a dinner at No. 10 Downing Street and a private audience with the Pope. She was attacked for breaching protocol. It was not ‘proper’,[4] to use another word we don’t hear much any more, a lot of people complained.
But Margaret Whitlam saw it differently.
She felt she had not just the right, but almost a duty, to share with the Australian people the experiences that they would never have and that she, by dint of political circumstances, found herself right in the middle of.
She also knew that she was physically an unusual woman. She had once been self-conscious of her height. She knew she did not fit the conventional stereotypes of femininity of the time. But then, neither did lots of other people and Margaret knew she could reassure them with her self-deprecating accounts of her daily life:
‘I came to represent all the ungainly people, the too-tall ones, the too-fat ones and the house-bound, as I had been, who’d never go to China or Buckingham Palace, and they all went through me,’ Margaret said in an interview in the National Times in 1985.[5]
IN 1975 Margaret was a member of Australia’s official delegation to the UN World Conference on Women that was held in Mexico City. It was without precedent for the Prime Minister’s wife to be a member of a government delegation that would represent the country at an international conference, discussing significant policy issues.
The year 1975 was, of course, International Women’s Year and since this was the first time the United Nations would hold a conference solely devoted to discussing the role of women and the obstacles to their full participation in society, there were no precedents.
Margaret took full advantage of being at this ground-breaking conference, meeting as many other delegates as she could. She caught up again with Germaine Greer, who had interviewed her in 1972, describing her as ‘one of the most outspoken and forthright women ever to move into the Lodge’.[6] She had lunch with Gloria Steinem who, Mitchell says, she thought was glamorous and charming.
Twenty years later, in 1995, another political spouse would lead the US delegation to the fourth UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing.
Looking back, that was a very significant conference.
Not only did it turn out to be the last UN Conference on Women – we don’t have time to go into the reasons why the world will no longer devote a special conference to championing women’s equality, but we should not forget this – but it was one that was to be remembered for the remarks made by that political spouse who was, of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
‘If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference,” said Clinton in her address to the Conference, ‘let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.’[7]
Those words have resonated ever since.
Clinton of course went on to have her own political career. She was twice elected to the US Senate from the state of New York (in 2000 and 2004) and in 2008 she ran for President.
Her quest to become the first female president of the United States was of course thwarted by a young man by the name of Barack Obama who went on to make his own history as the first African-American President of the US.
Clinton found it in herself to overcome the rivalry and resentment that had simmered between them during their hard-fought campaign and agreed to become his Secretary of State, a position she held for four years.
Now, of course, she is set to achieve the goal that eluded her eight years ago.
She will have proved not just that a woman can become President, or that an older woman can become President, but that a former political spouse can become President.
I am sure that were Margaret Whitlam still with us, she would be following Hillary Clinton’s political trajectory with immense interest – and approval.
I think it likely that she would have been gratified to know that it has proven possible in our lifetime for a woman to go from First Lady to Commander-in-Chief.
Becoming the first woman President is a huge achievement in itself.
Becoming the first woman American President after having once been a spouse to an American President is unique.
There actually have been quite a few precedents of women going into politics by taking over seats once occupied by their husbands. In the US, 34 of the 90 women who were elected to US House of Representatives between 1916 and 1980 went into seats previously held by their husbands. In fact, it was so common it had a name – the widows’ succession.[8]
Amazingly, it was not until 1978 that the first woman was elected to the US Senate in her own right – without having assumed a seat once held by her husband.[9]
But Hillary Clinton’s election as President will not be part of this pattern. Her husband is still living. In fact, he served the full two terms currently allowed under the US Constitution. So she will have won her own term, in her right, and on her own terms.
Some of you might have seen the image circulating on social media this past week of a youthful Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham when they were both students at Yale University. The bubble coming out of Bill Clinton’s mouth says ‘Do you think that one, or even both, of us might be president some day?’ Hillary replies: ‘Yeah, right. When Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.’
It’s worth noting that the photo was taken in 1972 – the year that Margaret Whitlam became Australia’s First Lady! – and 20 years before the Bill of that couple would become president.
It would be an incredible 44 years before Hillary would win the office, and in doing so set down a marker for what has now become possible for women in politics if you are ambitious and you are persistent and, of course, willing to endure the sexism, the misogyny and the extraordinary vitriol that has accompanied Hillary all the way to the White House.
NOVEMBER 8, 2016 will be an important day for women, not just in America but around the world.
Having made 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling in 2008, this time Hillary Clinton will finally break through.
She will set a precedent from which there is no turning back.
She will be part of a trend where, finally and about time, women are legitimate leaders of our world.
She will, along with Theresa May in the UK and Angela Merkel in Germany, control three of the top five economies in the world.
She will, if she follows her own example from when she was Secretary of State, change the way the US is governed by ensuring that the interests of women and girls are embedded in all government policies.
(Remember when we used to have that in Australia!)
We can be sure that Margaret Whitlam would have approved.
But would she have been envious? Is it a path she herself would have wanted to follow?
Probably not.
She had neither opportunity nor, I suspect, the inclination to pursue her own political career. But we do know that she championed women who did.
So let me conclude by recalling an event that some of you in this room will be far too young to remember: the great Labor Split.
And, no, I am not referring to the Split of 1955 when the Democratic Labor Party broke away from the ALP. Even I’m not old enough to remember that!
No, I am talking about the Whitlam family split.
Those of you who remember the pre-selection for the seat of Sydney in October 1997 will know that it was of course fiercely contested. Safe seats like Sydney don’t come up very often.
There was a large field of eight women and one man, but the contest ended up being between Chrissa Loukas and Tanya Plibersek, two women who had a lot in common: both were young, both were from migrant backgrounds, both were from the Left and each of them had a Whitlam in her corner!
It was a very tough call between two terrific candidates and a lot of people were very conflicted about who to support. Including, it turns out, the Whitlams.
Gough Whitlam made calls and sent letters on behalf of Chrissa but, in the end, Tanya won the day with the quiet support of Margaret Whitlam.
I think we can confidently say that Margaret would be very proud of how her candidate has fared.
Tanya has been a cabinet minister and is now deputy leader of the federal ALP, which, of course, also makes her deputy leader of the federal Opposition. During her 19 years in politics she has also managed to have three kids.
She has been among the women who have normalised being pregnant in politics, taking parental leave and breastfeeding in Parliament House.
Thirty years ago, when I was running the Office of the Status of Women, and the numbers of women in federal politics were just starting to increase, those MPs were invariably older women whose kids, if they had them, had grown up.
This meant that these pioneering politicians were unable to pursue serious ministerial – let alone prime ministerial – careers because they had started too late.
Thankfully that has all changed. Women will soon be 50 per cent of Labor’s parliamentary ranks, thus providing the critical mass of talent and expertise that we lacked just a few short decades ago.
As Hillary Clinton is about to prove, women can now run the world.
Here in Australia we must always remember the role of Margaret Whitlam, the ‘beaut bird’ and the outspoken political spouse, who was such a vital part of getting our country to understand and to accept that women have a role to play in politics.
And, more specifically, let’s remember and honour Margaret’s support for Tanya Plibersek whose political career is only just getting started.
[1] Susan Mitchell, Margaret Whitlam A Biography Random House, Sydny, 2006
[2] Mitchell p. 204
[3] Cited in Mitchell p. 213
[4] Mitchell p. 213
[5] Ibid.
[6] Mitchell p. 202
[7] http://www.un.org/esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/conf/gov/950905175653.txt
[8] Amanda Terkel, ‘How do you elect a woman? Give her a famous husband’ The Huffington Post 14 July 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/clinton-dynasty_n_7646856
[9] Nancy Kassebaum served as a Republican Senator from Kansas from 1978 to 1997. She was, however, the daughter of Alf Landon who had been governor of Kansas and who had run for President against Franklin D. Roosevelt.