Bronwyn vs Carmen
By Kath Tucker
Bronwyn is heading towards the finish line. Her power-dressed padded shoulders and string of pearls set her apart from the rest of the rabble. The bookies say she's the only woman in the pack able to lead the Tweedledee Party to election victory.
But wait! Coming up fast is the late starter, Carmen Lawrence. She's backed by the Tweedledum Party and is their gamble on the big one in Canberra.
Carmen Lawrence has been launched as the Labor Party's bid to eclipse Bronwyn Bishop's headlines. The ALP has at last found a marketable woman politician. She is, apparently, "intelligent and personable", and above all "reasonable". She rose rapidly after entering state parliament in 1986, becoming Australia's first woman premier in 1990.
The establishment media, meanwhile, continue to promote Bronwyn Bishop — tagged "Senator Bobbitt" for what she has done to John Hewson politically. When she smiles, when she talks, where she sits, what she says and what she doesn't say: we're given it all in minute detail.
Both women are blatantly being used to catch the women's vote. They are being sold as potentially our first woman prime minister. But is it really any better for us to have Bronwyn Bishop as prime minister rather than John Hewson, or Carmen Lawrence rather than Paul Keating?
When Carmen Lawrence was premier of Western Australia, cuts to women's services in that state generated a public meeting, called by the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1991, and a campaign around International Women's Day in 1992. Funding of the Supported Assistance Accommodation Program was cut, resulting in seven Perth refuges losing at least one staff member. The Nardine Women's Refuge lost two workers and was forced to close down its external services, with three other refuges in similar situations. The Young Single Women's Refuge lost all funding and was forced to close. The only Single Parents Centre was changed into a general neighbourhood centre.
In February 1992 the ALP state executive voted to condemn Lawrence's government because of its dumping of a safe sex campaign. Its savage juvenile justice legislation also drew criticism, and the state executive warned it was expected to result in a big increase in imprisonment of young Aborigines. The vote came on the heels of a Thatcherite economic statement by the government, which firmly embraced economic rationalism and borrowed heavily from the Liberals' policies. Lawrence is not our ally in the women's movement. Her actions speak louder than her shoulder pads.
Bronwyn Bishop has never been a fighter for women's rights. In fact, the only basis on which she is regarded as capable of winning the women's vote is the fact that she is a woman.
In the '80s Margaret Thatcher showed clearly that being female does not in any way make a politician inherently more compassionate, sensitive to the needs of women or interested in women's issues. Thatcher's militarism, economic rationalism and union- and strike-busting should leave no doubt as to her political loyalties — firmly with those who already have and against those who have not.
Like Thatcher's, Bishop's politics are clearly in favour of the status quo — a status quo in which she is quite comfortable.
In order to defend women's rights we need to look beyond simplified notions of unity on the basis that "we're all women". It's important to know who's on our side and who's not. Women whose interests lie in maintaining the current system, in marginalising and discounting women's issues and not allocating sufficient resources to resolve a whole range of questions, are not feminists. The Bronwyn vs Carmen competition will only determine which of the two major parties gets more votes that it doesn't deserve. In the struggle for women's rights, we need a new game altogether.