No Job for a Woman

by Sallyanne Atkinson

  Over the next seven years I spent many hours being questioned by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and more hours in the witness box of various courts, as did my fellow directors. I spent even more hours in discussions with lawyers. The legal fees, which totalled $50 million, were covered by insurance, which is a lot of money to come out of the Australian economy.

  There were obviously problems with the internal financial management of the company, providing a very salutary lesson for non-executive directors. You can ask all the questions you like, but they’re useless if you’re not given straightforward answers. I had heard rumours that one senior executive was moonlighting at another job but when I asked him about it he looked me in the eye and flatly denied it. I found out later that the rumour was true.

  ABC had begun as a simple business, albeit one with a lot of branches, but the company had always been clear in its goals and missions. In my report to the AGM of 2002 I said:

  Our main focus, and that of all who are involved in ABC at whatever level, will always be the care and wellbeing of our children. We are constantly aware of our responsibilities to the families who put their trust in us and to the children upon whose development the future of this country depends.

  Eddy and Le Neve were joint CEOs, he in charge of finance and property and she – with a PhD in early childhood education – in charge of education. They both sat at the table in board meetings. It wasn’t until 2005 when I was on a plane with Eddy to discuss the US acquisitions that he told me he and Le Neve had been separated for some years. I was stunned. Soon after I had taken on the chairmanship, back in 2000, I had had them to dinner with their two daughters and hadn’t been aware that this was not the happy family it seemed. When I asked Eddy on the plane, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this at the beginning?’, he replied, ‘You wouldn’t have taken it on.’ But of course I would have; I just wouldn’t have been describing it as a close family business.

  ABC Learning taught me some tough lessons, very expensive ones in terms of time and money but also about trust and direct dealing. I often wished I had learned them earlier when I could have put them to good use.

  One day in 2005 I took a call from Julie Bishop, then Minister for Ageing. She told me she was setting up a committee of experts to advise her on dementia, which was becoming a national health priority for the government, she wanted someone high-profile to chair the committee and asked whether I would do it. I laughed and said, ‘You’re obviously looking for someone in the demographic!’

  This was one of many committees I have chaired where I haven’t known much beforehand about the subject. I think it’s valuable to have an outsider with an objective point of view oversee a group of experts who know what they’re talking about but have widely differing views. The chairman – and I never allowed myself to be called a chairwoman – needs to be interested and intelligent and strong enough to keep the group focused and on track.

  But I did learn a lot and I was to learn more when I became chairman of the advisory board of the Queensland Brain Institute nearly a decade later. The Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research, so called because Clem’s estate gave money for its foundation, is Australia’s first and so far only facility focused entirely on research into the prevention and treatment of dementia.

  Dementia is a disease that causes impairment of brain function and is most common in older people. Because the number of older people in Australia is rising, so is the number of cases of dementia which has even been called an epidemic for our times. At the moment there are about 300,000 people living with dementia. By 2050 this is expected to rise to one million. It’s one of those diseases that everyone is terrified of getting, and a ‘good brain’ is no protection. Most of the people I know with dementia are very clever people. The neuroscientists say this is just coincidence. They also say that exercise is a better preventative than playing bridge and doing crosswords.

  The people on the taskforce did know a lot about dementia. They were geriatricians and other doctors, nurses and hospital administrators, and the CEO of Alzheimer’s Australia. Alzheimers disease is the most common form of dementia, though only one form. Our remit was in the area of the investigation of care and treatment, rather than scientific research into causes. It was the kind of work being done by one of our members, Henry Brodaty, Professor of Psychogeriatrics at the University of New South Wales.

  After the government changed in 2007 and my local member of Parliament Kevin Rudd became prime minister, I continued as chairman. This time I had a co-chair, Sue Pieters-Hawke, daughter of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, whose mother Hazel was suffering from dementia.

  This was to be a difficult decade in many ways. It was true that I too was not getting any younger. When I turned 65 I found it unexpectedly discomfiting. It was unexpected because I had never felt uncomfortable about the idea of getting older, in spite of all the outward and visible signs like a thickening waist and greying hair. I had liked turning 30 because I felt I was properly grown up. Turning 40, 50, even 60, were important milestones, assurances that my life was continuing as a series of transitions. This is especially true in the lives of women, and the changes are dramatic, starting with getting breasts and periods, becoming pregnant and giving birth, and going through menopause. Problems with these natural changes are often concerned with body image.

  But somehow turning 65 was different. I gave a speech at a seminar on Positive Ageing at the Bardon Professional Centre and said rather crossly that there was nothing positive about it. I think my discomfort came from the feeling that I no longer had anything to aim for or work towards. This is not to say there was no pleasure in life, but ever since I was little I had always anticipated the next stage – the next year of school and exams to be sat before you get there, university, a job, marriage and babies, the family growing and studying, marrying and succeeding, and me progressing through different roles. There had always been the next hill to climb, and some of the hills had been big ones. At 65 I couldn’t see what the next stage would bring. In our society there is no longer a role for a Wise Woman, the village elder, the old grandmother dressed in black and dispensing advice. Grandparents are now helpers and babysitters, and it is we who accept the advice of younger people on keeping up with technology and social media.

  I found the transition to getting old the most difficult of all, because of the loss of hope: not hope as the opposite of despair, but hope in the sense of something ahead, something to aim for. There had always been something ahead for me, some new challenge, and now there wasn’t. It seemed there was only a downward slide to look forward to.

  Depression is a strange and mysterious thing, hard to define, except in a clinical sense. It’s almost impossible to describe to someone who has never suffered from it, and it is also difficult to remember what it feels like when you no longer have it. There are certainly degrees of it. Some months after my first child was born I thought I was going nuts. I took myself off to a psychiatrist I knew through the Mater, who assured me I wasn’t. He said that having a baby so soon after marriage, living in a flat with a husband who was working long hours and having to deal with a small baby meant that feeling stressed was quite natural. This immediately made me feel better. Nowadays I might be diagnosed with post-natal anxiety, but this did not seem to be a known condition then.

  The several times in my adult life I have been severely depressed I have sought help. I was never concerned about any stigma attached to seeing a psychiatrist. I once wrote a column, back in the days when people didn’t talk about such things, pointing out that psychiatry was a practical tool: after all, if you have a toothache you go to a dentist. But perhaps that’s the most debilitating thing about depression, it’s not like toothache and not simply fixed. It’s different from grief, because you know what’s causing that.

  When I have been depressed I haven’t been able to work out why. I remember walking down a street in Paris one Sunday morning and feeling absolutely mise
rable and thinking, ‘Here I am in the city of my dreams, with a beautiful apartment and a very satisfying job – why do I feel so dreadful?’ My therapist (American, not French) was able to point out that being away from family and friends was leaving me emotionally bereft, which of course I could work out for myself, although it did help to have someone else articulate it. Other times I have just felt like a large black blanket was enveloping me, and luckily six months of medication always helped. But I do empathise with people who are continuously and continually depressed.

  I am now in my seventies and it’s been some years since I was depressed, and I’m thankful for that. I cannot give myself reasons why this is so, just as I could find no reasons for my last bout of depression a while ago. Perhaps there are biochemical changes that happen with age. Or perhaps I have a better acceptance of life.

  I think there’s a differentiation between depression and grief although both are terrible and debilitating and are sometimes linked. In 2007 our family knew deep sorrow when we had to come to terms with the tragedy of the death of Miriam, Damien and Marilyn’s little girl. She was 11 months old and had been born with a congenital heart defect. Her short life had been a series of operations and procedures, and it ended in Melbourne where she had been flown with Marilyn six weeks earlier in the hope of a heart transplant.

  I don’t think there is any grief that comes even close to that of losing a child. For the grandparents, for the siblings, for the extended family there is sorrow and sadness. Their grief is for the parents as well as for the child. Miriam’s funeral was very beautiful and in the same church where Damien and Marilyn had been married. The empty coffin had been brought to Currumbin where we had all gathered for Christmas. My grandchildren, Miriam’s siblings and cousins, spent time painting it pink with flowers and hearts. So when we gathered for the funeral mass in early January the children had a share in and an understanding of her death and dying. Damien gave a very brave and beautiful eulogy.

  The death of a child seems so illogical that it gives a sense of unreality to the life of those who are bereft. I realised that the Catholic faith was of enormous comfort to some in the family and the friends surrounding them, but for others there was a real questioning and a wondering why God had allowed this to happen. And of course, as with all the other significant questions about life and living, for most of us there is no answer. I was unutterably sad, not just for Miriam but for her parents, and I too was asking the big and difficult questions. My sadness had left me floundering, if not actually on the meaning of life generally, then more specifically on my own future and purpose.

  In another of life’s twists, I would soon see there was much to look forward to.

  A BEND IN THE RIVER

  When I was chosen as the University of Queensland’s Alumnus of the Year in 2014 I was inordinately thrilled. My public life had brought me my share of honours. The Australian Government had made me an Officer of the Order of Australia and the French a Chevalier, or knight, in their National Order of Merit (Ordre Nationale du Mérite) and the Queensland government had declared me to be a Great. I’d been honoured by other organisations, such as Rotary and Lions but this was special because it was chosen by the Friends of the Alumni Association, my peers.

  In the past I had been awarded honorary doctorates from three universities – the University of Queensland (UQ), Griffith University and the Australian Catholic University (ACU) – I was Dr Dr Dr Atkinson. I feel quite strongly that the honorific should only be used in a university context and think it’s a bit odd for honorary doctors to use that title in the world outside the university; you never know what the person is a doctor of, whether this is a professional appellation or recognition of a higher postgraduate degree. There are people who disapprove of honorary doctorates, and I must say whenever I’ve received one I’ve felt I should apologise to the PhD graduates, I appreciate that they have spent many years of their lives working towards their honours.

  Still, honorary doctorates are a recognition by universities that learning is not just a matter of studying for a degree; they recognise non-academic contributions. While my tertiary career was brief, my involvement with universities has been lengthy. I chaired the ACU Foundation soon after I came back from Paris, and then ran a drive to raise funds for a joint chair in midwifery with ACU and the Mater Hospital. My involvement with Griffith goes back to its beginnings in the bush at the original Nathan campus when it was established as an environmental university. The first vice-chancellor, John Willett, had a little office in the ABC Radio building in Toowong, where I would sometimes work. At UQ my wheel has turned full circle, through honorary lectures in politics and journalism to student projects when I was in Opposition, to becoming President of Women’s College and working with the Queensland Brain Institute.

  Over the years I have been involved in a host of community organisations. Sometimes I inherited them. In the 1970s Sir Reg Groom, the last conservative Lord Mayor, handed me both the trusteeship of the Queensland Womens Amateur Sports Council and a directorship on the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

  I have had what could be called a bit of a portfolio career, a collection of different companies and voluntary organisations, always concerning something for which I’ve had a passion. I’ve been chairman in Queensland of Greening Australia, an organisation committed to the conservation of Australia’s native vegetation, and when I stepped down from that role I became its patron. The Crawford Fund is a national body promoting agricultural research in developing countries and its benefits to Australians. It has been chaired by former MPs on both sides of politics, including Tim Fischer, Neil Andrew and John Kerin. I spent seven years as chair of the Queensland committee and was full of admiration for those who gave their professional expertise to further the work in Cambodia and the Philippines.

  I’m patron of the University of the Third Age for the education of older people, and of Friends of Newstead House, Brisbane’s oldest house. Tony O’Reilly, Irish Rugby hero and iconic businessman asked me to join the Board of the Australian Ireland Fund he had founded and I spent about 15 years helping raise funds for ‘peace and goodwill’ in Ireland. Some years ago, when Ireland was at the height of its EU-driven prosperity, my daughter Stephanie came with me to one of the very glamorous lunches the Fund held each year on the lawn of Lady Mary Fairfax’s house by Sydney Harbour. After Tony O’Reilly had given one of his usual rousing speeches about the work of the Fund in Ireland and our contribution to it, Stephanie leaned over to him and asked: ‘Is there a committee in Ireland raising money for Australia?’ The question was perfectly timed. Many people were starting to think that charity should begin at home. In recent years the Australian Ireland Fund has extended its reach to help support Indigenous communities in Australia.

  One of my most interesting involvements was with the Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) for which I was chair for four years from 2001. The BWF had evolved from Warana Writers Week which was part of the Warana Festival, a Brisbane street festival of the early 1960s. Warana is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘blue skies’ and was adopted after a public competition run by the Courier-Mail. There is a lovely story, untold until now, that two cadet reporters had been sorting out the entries on a big table in an office and had gone home or to the pub, leaving them overnight. The next morning, to their horror, they came back to find that a cleaner had swept all the paper into the rubbish bins. Just one piece had fallen under the table and it bore the name ‘Warana’.

  Writers’ festivals have taken many forms since Australia’s first, in Adelaide in 1960. Sometimes they are free and informal, as ours was when I took over. The events were in and around the old State Library on South Bank and when that was closed for renovations for three years it moved to the green lawns by the river in front of the theatres. There were marquees and people wandered in and out to listen to authors speak. Now it is more structured with formal ticketing, and held in the new State Library, which is somewhat grand and daunting.

&
nbsp; Actually, I think writers’ festivals should be called readers’ festivals. What they are really about is letting writers and readers get involved with each other. When I chaired various sessions, I always found that the most common questions were about the process of writing.

  When I became chairman we were heavily in debt, which people were resigned to: there seemed to be an attitude that this is how it was in the arts. I promised then Arts Minister Matt Foley that we would turn that around and we did, thanks largely to treasurers Angus Blackwood and Karen Mitchell, good financial managers who encouraged sponsorship.

  I’m still involved with Queensland Leaders, an unusual organisation that brings new and developing companies into contact with a range of established businesses to give them support and advice, and which is now national. It’s very inspiring to hear the stories of young companies from their executives. Basic to all business success, however important the product and the marketing of it, is good financial management.

  In recent years I have chaired two commercial companies. Barton Deakin Pty Ltd is a national government relations and lobbying company that is unabashedly conservative. Its establishment coincided with the coming to power of Liberal state governments across Australia. In a fine piece of symmetrical political history, its founders were the people I had worked with on the Australian Liberal back in the 1970s, Peter Collins and Grahame Morris. Peter is a former New South Wales Opposition leader and Attorney-General; Grahame had been at Liberal Party headquarters in Canberra and was former Prime Minister John Howard’s chief-of-staff. They headed up Barton Deakin in Sydney and Canberra as I did for Brisbane in 2013, in time for an incoming LNP government under Campbell Newman. Campbell’s demise as premier in 2015 meant that I was no longer required.

  Lobbying, which is what government relations outfits are presumed to do, has a bad name with very little attention given to its real value and activity. Barton Deakin in Queensland didn’t do much lobbying in the real sense of the word, which involves pushing government towards a particular outcome. I thought our real role was helping companies do business with government (we knew the politicians and their policies) and helping government understand the issues surrounding particular business sectors. Ministers are often too busy to absorb some of the finer points of the issues they are dealing with and it is useful as well as efficient to have them explained by someone they trust, who understands the political viewpoint.