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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am

The avalanche of allegations out of Federal Parliament in recent weeks has made it clear that workplace sexual harassment is still commonplace in Australia. But it’s also revealed that the law that’s supposed to protect women from harassment doesn’t actually extend to politicians.

Today - writer for The Saturday Paper Chris Wallace, on the surprisingly dramatic history of the Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, and the moves to update it for this current moment.

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RUBY:

Chris, I wanted to start by asking you about what it was like as a woman in the workplace in the 80’s, before there was any protection at all by law against sexual harassment. What was the situation?

CHRIS:

When I picked up the paper on a Saturday morning and went to the job ads - extraordinarily, Ruby - they were divided into men and boys and women and girls. Can you believe it? I mean, this is the early 80’s. It's that recent. It was a time when, you know, really, if you were sexually harassed at work, it was just kind of semi-routine. What could you do about it? As a woman, you could be sacked for getting married, for becoming pregnant or simply for being a woman. So it's an extraordinary situation for women in the labour market.

Archival Tape -- News Reporter from the 1960’s

“In Australia, perhaps more than any other country, we believe that a woman's place is in the home. All over these suburbs fly the white flags of domestic surrender.”

CHRIS:

We had at the time the most sex-segregated labour market in the industrialised world.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“When I arrive at the interview, however, they see of course that I am a woman and the interview is immediately closed.”

CHRIS:

So it was a very hostile landscape for women in the workplace.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“One company told me that I might be raped if I go into the plant, others told me that the laboratories are in a dirty part of the plant and it would be unsuitable for a woman…”

CHRIS:

And that's why Susan Ryan really was hell bent on making this bill happen.

RUBY:

So can you tell me a bit about Susan Ryan and about the bill that she set in motion to try and address the situation that you're describing?

CHRIS:

Susan Ryan was a really remarkable Australian. And I think, you know, someone that we deserve to think about putting up a statue to for her remarkable achievement in creating the Sex Discrimination Act.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“I dunno, It’s reinforced the view that I’ve been developing over the last couple of years that women have to take over, if I can use that phrase, that's what I mean so I might as well use it, take over the bureaucracy, take over the political machines as far as possible.”

CHRIS:

She was a feminist activist in Canberra. She won preselection for the Labour Party to run as an ACT senator and became a Labour senator.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“The total picture is one of inequality between the sexes and inequality that has real consequences in terms of poverty and happiness, waste of talent and human resources”

CHRIS:

And drawing deeply on her women's movement experience and her experience of practical labour politics, she took a very strategic approach to this very important piece of legislation.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“Well, can the law help? I believe that the law has a unique and positive role to play in removing discrimination.”

CHRIS:

So in opposition, she drafted a Private Member's Bill and that bill, Susan Ryan took to the federal parliament from opposition as an opposition senator, tabled it and was really kind of a ‘stake in the ground’ to say this is legislatively what's going to happen. Here's the bill. Here's how to do it. And then she marshalled support around it within the Labour Party to make sure that when Labour was in government, that bill would actually go forward and have a chance of becoming law.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“Despite our federal structure. We are one nation and I suggest that in such a basic area as human rights, all Australians ought to have equal rights and equal protection against the infringement of those rights.”

CHRIS:

It was the first bill in the world to include the words ‘sexual harassment’. It was really, really pathbreaking. There were a couple of bills around in some states that had some anti-discrimination measures. But this was the really gold standard internationally for tackling sex discrimination and actually making sexual harassment in the workplace illegal. It was tremendously controversial from the absolute get go and a hell of a fight had to be fought to get it through parliament.

RUBY:

OK, let's talk about that fight! What happened?

CHRIS:

So the situation for the Hawke government, which is typical for governments generally in Australia, is that they control the House of Representatives, but they did not control the Senate. They did not have a majority in the Senate. So while I could get it through the House of Representatives, Labour had a real fight on its hands to get enough numbers to enable the Sex Discrimination Bill to pass the Senate. Ryan was pretty much crucified as the Antichrist by conservative forces attacking the bill, who put around the most extraordinary ideas about what would actually happen if it passed. So, for example, its opponents accused Ryan of setting up a situation where truck drivers would be forced to drive across the Nullarbor Plain with female co-drivers and that their marriages would be destroyed by the enforced proximity in the cabin of the truck. They falsely claimed things like. There would be female posties whose backs would be broken trying to wrangle the motorbikes they had to ride. They said that film and theatre directors would have to put women in male roles because of the force of the Sex Discrimination Bill if it was passed. Ridiculous ideas.

Archival Tape -- Senator Susan Ryan

“Now, this appears to be the point of view of a fairly recently formed lobby group with the rather strange name of ‘Women Who Want to be Women’ …”

CHRIS:

Groups like ‘Women Who Want to be Women” who Ryan used to call the four W's and their supporters besiege talkback radio and daytime television, send massive amounts of mail and petitions to MPss, usually on pink paper.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified ‘Women who Want to be Women’ Member

“I think women are in great danger of being dominated by women being told to liberate themselves by doing what other women want them to do, that to me is a great danger.”

CHRIS:

Ryan really was under unbelievable pressure as opponents in the Senate to the bill filibustered. That is, they dragged out the debate for months and months and months, trying to wear Ryan and Labour down and give up on the bill. But Ryan was one tough character and she did not give up. She wore the assault and she got that Bill through parliament in an absolutely heroic performance. But the Sex Discrimination Bill, which became, of course, the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 was built around the idea of employers having obligations toward employees. And it wasn't really a matter that people were conscious of at the time. But MPs and judges don't fit the technical definition of either employer or employee in our legal system. So really, MPS and judges kind of slip through the cracks.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Chris, we’ve been talking about the way the Sex Discrimination Act came into being. But we’ve recently become aware of its shortcomings. One of those is that it doesn’t actually cover the conduct of all people - including politicians. Can you tell me more about that?

CHRIS:

So when the Dyson Heydon revelation occurred 10 months ago

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 1

“From High Court judge to an accused sexual predator, his target, six young female associates who had just joined the High Court.”

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 2

“They were young women in their first job in the legal profession, to their horror they were sexually harassed by a judge of the High Court.”

CHRIS:

There was a realisation that there was no law that could really convict Dyson Heydon for doing this. And the reason was that under the Sex Discrimination Act, in terms of action on sexual harassment, you've got to be an employer to be liable. So because judges aren't employers in the legal sense meant, there was no actual legal action that could be taken in relation to this kind of allegation. Now, in subsequent months, of course, sexual assault allegations have emerged against politicians and staffers in Parliament House and the realisation has occurred that that MPs, too, aren't employers in this legal sense. So suddenly there was an awareness that, wow, this is a whole group of people, judges amd MPs, who should be subject to the same sexual harassment laws as every other Australian and just aren't. Now, as people have had this kind of dawning realisation, the idea has taken hold that they were somehow exempted from the original act. They weren't. It's simply a matter of how the the Sex Discrimination Bill was draughted in the first place, which then, of course, became law, became an act because they don't fit this technical definition of employer. They don't fit under the umbrella of the act. Now, Senator Ryan was probably not aware of this at the time when she was getting the bill through parliament. Today, many years later, Zali Stegall, the Independent Member for Warringah, has looked at the situation and gone, well, I've got a private member's bill to solve this problem.

Archival Tape -- Zali Stegall

“Events exposed in Parliament House over the past month have highlighted the urgent need to amend the act to ensure that members of Parliament are liable for and protected from sexual harassment.”

RUBY:

So let's talk about Zali Steggall’s Private Members Bill, what exactly is she proposing to do to update the Sex Discrimination Act?

CHRIS:

Zali Stegall has consulted the Law Council of Australia and come up with a very elegant draughting solution to the problem of. How to bring in MPs and judges into the ambit of the act.

Archival Tape -- Zali Stegall

“Following the Dyson Heydon enquiry, the Law Council of Australia launched its National Action Plan to address sexual harassment in the legal profession, which recommends that the Sex Discrimination Act be amended to include the language that a person must not sexually harass another person.”

CHRIS:

So she's proposing this very simple thing, deleting the clauses in the existing Sex Discrimination Act, outlining the circumstances where it is prohibited. And replacing those provisions with a blanket prohibition of sexual harassment and when she tabled on March the 15th, I think she was hopeful that people would listen, that there would be support. She's certainly been very active in trying to alert coalition MPs to how simple and effective this change would be.

Since then, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, in his response to the Respect@Work from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, has announced that the government agrees this should happen. However, in the same breath, you referred to drafting difficulties in drawing judges and MPs within the net of the act. Now, either Scott Morrison hasn't done his homework and read Zali Steggall’s very short and effective Bill, or it may signal that he's not really that interested in making it happen, for real. If Scott Morrison really wants to fix this problem of judges and employers not being subject to the act, he could do it very fast. Let's see if he will. Women just aren't giving up. The revelations keep coming. The anger keeps growing. People are coming up with constructive ideas like Stegall has in this instance. And if he thinks everyone's going to go and shut up, I think he's sadly mistaken.

RUBY:

And there is a lot of anger at the allegations that have been coming out of Canberra in the past month or two. And I just wonder what you think someone like Susan Ryan, the original architect of the Sex Discrimination Act, who did pass away last year, would make of this current situation that we're in at the moment?

CHRIS:

Susan Ryan was such a wise, knowledgeable, experienced, seasoned person. She would really cast a gimlet eye on what's going on at the moment and I think take great joy in the fact that women are rising up and again, doing something about the terrible situations so many are subjected to. II think she would very strongly endorse the approach Steggall’s proposed. I think in government she would have immediately made this kind of move to fix this gap in the Bill. And in fact, looking back on the Bill later in life, she said one of the strengths of the Sex Discrimination Act as they crafted it, was its ability to sustain and absorb change as social change occurred. I think that should be enormously pleased that it's happening. And I'm sure she's sitting up there in secular heaven sending some lightning bolts down in support of it.

RUBY:

Chris, thank you so much for your time today.

CHRIS:

Pleasure. Ruby.

RUBY:

Special thanks to the National Film and Sound Archive for providing the audio of Senator Susan Ryan speaking at the Women’s Rights Conference in 1980.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

New South Wales has recorded three locally acquired Covid-19 cases, after the virus was transmitted in hotel quarantine. Health officials said three members of a family staying in hotel quarantine had acquired the virus from another group of guests in an adjacent room. Investigations are underway examining how the transmission occurred.

And China and the United States have announced they will push for stronger international climate change reduction commitments by the end of the year. The two governments will work together on developing low emissions technology and funding renewable energy projects around the world.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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