Governor General

Our Governor General, Quentin Bryce, is one classy lady and a role model for young women everywhere.

Speaking yesterday at the launch of the federal gender watchdog’s latest census of women in leadership, the 69-year-old Bryce, rocking a skirt suit of the hottest pink you can imagine, shared her memory of life before the women’s movement. It’s worth recalling here:

“I’m a girl of the 60s,” Governor Bryce began, “a time when women in jobs were clustered in a narrow range of occupations. Marriage meant resignation. Pay was two thirds of men’s. No maternity leave. No childcare. No role models. No mentors. Little access to superannuation or higher education. There were separate job ads for women and girls, men and boys. I was the only girl from my school to go to university. There were a handful of us in law school. I was shocked to see only one woman scholar on campus at University of Queensland and to learn that I would have to leave work when I was married. It’s no wonder women started to take action.”

Continue reading "We’ve come so far but there’s a long way to go" »

If Ricky Ponting scores a double century in the Boxing Day Test and announces his retirement from cricket, there would be nothing preventing the Prime Minister making Australia’s greatest run scorer the next governor-general.

How about Kylie Minogue? She would bring international experience and contacts to the vice-regal post and is a recipient of France’s highest cultural honour, the Order of Arts and Letters. She’s talking about retiring to a “big house” with a garden. Would Government House be suitable?

While either scenario might seem absurd, it could in fact be a reality. There are no rules, no selection criteria, no formal list of qualifications, no formal vetting procedure and no restrictions for appointing a person to the highest office in the land. It is the personal gift of the prime minister, who alone makes a recommendation, which the Queen is obliged to accept.

Continue reading "A stint in Government House is the PM’s gift to give" »

I’m part of an ever-shrinking club. Young people are resisting joining up in droves and well, we’re just not that cool any more. Yep, I’m in favour of Australia becoming a Republic.

I would like to see Quentin Bryce lose her job. So it was a very contradictory feeling yesterday when I found myself pleased about the news the Governor-General’s term was being extended until March 2014. It’s very inconvenient when people you’ve come to admire hold positions you’d like to see abolished.

Like the Queen. Can’t stand the monarchy, but Elizabeth II is terrific. And now I’ve developed a soft spot for our immaculately presented, incredibly hard-working, GG.

Continue reading "A little wisdom and a good ear go a very long way" »

Godwin Grech, the former senior bureaucrat at the centre of the so-called Utegate scandal three years ago, struck a chord in conservative circles yesterday with a suggestion that John Howard should be Australia’s next Governor-General.

Normally, anything the discredited Grech said would matter little.

In the same magazine article for example, the Liberal Party’s Treasury mole, who for years supplied leaked documents to help damage the Labor Government, complained about a lack of “apolitical public service professionals”.

Continue reading "Anyone but a politician for our next GG" »

In the lottery that is (public) life, being appointed Governor-General is akin to winning the jackpot. Candidates for the job – none of whom are struggling for a quid in the first place – receive a generous $394,000 a year and, as today’s investigation in the Sunday newspapers shows, enjoy lavish pensions which follow them to the grave.

It’s not a bad arrangement for a position which, under our funny constitutional arrangements, requires that you don’t really do anything.

The job rarely invites too much scrutiny, save for those rare moments in our history when the appointee is accused of exceeding their constitutional role, or finds themself mired in an unrelated scandal which leaves them unable to do their job.

Continue reading "Money for (almost) nothing - are we too good to our GGs?" »

For anyone who missed the Governor General’s speech opening Parliament yesterday we might be able to source you a copy, but the North Koreans are rumoured to have snapped them all up and are attempting to weaponise the material.

The Punch counted at least five people asleep in the public galleries of the Senate during Quentin Bryce’s speech, and that’s not counting some esteemed members of the press gallery.

The Governor General’s speech is written by the Prime Minister and intends to outline the Government’s new term agenda. Besides being very dull, the speech was also an extremely rosy view of how the Gillard Government will negotiate its policy through the new paradigm Parliament. Here’s a more realistic account version of the Governor General’s speech:

Continue reading "The speech the Governor General should have given" »