Primed to work
WHEN you get criticised by Germaine Greer (pictured), does anybody care?
Not sure, but it can start a thought process that begins with
The Female Eunuch and leads us to a land post our first female prime minister.
Greer is the most prominent Australian feminist thinker from the 20th century.
Australia has a mixed relationship with the author/lecturer/ panel show guest. She wrote seminal texts in the Sixties and moved to England. This was pretty much the career path for her baby-boomer contemporaries from the colonies.
It’s a long way from the coffee shops of Carlton to the hallowed halls of Oxford and Cambridge, and there are a lot of significant sociopolitical differences in between.
So now, when GG dips into the local cultural fondue pot it can be a little like a distant relative coming home for Christmas and taking random swipes and insults at all her nieces and nephews, just for the sport of it.
Last week Greer declared that Julia Gillard was a disappointment and had done nothing significant since leaving the office of prime minister.
Perhaps Greer thought the first female PM should have been somebody with a name like, oh, Germaine? Who knows? But it was a mealy-mouthed attack, and tone-deaf to the temper of the times in this 21st century Australia.
Gillard set up the Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children and set the NDIS in motion. She negotiated a minority government and passed more legislation than GG has ever done.
Gillard was doing all this while she was under constant sniping and attacks from her old mate KRudd.
Since her time in office she has been a significant contributor to policy think-tanks s across univer universities in Australia and the United States and now she e is running beyondblue … but whatever, hatever, right? Get a job.
As far as Germaine aine is concerned, this is an insignificant career trajectory.
So it asks the question: uestion: what do we do with h our former prime ministers? ers?
Sure, some of them hem are more useful than others.
Some could make ake outstanding inter mediaries or ambassador sors — these people have ave very large little black books, contacts and international connections.
We’re not talk- ing about former opposition leaders s here, we’re talking g about people who have had the persist- ence, the political intelligence and the guts to drag themselves through the policy quagmires and the political blood on the party room floor in order to organise the numbers and hold the bible in front of the Governor-general. Sure, locally they can appear to be the heavy weight hanging around the neck of the sitting PM. But fundamentally they are natural resources that should be strip-mined for every last grain of profit for the nation. So is Germaine right after all? When their days in office are over, should the incoming PM perhaps be finding something useful for them to do? After all, they’re getting younger and younger, and with our skyrocketing national debt, maybe we need to start thinking about how we can get more bang for our buck out of our most recently retired PMs. Instead of sucking up the pension and racking up the frequent flyer points, we could develop a mutual-obligation deal.
Last week it was heartening to see new generation PM Scott Morrison send the old generation PM Malcolm Turnbull to Indonesia. This of course ended in tears, but that wasn’t Malcolm’s fault. That was a miscommunication and he explained the problem on Twitter.
But Malcolm represented Australia with dignity and aplomb and looked damn comfortable in that ceremonial shirt. It’s a pretty tough gig, only weeks after getting stabbed in the back, but it made sense. Why send the PM when a former PM can go?
The tyranny of distance has always been a problem for Australia to connect with the northern he hemisphere. Between Gillard, Tu Turnbull and Rudd, we could ha have a crack team of multilingual dip diplomats circling America, Europ rope and Asia representing Austra tralia at post-diplomacy level.
The deal could be that if you wa want the pension, you do the wo work for us. It’s a work-for-the-do dole kind of system, and everybody wins.
But if you want to go on the spe speakers’ circuit and retire to Lo London, then you’re on your own. Su Support yourself and we owe you no nothing.
Australia has a solid founda dation in foreign policy and interna national relations. When it comes to borders and alliances, the two ma majors are bilateral. The briefings wi will be minimal and the return on inv investment will be maximised. Yo You know it makes sense. The be best form of welfare is a job. Ross Ros Mueller is a freelance playwright and director.