The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 9

9 UCHjH iJilAVTO'iIjll 11 imfflgmroQua THE AGE, Monday, July 30, 1979 W(QTOmi at war kJ A fJ Mrs. Yolanda Klempfner, State women's affairs co-ordinator. Mrs. Joan Adamson of the Women's Action Alliance. ing given undesirable reading material, she said.

Radical infiltration of the National Women's Advisory Council, she said, had pushed more important issues into the background so that the exclusive target, the elimination of sexism, would succeed. She criticised the council for organising a icent conference on equal opportunity when the agenda should have carried more relevant issues. These she listed as inflation, high unemployment, high taxation, refugees and energy. When asked why, instead of trying to abolish the council the WWWW did not try to get a member of its own appointed, she replied: "Ours is a more urgent battle. "WAA is happy to go through the usual channels, but we are not prepared to wait We want to get something done now." The ideology of the WWWW and the WAA is similar, their memberships overlap and both sides insist that there is no splintering, that they can work in harmony while emphasising their own lines of thought WAA has not yet achieved its goal of winning a home-maker's allowance, but Mrs.

Adamson said that a lot had been achieved in obtaining recognition for their objectives; they, too, had got to pre-Budget discussions and they had joined Senator Margaret Guil-foyle's Women's Welfare Issues Consultative Committee. Mrs. Adamson's opposition to the radicals was not as bitter as Mrs. Renkema's, but when asked why she thought the other side had gone quiet she said they didn't have to make a noise any more. "They are in the positions where it counts.

They know exactly what is happening in Government because tney are in Government departments. They don't have to say too much publicly, they are achieving a heck of a lot through Government" We put these assertions to Ms Julie Rigg, one of the founders of the ABC's women's collective and first co-ordinator of the influential women's affairs programme, 'Coming Out'. Ms Rigg said feminism had reached a second stage where feminists no longer felt the need to flock together. Instead they were applying their politics in different areas of the community. "There is no conspiracy.

They established sufficient claim by 1975 to create the community perception that things needed to be changed. Now there are opportunities to create the changes, and their energies are more By DAVID ELI AS fTTHE work behind this honest attempt to explain the present level of feminine activity has been like a Sunday stroll through a minefield. It is the little things that trip you up, such as working out which groups have spokeswomen and which have spokespersons, who is to be addressed as Mrs, and who Ms. The level of sensitivity exceeds all expectation. An unsolicited phone call came from Mrs.

Babette Francis, a founder of Women Who Want to be Women, because we had the temerity to ask their spokeswoman if this newest and most vocal of women's organisations had splintered from the Women's Action Alliance. She aid quite forcefully there was no split and she didn't want The Age' to write mat sort of story. Finally there is the ordeal of coping with the conviction that a man should be dabbling in the affairs of women anyhow. Female colleagues warned that the Women's Liberation Movement, now quiet but still alive, distrusted both men and the media. A call to their switchboard in the Women's Cultural Palace in Fitzroy resulted first in stunned silence and then a decision to discuss our request at a meeting that night.

Women's Liberation did, how ever, agree to talk to us and sent a delegation of three. They voiced their distrust and made it clear that we were on trial. The groups we talked with ranged across the political spectrum from conservative to radical and only two areas of agreement emerged. They agreed to differ, and each believed that everyone else had the inside running with the media. Conservatives and radicals alike complained that only the other side's letters were published in newspapers.

Women Who Want to be Women suggested that Women's Liberation had infiltrated the educational and media establishments while Women's Liberation said conservative views which stood for the status quo were more acceptable to the media. This resentment of each other's imagined pulling power in the media is just one sign of long years of distrust between the conservatives and the radicals. At' the moment, feelings are running hot over the National Women's Advisory Council, appointed by the Federal Govern Ms Judi Power of the Women's Liberation Movement. matic demonstrations but were involved in hard, slogging work made more difficult by economic conditions. The emphasis of the movement was still on creating changes of attitude and climate rather than the mechanics 'of legislation, and in this work each of the loosely structured groups had set its own priorities.

They felt they had been successful over the years in changing people's attitudes, but when asked to set out the issues that concerned them most, they found it difficult to answer. No single controversy occupied them, but finally they put together a list including family law, abortion, rape, discrimination in employment, and education. Out of the head of steam created by Women's Liberation, the Women's Electoral Lobby was started in 1972, with the single objective of canvassing election candidates for their views and intents on women's issues. WEL appealed to a less radical sector of feminist thought. Mrs.

Yolanda Klempfner, Victorian Government co-ordinator on women's affairs, said WEL's appeal was to the middle class educated woman, often older than the lib-erationist. That could well describe Alma Morton, a mother of five, a grandmother of nine, member of the WEL co-ordinating committee and their voice on their 3CR radio programme 'Alive and WEL. Ms Morton said she had tried Women's Liberation at first, but found it too unstructured, too anti-male. She preferred the more formally organised WEL but still supported the liberationists' rape crisis centres and women's refuges. She praised their relentless dedication.

Little has changed in the WEL approach over the years; the group tends to home in on a single issue at elections and to work steadily on a narrow front in between. At the May State elections, they went all out for compulsory sex education in Government schools, and after sending deputations to Mr. Hamer they appear to have settled for a compromise providing for parents to opt out if they chose. a uicfe.o air a. Dooulist cause ku stone, dead.

Attention' Br Lynch is required in casualty Ms Gillian Dwyer of Women's Liberation. For several months they have been circulating a child care tax deduction kit in a bid to have the deductions re-instated and they are at least grateful that they were invited to the Federal Government's pre-Budget talks. The next on the scene was the Women's Action Alliance which came into existence during the 1975 International Women's Year. Mrs. Adamson said they formed as a reaction to Women's "We were concerned at the extreme trend of the Women's Liberation Movement." WAA has had to suffer denigration often in the form of snide accusations that they were the women's arm of a Right-wing political party, a charge strongly denied.

The alliance is known best for its demand for a home-maker's allowance for women who choose to make their careers as wives and mothers instead of joining the paid workforce. Mrs. Adamson said this was a main platform but not the total philosophy of WAA. "We fully support equality of opportunity and freedom of choice, but we talk of equal status for those who voluntarily go into the paid workforce and equal status for those who have voluntarily chosen to stay at home. "We feel we have taken a reas- It fc Mrs.

Babette Francis, a founder of Women Who Want to be Women. onably moderate line, but some members have felt we concentrated too much on equality of opportunity and didn't home in on the career of the wife and mother." And so to the formation in March of the Women Who Want to be Women with links to similar WWWW organisations in the US and Canada. Their aim is to entiance the status of uniquely female roles, recognising that men and women are equal but different, not equal and the same. WWWW has taken its stand against the National Women's Advisory Council because it believes an Equal Opportunities Bill will eliminate sexism, so denying the difference between the sexes. The appointed spokeswoman of the WWWW, Mrs.

Valerie Ren-kema said: "Some of the more radical groups are trying to engineer a unisex society. "We want to emphasise the status of the unique family role, to raise the status of home makers and mothers. We don't believe that women go to work because they want to. We believe they have to go to work because they cannot manage on a single income." Her attack on radicalism was relentless; infiltration of the schools meant children were be TAKE A LOAD OF WE RENT FINE FORD AKtfL tolls rpHE Victorian Premier, Mr. Dick Hamer, was clearly furious when he flew into Perth on Saturday, April 21, to attend the Liberal Party's Federal Council meeting.

On the previous evening, the Deputy Prime Minister and Fede- ral leader of the National Coun- try Party, Mr. Doug Anthony, had intervened in Victoria's State election campaign. Urging a vote for National Party candidates rather than Liberals, Mr. Anthony described the Hamer Government as "dull and dreary and struggling to maintain its To Federal Liberals it seemed like pretty mild stuff, but their State counterparts were enraged and vowed retaliation. "One thing you can be sure of, Mr.

Hamer told any Liberal Fe- deral Council member who would listen, "is that Peter Nixon will not be unopposed at the next Federal It is now clear that the Premier was making no idle threat. If Saturday's Liberal Party State Council decision is implemented, the main result will be a Liberal attempt to wrest the seat of from the Transport Minister and senior Federal NCP member for Victoria, 1 That would, undoubtedly enormous tensions in the Federal coalition and perhaps weaken the Government's electo-'. ral position particularly in view of the strained relations between the coalition partners al- ready in Queensland. Problems between the Liberals and the NCP in Victoria are nothing new, of course. They have bedevilled coalition leaders in Canberra for the best part of 30 years.

A similar situation contributed 'to the coalition's failure to win I the 1974 Federal election an -election the coalition itself had brought about by deciding to block Appropriation Bills in the Senate. Then, as now, there were two "issues the question of the joint Senate ticket, and the question of three-cornered contests in House of Representative seats. In July, 1973, the Victorian 'Liberal Party executive decided I that the NCFs Senator Jim Webster, now the Minister for Science and the Environment, would have to be content with the vulnerable third position on a joint ticket. There was an outcry from the NCP; Mr. Anthony announced himself "amazed and Sir Robert 'Menzies broke his retirement rule not to get in-' volved in political issues and described the Liberal executive decision as "a cardinal But the Liberals stood firm and Mr.

Anthony, while criticising Liberal "thickheads" in Victoria, persuaded his State colleagues to accept the decision for the sake of coalition unity. The peace settlement fell apart in February, 1974, however, when the Victorian Liberals decided to call for nominations for all House of Representative seats in the State, including those held by the NCP. The issue exploded at a Vic-torian Liberal Party executive meeting less than a month before the double dissolution election. Mr. (now Sir Billy) Snedden, the then Liberal Opposition Leader, wanted the February de-' cision reversed and had drafted a long resolution for submission to the executive specifying a num-i ber of Federal electorates where the party should not run candi- ment a year ago as a communications channel between women and Government.

Among other things, the 12 members of the council are working on proposals for Federal legislation on equal opportunity. This runs contrary to the philosophy of WWWW who have said they intend to work towards abolition of the council on the ground that it has not been democratically elected by the women of Australia and is not representative of them. A petition in circulation describes the National Women's Advisory Council as a "discriminatory and sexist imposition on Australian women" and adds that Australian men do not have a National Men's Advisory Council imposed on them. Women Who Want to be Women and the Women's Action Alliance have an overlapping membership, but the WWWW is running this campaign alone. The national secretary of the WAA, Mrs.

Joan Adamson, said her organisation wanted to work through the advisory council. Sr. The Women's Electoral Lobby has met to endorse support for the council, and the Women's Liberation Movement, although sceptical that the Government would listen to the council, felt that the council could be useful and might as well remain in existence. The row over the council is not surprising because the questions of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination go to the philosophical heart of every women's group. The deep feeling that discrimination had to be fought at' every turn led to formation of the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s.

That was by no means the start of feminism a point borne out by the fact that the National Council of Women, with a long membership list running from Arxrtion Law Repeal to Zonta, has just celebrated its 75th anniversary but it heralded a new era of activism. Women's Liberation came in with a bang. Its original activists had a sense of the dramatic and the outrageous. There was no shortage of publicity and this created the climate for change. But having done that, the movement appears to have retreated into itself.

Today it creates no headlines, but is still around, running refuges for maltreated wives, crisis centres for rape victims, action groups for lesbians and a host of counselling and information services. The Women's Liberation delegation, Ms Judi Power, Ms Gillian Dwyer and Ms Judy Strong, represented five of the 17 or so groups that operate under the Liberation Movement banner. Ms Power did most of the talking on their behalf, saying that they no longer took part in dra- Canberra Mr. Lynch not only did not carry the day, he was reportedly hissed by some members of the council. The Prime Minister, Mr.

Fraser, will be anything but pleased with the situation when he returns from his African safari. According to Liberal sources, however, it is unlikely that even he could have changed Saturday's vote had he been there. The likelihood is that it will again be Mr. Lynch who will have to try to get the decision modified by the State executive. The NCP could live with three-cornered contests in most electorates.

But for the Liberals to oppose a NCP Minister would be breaking the rules of the coalition. Mr. Nixon would almost certainly hold his seat even if the Liberals ran a candidate against him, but it would be difficult to maintain any image of coalition unity. Senior Ministers in both the Liberal Party and the NCP yesterday were trying to play down the significance of the council decision, realising that any public comment at this stage would make a solution to the problem harder to achieve. But because of the feeling which already exists between the coalition partners over what has been happening in Queensland, the situation will not be easy to contain.

There the State Liberals, tired of being dominated by Mr. Bjelke-Petersen's Nationals, have decided to. go all-out to become the major State coalition partner. The Nationals at their State conference at Bundaberg 12 days ago, approved retaliatory action, empowering their management committees to run candidates against sitting Liberals in future. Mr.

Anthony told the conference mere would be a flow-on effect. "The political situation in this country is far too delicate to be allowed the luxury of individual fights and petty prejudices," he said. The Federal NCP has already suffered one blow this year with the decision of the Northern Territory's Senator Bernie Kilgariff to transfer to the Liberals. If the Liberals go ahead with a separate ticket in Queensland, the NCFs Senate strength could be further reduced. And, in third place on the joint ticket in Victoria, Senator Webster would run a sizeable risk of losing to a Labor or Australian Democrat candidate.

The NCP, in other words, stands to see its Senate strength cut from six after the last election to only three next time round. It is unlikely to tolerate the Liberals trying to unseat its Ministers in the Lower House as well which is why, somehow, the Federal Liberals will have to persuade their Victorian colleagues to back down. From LAURIE OAKES in dates against sitting NCP members. The Snedden motion was passed, but later withdrawn after the then State Liberal president, Mr. Peter Hardie, and the four vice-presidents, threatened to resign.

Details of the crisis leaked out, to the immense embarrassment of the coalition. It was left to the Deputy Liberal leader, Mr. Lynch, to sort the matter out The anti-NCP line was pushed in 1974 by a strange alliance of Left-wing or "trendy" urban Liberals and Liberals from country areas. The urban progressives, typified by Mr. Hardie, believed the NCFs conservative views had dragged the Liberal Party too far to the Right.

The country Liberals believed they could win seats from the NCP if they were given the chance. That alliance presumably still exists. But the bitterness created by the State election campaign has added many of those in the centre of the Liberal Party to the anti-NCP ranks. Saturday's State council resolution was in three parts. It said the Liberal Party should field candidates in all Federal electorates; the party should organise a separate ticket for the Senate, or put the NCP third if there is a joint ticket; and Australia would be served best by the Liberal Party governing in its own right.

The State council has no power to direct the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, so the third part of the resolution can be ignored. The Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, Insists on maintaining the coalition, though the Liberals have had a House of Representatives majority in their own right since the 1975 election. Despite NCP pressure, it has been assumed all along that Senator Webster would have to put up with being number 3 on a joint Senate ticket His only hope of getting the safe number 2 spot lay in the Nationals holding the balance of power after the Victorian election and using this as a bargaining point As it turned out, they did rather badly and are in no position to bargain over anything. Which leaves the question of three-cornered contests in House of Representatives seats the big problem, as it was five years ago.

It is interesting that Mr: Hardie played a major role again on Saturday. He and other speakers in favor of the motion spoke in emotional terms about the NCP, describing it as a sectional party, anachronistic, out of touch. But the real depth of anti-NCP feeling in the State Liberal Party was shown by the way the coun-. cil rejected a compromise amend- ment from Mr. Lynch which would have referred the issue to the State executive.

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