No Job for a Woman

by Sallyanne Atkinson

  I always saw our Olympic bid for what it was, a marvellous marketing exercise with an outside chance of getting the Games. One of my lobbying lines was ‘In Australia we have a famous race called the Melbourne Cup, which the favourite never wins’.

  But I did believe, and passionately, that we would have run a very good Olympics. Australians are excellent organisers, and in Brisbane we had the climate and the space for the necessary facilities, plus the Gold and Sunshine coasts. This was our chance to show the world that there was more to Australia than Sydney and Melbourne.

  A couple of weeks after taking office, I led a delegation to East Berlin for an IOC meeting, where the candidate cities for the 1992 Games would declare themselves. Our competitors were to be Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Belgrade and Birmingham; New Delhi had pulled out. I should point out that the Olympics are awarded to a city, not to a state or a nation, which is not always obvious when politicians at all levels want a piece of the action. In our case, of course, the state of Queensland had the money, and so with us to East Berlin came the state Minister for Sport, Peter McKechnie, who happened to have been at The Southport School when I was at its sister school St Hilda’s. For our final foray in Lausanne a year later we would have federal Minister for Sport, Recreation and Tourism, John Brown, attend. Peter was National Party and John was Labor: the three of us provided a fine example of political ecumenicalism.

  At this first IOC gathering I found to my surprise that I was a bit of a star, simply because I was young, female and not the archetypical Australian sporting figure. I also spoke French, not well, but my accent was good. As Henry Higgins says in My Fair Lady, ‘The French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly,’ and there is some truth in that. So when I gave a speech in French at a lunch party held by Rupert Murdoch, the elderly gentlemen of the IOC – and they were nearly all men and nearly all elderly – fell about in astonishment.

  At two o’clock one morning a few days before the IOC lunch, I opened my hotel bedroom door to find Rupert Murdoch’s man Wilf Barker standing there in a state of mild hysteria. Wilf was rather a large chap and the sight of him in his shortie pyjamas almost reduced me to hysterics, although of a different kind. He had just discovered that the invitations we were about to send out for lunch at the Australian embassy in East Berlin would not be accepted by a large number of our intended guests because the Communist bloc did not recognise ‘East’ with ‘Berlin’. So I got dressed and we all set about obliterating the word ‘East’ on the invitations so they could go out the following morning.

  Hosted by Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Anna, in a marquee in the grounds of the embassy, the lunch was a typical 1980s extravagance. The food by leading Melbourne caterer Peter Rowland had been flown in specially, and there was drama when the seafood was held up for a bit at the East German border. The IOC members feasted on Australian crabs and prawns, seated at tables with tall centrepieces of native Australian wildflowers. Afterwards, as we were leaving, I saw the poor East German staff eagerly stuffing themselves with the leftover food behind the marquee.

  At the lunch there was another potential crisis. Prime Minister Bob Hawke had sent a video, which I was told we couldn’t use because it included a reference to ‘our embassy in East Berlin’. The prime minister’s endorsement was obviously vital for our bid, so I needed to come up with a solution. I played the video at the hotel beforehand and discovered that the offending words came very near the end of the tape. At the presentation I had someone hidden under a table near the power point and at just the right time the plug was pulled out. ‘Oh, dear, technical fault!’ we said. ‘Sorry!’

  Still, behind the Iron Curtain in 1985 it was scary and depressing. The shops in East Berlin were full of locals queuing for everything, and there wasn’t much for sale anyway. In my hotel suite I met Horst Dassler, the highly influential head of sporting company Adidas, who gave me to understand in sign language that the room was bugged. When I suggested we go for a walk in the garden he looked taken aback.

  I hosted a lunch for the female IOC members, a small gathering – Princess Nora of Liechtenstein, Pirjo Haeggman of Norway, Mary Glen-Haig of Great Britain and Flor Isava-Fonseca, the very glamorous Venezuelan who had been an Olympic equestrian champion. Flor was in her sixties, which seemed very old to me then, and announced that she kept young by taking lots of lovers. Mary, later Dame Mary and a former British hospital matron, looked suitably shocked. I’m not sure what the Communist listeners thought. On another occasion Princess Nora complained about the awful toilet paper in the hotel. We had obviously been warned about this in Brisbane and had brought our own, so later in the day I had some gift-wrapped in our special ‘Brisbane 92’ wrapping paper and sent around to her.

  On Sunday I asked to go to mass and was told that it would be difficult in Communist East Berlin, where Christianity was banned. However, we found a Catholic church in which were a clutch of Catholic IOC members. Going to mass, which I did regularly at the time, was going to be an integral part of my Olympic lobbying during the year ahead, for all the Latin American members and many of the Europeans were diligent attenders. It was very moving in Berlin because the local Catholics were clearly part of an underground movement, and very brave.

  My mass-going strategy only once went awry. In Lausanne some years later as part of the Sydney bidding team I was given directions to the cathedral. Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said he would like to come too, and so did my son, Damien, over from Cambridge where he was doing his Master of Laws. Halfway through the service, having noted there was not another IOC member in sight, it dawned on me that we were not in a Catholic cathedral at all, but the Protestant one. Gough, of course, had great fun with this story, telling everyone: ‘There hadn’t been a genuflection in that church for at least five centuries!’

  In our 1992 bid, one of our arguments was that the Olympics had only been held in the southern hemisphere once before – Melbourne in 1956 – and that they should be held in the southern hemisphere again. Barcelona’s strong selling point was that the Games had never been in Spain. I asked Eduardo Hay, the IOC member for Mexico, ‘Are the Latin Americans going to vote for Barcelona?’ He looked at me directly and said, ‘Yes.’ So when the announcement came and President Samaranch declared Barcelona the winner I was ready. We were able to do the Australian sporting thing and congratulate the Barcelona delegation on their success. We had come third in a six-horse race, Paris came second.

  In recent years the Olympics, and it seems all major sporting bodies, have been tarred with allegations and evidence of bribery and doping on a grand scale, but back then none of this had surfaced. As newcomers to the world of sports administration, our naivety was tempered with surprise and cynicism at the accepted lavishness of the IOC world. In Lausanne for the final announcement of the 1992 winner, Denis Howell who had been Britain’s first Minister for Sport and was the leader of the Birmingham bid, said to me, ‘I’m just disappointed that our young athletes have had to witness how the IOC operates.’

  As we were all sitting together in the hall waiting nervously for the announcement of the successful bidder, someone in one of the teams whispered, ‘Have you heard what Paris has done? They’ve given all the IOC members fur coats!’ Someone else said, ‘But have you heard what Barcelona has done? They’ve put girls in them!’ We all laughed uproariously.

  For Brisbane, we had several Olympic lobbying forays: we also went to Moscow, Sofia in Bulgaria and Belgrade in then Yugoslavia. Sofia was bidding for the Winter Games, and Belgrade was bidding against us, but part of our strategy was to get second votes for countries who might not put us first. The Olympic voting system was preferential, just like the Australian political system. Joining John Coates, Wilf Barker and me in Moscow was long-distance swimmer Michelle Ford, the only Australian to win gold at their Olympics, and part of the team that had defied the Australian government’s official boycott in 1980. Boycotts then seemed to be a regular feature of a
thletic events. The 1986 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games had been boycotted by 32 of the 59 eligible countries over the British government’s acceptance of apartheid in South Africa. Michelle’s presence in Moscow gave us official access and we were shown the city’s sporting venues with great pride. At the stadium she whispered to me to ask to see the athletes’ facilities, which I did, and they were indeed awful.

  In the months leading up to the 1992 bid decision we hosted about 25 IOC members in Brisbane. We wanted to show our sporting facilities, mainly built for the Commonwealth Games and our plans for the future, as well as Brisbane’s touted attractions like our friendly people and lifestyle. We made a series of videos extolling the virtues of Brisbane’s climate, culture and sporting facilities, and explained how we would overcome certain problems such as quarantine for horses. We hosted dinners for the IOC delegates. These were not always trouble-free events. The Ethiopian IOC member was a doctor of medicine, wearing a lot of gold jewellery, while his country was in a crisis of famine and civil war. Damien asked him whether he felt guilty about being here. The doctor didn’t seem to take offence. He replied that his country was a very rich one but its people were lazy, which shocked us all.

  Lausanne in October 1986 was abuzz with delegations from the bidding cities, involved in rounds of parties and meetings. The Winter Games were also being awarded so there were people from Albertville (France), Lillehammer (Norway), Cortina (Italy), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Falun (Sweden). Royals were reduced to humble lobbyists. At dinner one night I sat next to Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, with Australian Olympian Herb Elliott on the other side. Queen Silvia of Sweden was in attendance. The Italians hosted a cocktail party at which Gina Lollobrigida was the star. When I met her in the receiving line she was very disappointing, old and lined with far too much makeup. Minister for Sport, John Brown, rushed over and said to me, ‘Where’s Gina?’ I had to say, ‘You’ve just passed her!’ When a photographer asked to take a picture of me with the famous Italian film star, I was quite pleased. When I later saw the photo she looked gorgeous and I looked drab. I learned a lesson about makeup that day.

  When Melbourne lost to Atlanta for the 1996 Games, there was great and public disappointment. Crowds gathered in the city, expecting that even if Melbourne didn’t win, at least Athens’ success would give the city’s huge Greek population something to celebrate. Athens was of course the city of the original Olympics and the sentimental favourite among the six bidding cities. The party turned into a wake. In Brisbane we were more fatalistic, and certainly on my return I had letters of congratulations from all over Australia.

  In 1987 I was invited to speak at the International Olympic Academy in Olympia, the actual birthplace of the Games in Greece and a deeply spiritual place. I spoke of Barcelona’s ‘emotional argument’, that no Spanish city had ever hosted an Olympic Games. I avoided mentioning the emotional attachment between Barcelona and the IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. I ended my speech by saying, ‘Although Brisbane did not win the vote of the IOC, the city won other things that were perhaps just as important.’ The bid had succeeded in strengthening community spirit and civic pride, it focused world attention on our city and its potential for tourism and investment, promoted Brisbane’s sports facilities and highlighted its ability as a sports administrator, dramatically demonstrating the ability of the public sector and private enterprise to work well together.

  There was talk of a future bid but I was sensitive to the fact that a percentage of the population were opposed to the Olympics (despite the warmth of the welcome home) and to the next election. Early in 1988, the Australian Olympic Federation (later to become the AOC) invited all Australian cities to bid to be the candidate city for 1996. Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne threw their civic hats into the ring and what ensued was a ridiculous mini-rerun of the Olympic bidding process with all kinds of allegations of behind-the-scenes shenanigans. When Melbourne, the chosen candidate city, lost the bid for the Games, I wrote to the AOC suggesting that they should make the decision on the next bidding city rather than allowing a competitive process. I have to say that part of my joy on that dark and stormy night in Monte Carlo in October 1993, when Sydney was declared the winner for 2000, was that I would not have to front up for Hobart, Adelaide or Perth.

  For the girl who was always the last chosen for ball games at school, my Olympic experience has ironically been long and deep. I was in the presentation team for Melbourne in Tokyo in 1990. I went to the Winter Games of Albertville and Lillehammer as a member of Sydney’s lobbying team and then to the Summer Games in Barcelona where I had persuaded the mayor, Pasqual Maragall, to host a lunch for the mayors of all the bidding cities of 1986.

  I kept up my Olympic connections as Vice-President of the Australian Paralympics Federation to John Brown’s presidency, and chairman of the AOC’s Sport for All Commission. I was also Deputy Mayor of the Athletes’ Village at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

  Interestingly, Brisbane is now considering bidding for the 2028 and 2032 Olympics, this time in a kind of consortium with twelve councils in southeast Queensland, including the Gold and Sunshine coasts and Toowoomba, which would work very well. We had discussions about this in our bid to be Australia’s choice for the 1996 Games.

  AN UNEXPECTED LOSS

  Losing the mayoralty was a great shock, mainly because everyone said I couldn’t; it would require a double-digit swing against me, and that’s what I got. On election night in March 1991, with 75 per cent of the vote counted, I had suffered a swing of 18 per cent.

  I didn’t concede defeat that night, despite being 3000 votes behind Jim Soorley and with a clear loss of Liberal wards. The absentee and postal votes usually favoured us, and I was hopeful of Green preferences after our environmental initiatives – Australia’s first Green Levy (which by 2015 had protected 3000 hectares of bushland) and the Boondall Wetlands, internationally recognised as important by the Ramsar Convention. We had undertaken several major studies of the environment which were pioneering in concept: the Brisbane Wildlife Study, a 1989 study into the implications of the Greenhouse Effect on the Council and climate change, and the Conservation Atlas. The Conservation Atlas, the first of its kind, was an inventory of all the significant natural areas around Brisbane. It was used by Council planners to assess development applications and it identified land that Council would buy through our Bushland Acquisition program.

  We had declared 1990 the Year of our Environment to underline its importance, but the Green preferences went to the Labor Party. Some years later the Green candidate, Drew Hutton, apologised to me personally, which, as I pointed out then, was hardly a comfort. When the figures were finalised a few weeks later I had been ahead in the primary vote (185,395 to Jim Soorley’s 184,557, with Drew Hutton on 30,137) but in the final count Soorley gained 211,124 votes to my 198,232.

  I was stunned beyond belief. Earlier that evening we had been at a cocktail party at a friend’s house, planning to have a few drinks and then go into City Hall to hear the results and celebrate. But people at the party were listening to the radio and it became clear the results were going to be bad. Instead, I went to my office and they didn’t get any better. My personal staff were close around me because it had been their campaign, too. People came and went, some offering commiserations, some just slinking away.

  I hardly slept that night. I had made two commitments for the next day, both of which I fulfilled. One was to help out with Clean Up Australia, where I was to do a stint at the Breakfast Creek reach of the river. As the mayoral limo pulled up to collect me Alderman David Hinchliffe, the smartest Labor member of the Council and my bête noire, stuck his head in the window. Heavily disguised in his Clean Up gear of towelling hat and sunglasses, he offered his condolences. The other commitment was to an Italian community function in New Farm. We had a family rule of no functions on Sundays but Graham Clay, the sitting Liberal alderman and a friend, had cajoled me into it by saying that the promise of my appearance would save his n
eck. It might have saved his, but it hadn’t saved mine.

  Under electoral rules, I would be Lord Mayor until the polls were declared, and they were not declared – published in the Government Gazette – until Saturday 13 April. I was criticised for not leaving immediately, but rules were rules. In 1985, though I had won decisively on election night, I hadn’t been able to take up office until the polls were officially declared. The new Lord Mayor was not in office until then, and the old had a responsibility to soldier on. And so I did.

  I had taken care not to show my emotions in public, and I did maintain that stoicism. I had shed tears in private, grieving for a role that I had never seen as a job. I had always felt such a strong personal and emotional connection to the city of Brisbane. What I felt after the election loss was an acute sense of abandonment. Strongest of all was the feeling of rejection and a sense of injustice, upset that the very good things I’d done, the changes that I’d help bring to the city of Brisbane, hadn’t mattered in the face of what I felt was a very dishonest political campaign against me. I was also concerned for my staff, who had been so dedicated and who had worked so hard and, in the way of politics, would now be out of jobs. I also had to consider my family. With Genevieve and Stephanie still living at home, it was going to be a major disruption to their lives. I was going to have to take stock and look to the rest of my life, or at least the immediate future. One night I said to Steph, still at school, ‘Now I’ll be able to do tuckshop!’ She looked quite horrified.

  In the lead-up to the election, everyone had seemed to believe that my win was a foregone conclusion. The Liberal Party hadn’t bothered to do any major citywide polling. At a big dinner at the Sheraton Hotel some months before, American basketballer Leroy Loggins, over here with the Brisbane Bullets, said in his speech, ‘I don’t know why this city even bothers having an election.’ My heart sank. Anything that smacked of complacency would turn people off and have the electorate thinking you took them for granted.