Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 15 July
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Two years ago, for a small window of time, Australia had a female prime minister, attorney-general, governor-general, finance minister and four other senior ministers. Today there is just one woman in the federal cabinet – foreign minister Julie Bishop – and when she is away, there are none.
How is this possible in a modern representative democracy? What did we learn about the treatment of women in Australian public life from the rise and fall of Julia Gillard? And what is the personal cost for women in politics?
To discuss Julia Gillard’s time as prime minister, and to look more broadly at women with power in politics and public life, Fifth Estate host Sally Warhaft is joined by two formidable guests, Gold Walkley Award-winning journalist and former state government minister Mary Delahunty, author of the newly released Gravity: Inside the PM’s office during her last year and final days, and bestselling author and journalist Anne Summers AO.
Featuring
Sally Warhaft
Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne broadcaster, anthropologist and writer. She is the host of The Fifth Estate, the Wheeler Centre’s live series focusing on journalism, politics, media, and international relations, and The Leap Year ...
Mary Delahunty
Mary Delahunty is a Gold Walkley Award winning journalist and presenter with ABC TV and commercial networks. She served for 7 years as a Victorian state government minister in senior portfolios and has seen the tensions from both sides. She is currently working as a consultant in government, media and the non-for profit sector where she heads numerous boards.
She is the author of Public Life Private Grief (Hardie Grant), her own memoir about political life and loss, and the newly released Gravity: Inside the PM’s office during her last year and final days.
Mary has written about Julia Gillard for Crikey, The Hoopla, The Drum and published an essay about Gillard’s last 24 hours in Good Weekend. She also contributed a long form essay “Liars, Witches and Trolls” for Griffith Review 40. She lives in Melbourne.
Anne Summers
Dr Anne Summers AO is a journalist, researcher, commentator and best-selling author of nine books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975, and still in print. Her most recent book Unfettered and Alive, a memoir, was published in 2018.
In 2021 Anne was appointed a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow, located at UTS, and commissioned to undertake original data-based research that will throw new shocking light on the incidence and nature of domestic violence in Australia.
The result of that research is the report, The Choice: violence or poverty was published on 7 July 2022
Previously Anne has advised Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, on women’s issues, run the Office of the Status of Women, been editor-in-chief of America’s leading feminist magazine Ms., editor of Good Weekend, chair of the Board of Greenpeace International and a Trustee of the Powerhouse Museum.
She has been an activist in the women’s movement since its inception and in 1974 was involved in establishing Elsie Women’s Refuge the first modern shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence.
She was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for her services to journalism and to women in 1989; had her image on a postage stamp as an Australian Legend in 2011 and in 2017 was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame
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