Millie Finkelstein wrote a best-selling book calledThe Newest Womanin 1895 that imagined an uncannily resonant future in a “miserable,man-mismanaged,God-forsaken” Australia. This state of affairs was brought about by “an incompetent government,coupled with an epidemic that broke over the land like a tidal-wave of disease,and scattered desolation far and wide”.
Illustration:Simon LetchThe Sydney Morning Herald
In this time,there was also a property boom,“when men purchased for a song large tracts of land,and resold at fabulous prices”. Spooky,right?
After this obvious failure of governance,she wrote,“the male population surrendered,and women took up the task of reconstruction”.
Only female MPs were elected,and men shouldered domestic responsibilities. This was meant to be a deeply alarming prospect,and in the end of the novel,the “True Woman” triumphs over the “New Woman”,but I have been thinking of it ever since election night,watching how some of the oldest tropes and anxieties about women – independent women – still hold fast.
Witness the way the centrist teal candidates have been described since first announcing candidacies. They were frequently painted as shallow,hypocritical and “fakes”,either as fake lefties or fake Liberals,somehow not “true” politicians.
Former PM John Howard called them “anti-Liberal groupies”,implying they were simply the facile puppets of one of their backers,climate activist Simon Holmes a Court. Barnaby Joyce said they were “self-indulgent” and would make the country “a laughing stock”.
The now former PM Scott Morrison said they represented ”“,as did,hauling to mind all the stereotypes about women destroying the male order of things,that even if they were bringing their community’s concerns to parliament,that this would somehow destabilise the system with unnecessary matters.
And that women might actually talk about and represent ... women.
The astonishing wins of the teals,in the affluent seats of Mackellar,Kooyong,North Sydney,Wentworth,Goldstein,Curtin,were quickly dismissed as the consequence of particularly selfish,out-of-touch electorates,too. Their seats have been and in some cases inaccurately referred to as “”,therefore out of touch with the rest of the country.
Independents Allegra Spender (Wentworth),Kylea Tink (North Sydney),Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar) are part of the 2022 gender quake.Oscar Colman
Concern about the climate,and agreement that something more urgent and concrete needed to be done,was expressed across Australia in myriad ways,leading the ABC’s Laura Tingle to call this “the climate election”. Yet,the fact that the teal women prioritised climate action was portrayed as fringe and indulgent.
For example,this piece inThe,which read:“Teal is the colour of a Tiffany’s gift box. Teal climate policies are trophies for rich women,diamond necklaces to flaunt at harbourside parties. They are not signs of virtue;they are vanities. Ordinary Australians can no more afford them,than they can afford to replace their Toyota with a Tesla (interestingly,an anagram of teals). Or fork out the $100 million paid by green rich-lister Mike Cannon-Brookes for his Point Piper mansion “Fairwater” in 2018.”
It is truly fascinating to get to a point where the conservatives are slagging off rich people. When people in electorates that have been safe Liberal seats for decades decide to vote for someone else,they are no longer “heartland” but now stupid,vain elites.
The alongsideThe Spectatorpiece showed women in fancy Tiffany-teal-coloured dresses,looking like Audrey Hepburn,but bearing a mop,drawing on one of the most reliable tropes about women MPs – that they are there with domestic skills to clean up the mess of the blokes.
Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith,who was forced to not recontest his seat after crashing his car while drink-driving,wrote:“The people of Kooyong,Wentworth,Goldstein,North Sydney and Mackellar aren’t forgotten or quiet. They are loud,entitled,and privileged. The future of the great party that Menzies founded was never about the top end of town. It was and will always be the party of John Howard’s battlers. When Menzies founded the party,the eastern part of Kooyong was still orchards.”
But Kooyong,has only ever been represented by conservative men – until now.
Ironically,Smith ends his piece,also,with this Menzies quote,saying the Liberal Party needs “the kind of people I myself represent in parliament – salary-earners,shopkeepers,skilled artisans,professional men and women,farmers and so on. These are,in the political and economic sense,the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unself-conscious … They are taken for granted by each political party in turn.”
Yet what happens when they do organise? When they get sick of being taken for granted? When the professional women decide do take up places alongside professional men,after having been dismissed and derided – and infuriated by a political culture that refuses to take the frustrations and concerns of women seriously?
This happens. According to Sue Barrett,Zoe Daniel’s campaign manager in Goldstein,women made up half of the rank and file and two-thirds of leaders in their campaign. Most of the early volunteers for Monique Ryan – who unseated Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong – were “middle-aged or newly retired professional women who were ‘fed up’ with the government”,said.
For years,women like me have been wondering out loud why the Coalition seems to care so little about the widening gender gap,which has seen previously conservative-voting women turn away from the Liberal Party for more than a decade. Why they made so little effort to recruit,preselect and promote women. Why they toyed with quotas but never implemented them. Their own internal reports – buried and ignored – told them this would hurt.
The election of a small group of independent women,smart and capable but politically untested,is no panacea but it is refreshing. Their lack of racial and ethnic diversity has been the subject of some.
But they have demonstrated that the rage and frustration women have been expressing,again,and again,for years,marching on the streets in their thousands,cannot be dismissed as a whim,or a bad mood. It’s an unbending call for change.
Julia Baird is the author ofMedia Tarts:How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians
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