THE HON JULIA GILLARD AC, HOST: Katy, it's not politics that brought you to Canberra, you were born and raised there, like no one's born and raised in Canberra. Can you tell me about that?
SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR WOMEN: Yes, I'm one of those rare species at Parliament House that lives in the, you know, in the place where everyone comes to and then leaves. My parents came to Canberra in the late 60s. My dad had terrible asthma and had been told to leave the UK and he came and joined the parliamentary library actually and so started working there in the late 60s and I was born here in 1970. Yeah, it was a very small place and a place where a lot of people came to live, not where a lot of people had been born to live. But the kids that were born in the early 70s was sort of the first generation that were born and stayed. I mean, many went, but you know there's a good lot of us that were born in the 70s that stayed, and this became our home.
GILLARD: And tell me a little bit more about your mum and your dad. So, your dad's in the parliamentary library and I know that your mum has been honoured in a beautiful mural and through a mental health award that's named after her. Tell me about her story.
GALLAGHER: Yeah, so Mum was like this dynamo. She was born in the UK but I think had lived in a number of countries, so quite a kind of, for that time, probably someone who had you know all those international connections and found herself married with, in the end, four children, quite young, four under four, in the suburbs of Canberra with no car, no family, no friends and a husband that was working all the time. Very isolated. And instead of, I think, succumbing to that isolation, she turned around and started building a lot of connections and building up services and supports and really dedicated her life to that. Which is why, yeah, there's a mural of her close to where I grew up. But I think a lot of people when I'm going around and doing the work I do, always talk to me about how they remember my mum. Particularly services for women and women with children and people with a disability. She was just, she was one of those people that just rolled her sleeves up, got in, cause nobody else was doing it. And yeah, she was definitely a very powerful influence on all of our lives and many other peoples' as well.
GILLARD: And in terms of your own personal development, what you're doing now, how much of that do you think comes from, from your mum, from seeing that model of activism in your home? She must have been an early role model. I mean, not everybody's mum is out and about doing those kinds of things.
GALLAGHER: Oh yeah, I think there's probably a lot of Mum in me. I think we're all children of our parents, aren't we? When you grow up in, in a household where both are around all the time. So, there's a lot of Dad there as well. But Mum, she taught me a lot. One of the sort of lasting things out of my childhood is that you should be involved in your community, that it's not enough just to exist in it, that you should offer help where you can and you should contribute. And that, I think, was important for both of them, but Mum really lived that and she was a real, very strong feminist, hilarious in many ways, she was more left than I am in my politics, and so even though we grew up in a Labor house, she was nuclear disarmament, she was sort of left of the Greens in many ways in many areas, so we grew up with a lot of contested arguments around the table and yeah. So, she was definitely a very strong influence on me and taught me an incredible amount about contributing and giving. And both – Dad did that as well, but he was more of an introvert and did it in a more introverted way if I can say that. He was a Lifeline counsellor, he worked for prisoner advocacy. He was more one to one, whereas Mum was absolutely, she was building organisations if they didn't exist.
GILLARD: They both sound incredible. Now, there were four kids in your family, your older sister and you and then your two younger brothers, and they were adopted. Can you talk to me about that family dynamic? Because, once again, that marks you out as different from many other families growing up in Canberra, or indeed anywhere else in Australia.
GALLAGHER: Yeah. So, because we're all so close in age. My sister's a year and a bit older than me. And then my two brothers are within three years of us all. So, it was a very quick turn around and they, they both joined our family as infants, as newborn infants. So, for Claire and I there was – we don't remember a time without my brothers, so they were always there. And Mum wanted a huge family, I think Dad was, he was happy to go along for a while but then did put the stop on it. I think he was happy with four and my brother, particularly the third child in the family, Richard, he's Papua New Guinea and Chinese heritage. And so, it was very clear that he was not the biological child of my parents, not that that bothered any of us, but it did mean I grew up in and around a fair bit of racism in that time even, you know, at schools in the playground, and I think that shaped a lot of our family dynamic as well. And our kind of experience of growing up with someone of a different cultural background, exposed us to different experiences than we would have had had we not had the boys but yeah. My brothers and my sister live here in Canberra with us, so we're all still deeply connected to each other and each other's families and to us it was just, we said the boys are adopted and the boys said they were adopted before any of us knew what that meant. It wasn't a thing in our family and I and in fact my youngest brother and I, everyone would say that the two of us were the spitting image of each other, which we always found very hilarious.
GILLARD: And what about early experiences of sexism? You've referred to racism because of your younger brother, but for you, when was the first time that you thought to yourself, gee, boys seem to get treated differently to girls?
GALLAGHER: It like, it wasn't in my household. That's for sure, because my mum, if anything, she went the other way. Girls are the best and can do everything more than anybody else, like, she always built us up. But I think it was probably at school when you first started getting segregated into you know the boys doing different sport than you, some things that the boys were able to do, some courses that girls weren't encouraged to do. So, I disappointingly – and I think that has changed watching my own children go through public schools in Canberra – but I think that's probably where the imprinting started. That there were different rules for girls and boys, you chose different subjects as you progressed through school. That kind of, that gap got worse. You wore different clothes. I remember having to wear school uniforms and things that were freezing in Canberra and things like that where the boys always look toasty warm. So, I remember all of that and so I think unfortunately for me it was just the reality of the world I grew up in and as I went through university, I think that was still a bit the same.
GILLARD: And would you, when you were a teenager or at university, would you have referred to yourself as a feminist?
GALLAGHER: I think I probably would have. By university I definitely would have, and again that goes back to Mum's incredible influence on us. It wasn't even a choice. I can't remember – in our household like we, we were all feminists, and you know, sort of woe betide you if you weren't. That was the thing. But I was probably more kind of aware of what that meant and more proud about that and about pursuing that by the time I went to university. I think those years from sort of 13 to 17, certainly for me I was much more unsure of myself and less likely to speak out and speak up than I was by the time I started going to uni.
GILLARD: And you just went straight on to do social work, what made you pick social work?
GALLAGHER: Well I did a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Political Science, and so I really didn't know what I wanted to do at all, so I muddled my way through and by the time I finished I was working in the community sector pretty much full time, which is where I then spent, you know, a number of years working with people with a disability and children with a disability in particular. But I do look forward to the idea that I go back to uni one day and really enjoy it cause I just don't think I gave myself the whole experience, cause I was working pretty much you know 20 hours a week, studying and I lived at home so it was probably, compared to what I see some others do at uni, mine was pretty tame.
GILLARD: OK, you heard it here first that Katy, post her political career will be found on a university campus, reclaiming student days. That's something to look forward to. If I had met you back then when you were in university studying obviously some politics and asked you, are you interested in politics, would you have said yes or no? Would you have thought of yourself as the kind of person who could go into politics at that stage?
GALLAGHER: I was definitely interested in politics. Dad had been a member of the Labor Party, so I'd spent a fair bit of time as a kid handing out how to votes, back when you allowed children to hand out how to votes. It's not really, it's not really the done thing now. So, I'd grown up in a political household with parents who were quite active and debating about politics was, you know, common. But I knew I wasn't a Liberal and I knew I wasn't a conservative, but I didn't really know at university where I fit within, you know, the traditional I guess paradigm at that time. And so, I didn't join any established political organisation then, but I sort of watched from the sidelines and I studied political systems, and I understood politics mattered and that when used and got right it changes lives. And I think that really clicked when I was at uni with some of the reforms that Susan Ryan did around sex discrimination and then onwards with the Disability Discrimination Act as well – that, you know, those pieces of legislation weren't just legislation on paper, it actually made a difference and changed lives for the better. And so that's the moment, I guess it really switched to me that this matters and we need to be involved, but I would never have thought that I myself would have been a politician. I could definitely – I joined the party, and I was involved, but never, ever would have. If people who knew me then, knew me they wouldn't have said so either. I was more the person that you know would turn up and do all the staffing the booths and getting up early and doing all that and making sure I went to meetings and things like that. But I left all the hard bits, like being out the front, to others.
GILLARD: Well, we'll talk about how you moved from then to doing what you're doing now and thank you for reminding us of the wonderful role model Susan Ryan was as a woman in the Hawke Labor Government cabinet who showed us that women could be in politics at that level, I mean the role models were so few back then. But before we get to the stage of your life where you're more in active politics, I did want to ask you about a very unexpected and devastating turn that your life took in 1997. You'd, you know, gone to university, you were a 27-year-old, you were pregnant with your first child, your beautiful daughter, Abby, and you were engaged to your fiancé at the time, Brett, and he was tragically killed in a bike accident. Can you tell us about that? I mean, it's sort of an unimaginable loss for someone to be there, pregnant, in love and then your partner doesn't come home.
GALLAGHER: Yeah. Look, it's one of those one of those times that happens in your life where it really shapes the rest of your life in many ways. You know it's such a massive event that you change forever from that moment. And that's certainly what happened to me. This taught me a lot about, you know, some of the work I do now, how I guess when you go through experiences like that and you go to the bottom of the bottom, which I did, it teaches you empathy and understanding, I think that's probably at the time beyond your years. Like now I'm catching up to it because you know, a lot of people my age have now gone through you know, loss and grief and life has shaped them. But at 27, I think it's quite – you're quite young and so it's, it's not, you know it's not a 27-year-old's experience. And I'd lived a very happy and privileged life you know so that – to go from sort of planning our lives, waiting for the birth of our baby – and we were actually on holiday at the time, we were just having a weekend off down the coast – to this accident occurring and then you know being basically a single parent on a supporting mothers payment, finding it difficult to work, having to find a new place to live. All of that it, you know, in the transition of a few months was pretty life changing and life shaping. And even now while I talk to you about it, you start to get that kind of – not that I mind talking about it cause I don't – but you, you start getting that sort of funny feeling you get when you reflect on that. Cause it's such a difficult time. I mean, one, the unfairness of it all, which I know these things that you can never just diminish them to fair or unfair, but you know he was out on a bike ride, an unlicensed woman in her late 80s just was not – shouldn't have been behind a car that day or any day, actually, as it turned out – and, you know, hit him at over 100 kilometres an hour. So, he had no, no chance. He was a recreational cyclist, a very good cyclist, road cyclist and then there was other things about it. I was out looking for him. It was back in the days before mobile phones. He just never came back, and I actually heard about it whilst driving around looking for him on the radio, I'd tuned to the local radio station and they'd put a call out to say police were looking for somebody who knew this cyclist who'd been killed, and so that's how I actually heard about it. So, I think and again, that kind of impact of that has always stayed with me as well. You know, it's those moments where you just sort of, you feel that trauma being inflicted on you straight, you know, so brutally, which it was, and it was no one's fault. That was just the way I heard about it. Yeah. And then piecing myself back together, which I didn't do a very good job of. I was just in deep shock really, and the whole thing was so traumatic, and I ended up living, you know, really retreating. I lived by myself. I was very difficult to be around for my family and friends who wanted to care for me, and I just, I couldn't allow that, and so I spent for the rest of the pregnancy in a pretty bad shape and had a lot of interventions. Had a, you know, had in the end, you know, some pretty serious psychiatric interventions. I really did go into the bottom of the bottom. But you know, through that and through some very good interventions by some very good doctors, I sort of pieced myself together so that when Abby was actually born – I was in better shape and it was a doctor saying to me, "you're going to" – I remember it, sort of those moments that cut through – he said "you're going to have a baby in six weeks and you're not going to be able to care for it". And that's the moment that I sort of thought, "God, Katy, get yourself back together." Because I thought I can't now lose the baby. And so that, that moment just that one line, that clarity. I thought right this is this is for real now. I've got to get myself back together. So, I started taking antidepressants, which made pulled me out of kind of hole I was in, and by the time Abby was born, there was no one who was going to take that baby from me. You know, I was in much better shape and I was then, because I had this baby. I don't know. I transferred everything all this love and things to her, and she became the most important thing and that allowed me to reconnect with other people. I shouldn't put that burden on Abby, you know, cause she's a newborn baby, but she was the bridge that I needed to get back and then, you know, people were incredibly kind and supportive. Brett was in the Labor Party. He'd sort of got me more active than I had been before and so the Labor Party, the union movement, really wrapped around me at that time and made sure that you know, I wasn't struggling. And found me a job because I wasn't really able to do anything, but they gave me a job anyway and looked after me and they did so not just for me, but they did so because, you know, they wanted to for Brett. And now I have this beautiful 26-year-old who's just left Canberra to live in Darwin and she's wonderful. And she's very like her father. But she's the product, you know, of and of a very happy life so far. So, it's been wonderful to have her. She's been a real gift out of all of that.
GILLARD: Absolutely.
GALLAGHER: Sorry, that was probably a bit too frank and honest, but when I open it up, that's sort of telling you really how it was, it was terrible but a lot of good come out of it as well.
GILLARD: Well, thank you for sharing all of that and of course, it's such a tragic story that when you do open it up, then you know, I, everybody else listening, I think can feel the force of it and I think it therefore makes it even more difficult, in some ways, to see your pathway into politics because you know, 1997, you lost Brett. In 2001 you joined the ACT Legislative Assembly. So, for those who don't live in Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory, the equivalent of the state parliament for the territory, I mean you talk about piecing yourself back together, but that is more than piecing yourself back together, that's the sort of birth of ambition and going into frontline politics. How did you work from one to the other given you, you before this, you'd not only sustained this tragedy, but before this you'd been the backroom person and I don't mean that in the sense of one of the backroom manipulators, but the person who did the street stall set up or did the how to votes, but you weren't at the front line. You weren't the public advocate.
GALLAGHER: Yeah, so well it's all sort of part of the same story really, was, I felt when the movement gets around somebody it's, and I expect this happens in other communities where there's deep connections, but I had been so well supported from 1997 onwards. And in a sense because I'd lost, you know, I was just a single parent living at home, the Labor Party, and this sounds a little bit tragic, but it is actually quite a social place where, you know, for us as well as politics, it was a safe place for me to be and to go out and go to sub branches and all that and everyone knew me, I didn't have to tell my story. Everyone welcomed Abby. So it was sort of part of the Labor family and I felt, I did feel a sense of debt and enormous gratitude to, sort of the way that I felt that I know in hindsight I did a lot of this myself, but I always felt that other people had sort of lifted me up and I was definitely part of it, but there was a lot of others there. So, to cut a long story short, in about the year 2000 there was no women in the Labor Party in the ACT Assembly, and there was a big push by Emily's List to get women to put their hand up. We have this very weird electoral system called Hare-Clark with Robson Rotation, which makes it very difficult for new people to get elected. So, it's a one where name recognition is really rewarded, and where traditionally men have done very well. Because it requires a very kind of aggressive style of campaigning where your main competitor is your Labor colleague. So, in a multi-member electorate you know that you'll probably get, you know, two or three Labor members elected. Then the candidates kind of have to go and cannibalise each other for that vote. So, it – that's how I think it has traditionally supported men, because women are kind of going, ohh just don't really want to be part of all of that. And these were early days really the first sort of 10 to 15 years of self-government that we'd seen that. So, there's been a few elections. Anyway, again, these incredible Labor women, Joan Kirner was around, trying to push women to get elected or to stand for nomination and somebody said to me you would be a good candidate and I was like, ohh I, you know, absolutely not. And then, you know, you get you do get tapped on the shoulder as you know, like somewhere there's a group meeting and somebody decides that Katy actually, partly because nobody really knew me, so nobody disliked me, that I could be this clean skin candidate along with a number of other women, but we had to go through this process. I had to meet Joan Kirner, for example. I was beside myself, I had to go to this meeting. So nervous. And I was so nervous I couldn't get my spiel out because she – and you know how direct she always was. She was like, so Katy, why should you be a candidate? And I was like, I probably shouldn't. I don't know what I'm doing here. And then she must have, I don't know, she must have seen something. And she said tell me you story. And so, I talked to her about you know how I got to here and I just saw her put a big tick on my kind of form and she was lovely to me and she actually stayed in contact with Abby – you know cause she wanted to meet Abby and all this. And she was lovely, gave me a book to give Abby which she signed and everything. And so, it was her, she was just like, absolutely you're going to be a candidate. And then everyone said, but you won't win so don't worry about it. And I kind of rationalised that as you know what, this is putting myself out there, I've hidden under a rock for probably four years. I'm 30 years old. It's that's not good for anyone, you've got to see it as a personal development exercise. And because it was a, you know, such a long shot that a no name person, woman would get elected, I just went along with it and then, you know, I was the 7th member elected in that seat by about 120 votes out of 70,000 that were cast two weeks after the election. Like I was the last person elected to the Assembly, accidentally. Like, that's how I saw myself. I was like, I've accidentally been elected, and we formed government at that time as well, so yeah. It wasn't meant to be. I was told it wouldn't happen, and then when it did happen, it was a shock to everybody including the new Chief Minister who I'd never even met, John Stanhope. So, I remember him being asked on the radio that afternoon, so the new member for Molonglo, Katy Gallagher, how you going to work with her? I was thinking, gosh, he's never met me. Anyway, he gave a suitably appropriate answer, but it was a shock to everyone, believe me, Julia, including myself and Abby, but it was a good one as well. It's been again one of those life changing moments.
GILLARD: That is a wonderful story overall, and it is a wonderful Joan Kirner story. You know, our much-loved leading woman, first woman to lead the state of Victoria, who then went on to become this affirmative action, promote women powerhouse and there she is with the tick, that's that is a fantastic story.
And so you viewed yourself as the accidental joiner of the ACT Assembly, but over the next decade, slightly over a decade, you made it your own, you held portfolios, Health, Treasury, you became Deputy Chief Minister and then ultimately Chief Minister. So, how did the conception go from oops I accidentally got in to, you know, leading the Assembly, leading the ACT. How did that happen?
GALLAGHER: Yeah. Well, again, like it, I'm not one of these people with life plans or, you know, once I got elected, I didn't set out to be anything, like a minister, I didn't have a political strategy at all. And that just doesn't seem to have ever hurt me. I still, I still don't in federal parliament. But I think I was fortunate again, I had a very good, the Chief Minister, John Stanhope, very supportive, again, a deep feminist, really when you look at everything he stood for. When I got elected, I was one of two women in the Labor Party in the Assembly, and I think he saw it as his job to develop up women through roles. And so, I think, I was on the back bench for a year because nobody – honestly, I don't think it would have been right to make me a minister straight away. I wouldn't have had a clue, so I did a year on the backbench and then I was promoted to one of the more junior portfolios and then I think it – and you would have seen this in politics too, you know, some you get thrown opportunities and then you make what you can with that opportunity. Like I've never been one to say oh that's a terrible portfolio or that's a better one, or I want that one. I've always took the view that whatever you get given you do, and you do to your best ability and there's opportunity in everything. And so that's sort of the way I worked and John and I, he made me Deputy Chief Minister I think in 2006. And you know, I always say they were sort of the happiest time in in the Assembly was when I was deputy to him, I feel like I'm a very good 2IC. And we worked well together, which I again I think is sometimes unique in politics when you can find people that are like that. And it turned out at the elections, I must have had three or four elections in the Assembly, people liked me and they voted for me and so I enjoyed it enormously, but there was also a time to leave as well. You know, it's always hard to leave politics, because it's never finished, nothing's ever finished. You finish aspects of it, but there's always something coming at you. You know what I mean.
GILLARD: I do, It's the old Paul Keating. The race of reform is never finished. There's always more to do. And so, to draw a line under it for yourself when you're obviously full of ideas about what to do next is not an easy thing. But you really made a you know, you made a huge impact in the ACT and that position is not only the dominant position, obviously for the ACT, it does bring you very strongly into intersection with federal politics, the federal parliament is such a big part of what happens in Canberra, you join what is now called National Cabinet, so you get to have your say on national reforms and you, at through your life and your pathway decided at some point that having been there in the ACT, that federal politics would be the thing for you. How did you do that transition and think about that transition?
GALLAGHER: Well, it's another one of those stories. I don't think I've told before. But now I look back, I see what was happening, but I didn't see it at the time, but I think Kate Lundy had a view, which I hadn't really cottoned onto because I've always been had been friends with Kate.
GILLARD: We should just say Kate Lundy, then senator in the federal parliament from the ACT, Labor senator.
GALLAGHER: And I think she'd made the decision in her head to go and, you know, so the calls for let's catch up to have a coffee were a bit more frequent than they had been in the past, and so I think there was a bit of that, not that she ever came out and actually bluntly said it, but I think that's what was going on. And I had kind of been at a crossroads. I knew I didn't want to go through another election in the ACT. I felt like I'd done enough. I'd kind of made my mind up, but in a small place like Canberra, it was also, where you're quite high profile, it's a hard place to disappear from or to find another pathway. I had young, relatively young children as well, and then you know, Tony Abbott came in and that first budget destroyed our budget, but more broadly, it was destroying everything that I think we'd spent, you know, working with your government and with Kevin's government on putting in place in education, particularly and in health, and I was absolutely furious about it. And that coincided with Kate leaving and I thought, well, I'm, you know, they're not going to listen to me here, so I can join the group that's trying to hold them to account federally. And there was a, you know, Kate leaving created that casual vacancy where you get appointed, and I think Anthony and Penny had certainly indicated that they were trying to increase seniority in the Senate. So, bringing people into the Senate to refresh that, anyway so all of those things happen to line up just again more time and circumstance rather than any careful thinking or planning.
GILLARD: And how would you reflect on the differences between federal parliament and what you used to do in the ACT Legislative Assembly? I mean obviously size is very, very different, but political culture, is it more brutal, more nasty than ACT politics?
GALLAGHER: Ohh yeah, yeah. I mean I wish – I always say this – I wish I had enjoyed the kind of calmness and niceness of the ACT political system more. Like I, I always – in the job, I was always stressed and what's the Canberra Times saying about me or the government. And it's just absolutely nothing compared to being taken on in federal politics. The speed of the politics. The nastiness, the brutality of it. What you're up against with some of the news outlets is just – like, it's a completely different world. And I was completely unprepared and there was a couple of really difficult interviews where I kind of turn up like ACT Chief Minister ready to kind of answer a few questions and I'm all of a sudden in a brawl with people and saying – you know, saying something that's inconsistent with what someone else said two years ago and the headlines coming. And so, it was a real wake up for me, like oh okay, this is how politics are played. And even in the caucus, you know, it's a bigger caucus. You know, there's groups within the caucus, all of that that. I had to learn to navigate that I hadn't had to deal with in the ACT. So, I did feel like – I felt like I was bringing experience and then I turn up and I feel like I'm back in kindergarten going oh my god and I felt like people were looking at me going, isn't she really experienced, and you know shouldn't she understand this a bit more? But anyway, you learn, you take those moments, and you get on with it. You've got to be resilient.
GILLARD: You do have to be resilient and one thing that calls on you to be resilient is that the environment is still gendered. And I'd be interested in your reflections about how gendered. But you know, looking at your experiences in the federal parliament, you're kind of famous on YouTube, you can click on the clip of you explaining mansplaining which – one of those viral clips. And there was the time when you were, along with a number of other Labor women, being derided as a mean girl, a characterisation which is obviously sexist at its heart. I mean, how have you found how gendered it is and compared with the ACT or your expectations?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, I feel like in the caucus, cause we're 50 per cent women now, that's a very different environment to when I first joined sort of formal politics. Even when we were in a small ACT assembly – like when you went to meetings that were predominantly men and you'd be the only woman. I find that has changed a lot for the better. I think the caucus, just from the numbers of women – from my experience again, I wasn't there in previous terms when there was a lot less women – but I find it you know a very encouraging place for women to be. Which I think is excellent. And I always say 53 per cent of the caucus are women, but 100 per cent of the caucus support women and support our roles in the party. And that hasn't come easily, has it? Like, it hasn't just happened. Our male colleagues haven't just gone ohh, that's great, welcome. Like it's been a pretty hard fought for structural change to our organisation. But I look at the generations that are coming behind me and I think they get an easier – they will get an easier run, a better run than you got. And that, you know, any woman in around politics previously have. I was talking to Penny Wong about this. I feel like our generation was about getting a spot at the table and holding that spot, whereas the women coming behind us, they take that spot, that's theirs, that's for granted. And now they want – you know, they're taking it a step further about, it's not just about holding or being a part of this. They're actually challenging some of what goes on. Which is really heartening to me to watch, and I do watch the younger women coming though. You know, it's still a male dominated environment, politics in general and our engagement with stakeholders. You know what it's like. Dealing with national politics inside and outside the Parliament is still predominantly a male game. And yeah, I think some of the media certainly is still challenged a bit by having strong female leads playing legitimate roles within political organisations and I've certainly felt the full brunt of that, as have many other women, I should say, from certain media outlets outside of politics as well. I find that a real challenge because I think, well, I'm old enough and tough enough and you know, I've been in enough dark places to know that this is something that I can manage, but I think it does still send a message to women that you're not really welcome or if you are going to step up and front up, be prepared to face onslaughts or you know attacks. And I think for some women, they just go, "you know what, that doesn't look so great." And I think that's the bit we've got to keep chipping away at.
GILLARD: Yeah, I agree with that absolutely and that's a critique obviously of what we would call traditional media or legacy media now the newspapers, the TV stations, but also definitely a critique of social media. And I'm sure you would get stuff on your social media feed, Penny Wong would, other leading women would that's just you know horrifying.
GALLAGHER: Yeah, that's right. I was just talking to a younger woman in our party about some of what she's getting. And it's horrible to tell them but I just say turn it off, like, don't read them. You've got to give yourself a break from it. But a lot of the gendered kind of violence and you know violent comments are really horrible. And our eSafety Commissioner does an incredible job trying to stay on top of it, but yeah, it's a very, very difficult environment, I think. And you – yeah, it's up to a lot of us who've been in it I think to keep protecting those who want to come forward and encourage it. Because nothing will change unless we keep challenging it. Like this is the bit that gets me, I'm so stubborn now. I love being in my 50s, it's like I don't care anymore. You know, like I'm not going to watch, what I want to actually say. But it's, I just feel like anyone who tries to push us out – we've got to just keep pushing up against it.
GILLARD: And you're there now. And your Minister for Finance now, for the listeners who are not political aficionados, what do you do?
GALLAGHER: Well, that role and it gets very popular about this time of the calendar cycle cause it's just as we're finalising the budget. I don't want to diminish the role, but I'm involved in pretty much – it's like the nosy parker of the government. You're involved in everything and you're watching everything, and you see things at a whole-of-government level. I work closely with Jim, the Treasurer, putting our economic updates together. So, we're putting our budgets together and yeah, we cost everything and we look at what means going forward, I look to find savings and do all that. So, I'm sort of liked and disliked at the same time, if I'm doing my job properly.
GILLARD: Yeah, liked by those whose ideas and new programs have got funded, disliked by those who have been asked to find the savings.
GALLAGHER: Exactly.
GILLARD: But in addition to that huge role, you are driving the government's work on gender equality and in March this year you announced Australia's first strategy for gender equality. So, thank you. And there's a 10-year commitment there to drive action. There's all sorts of commitments that lie under that, one of the priority areas is violence against women, where we've still got so much to do. We know that in 2023, 64 Australian women were killed in violent incidents. And this has been described as a problem of epidemic proportions. How do you think government can make a difference on violence against women?
GALLAGHER: Yeah, well that's you know, a big question that I ask myself because we're putting a lot of money into it and I guess people are saying, are we seeing the change we need to see? You know, cause governments, including yours, invested heavily – governments all around Australia invest heavily – and we're still seeing completely unacceptable levels of gendered violence and violence against women and children. We've got our plan to end violence against women and children in a generation so that – and that was hard to land, you know, a commitment. And when we were talking with everyone and trying to get them to sign on to what target or what should we aim for when we're talking about that, you know there's not agreement necessarily on how achievable that is. But we just decided, Amanda Rishworth and I, that it was important to set out even though it doesn't have it in year time frame, something that we were working towards to end violence because of the impact it has on our community, on individuals and on our economy. So, I think a couple of things. One we've – governments obviously should invest in programs that prevent violence and we need to continue to do that. We need to work in partnership with all the stakeholders and those particularly at the frontline, who you know are really managing the crisis as it is on a daily basis. I think we need to be open about changing course if we need to change course. And we have to be continuously trying to I think get ahead of what next is coming. I mean, one of the biggest changes that we're seeing now is not only the physical violence and sexual violence that happens against women and children, but the increasing – and you've mentioned it before – shift into online and sort of surveillance violence that's happening. And some of our traditional approaches have to be able to get ahead of that and look at what we can do there. So yeah, I mean, if there was one thing I could change in the world if you did have a magic wand, it would be to remove violence as an issue that that women face. Because I think that feeds into – when you look at all of the work, it feeds into so much else in terms of you know what happens to children, what happens with housing, what happens with employment, what happens with retirement savings. When you look along the spectrum of all those issues where women fall behind there is you know this big kind of elephant in the room, which is violence and the impact that that has on every other aspect of life.
GILLARD: Yeah, it's so important. And so central to gender equality. You're absolutely right. How it, the ripple effects of it affect everything. A big thank you for the work you and the government have done to improve our gender pay gap disclosure legislation. I know that the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University and the Institute at Kings College London, both of which I proudly chair, were involved in some of the thinking and research work about how to improve gender pay gap legislation. And the government's really run with this, and we know more now than we ever did about the gender pay gaps of individual employers, almost 5,000 of them. So, a real motivator for change. Thank you so much for doing that. Were you at all shocked when those numbers came out?
GALLAGHER: On some of them I was. I acknowledge everyone who's worked to get us to this point. I kind of swept in at the end and had the privilege of pushing the legislation through and then being around to see that first year of data come through. Maybe I wasn't surprised, because I know that if you have a gender pay gap – if you use the ABS data 12 per cent or if you use WGEA with total remuneration, closer to 21 per cent. So, within that, there's going to be outliers. And so, I knew that. The thing I was really pleased about, one, it turned into this real conversation starter. And friends of mine that aren't in politics and don't really follow politics, I know they were logging on to have a look at what was going on. Because there's just this thing I think when you're a woman in the workplace, you think there's something going on, you're not quite sure. And this gave people that opportunity to check. But the other thing it did was it flushed out the industry average, you know so people who've been hiding behind an industry average. Like, I did a whole press conference on gender pay gap. Like, when does that happen? I think it will drive change because I certainly had a number of businesses reach out that were like, ohh you know, I know it looks bad, but it's just because we don't have any women on our executive. And it's like, yeah, that's the point. You know? So, I hope the reporting to boards as well as the requirement will drive some of that change cause ultimately boards and you know the managing directors are responsible.
GILLARD: I need to let you go because that budget won't write itself. You've always got things to do. So, I am gonna bring us to the last question. As you know, this podcast is named for a saying of the author and feminist Virginia Woolf and I always put a Virginia Woolf quote to my guests and your quote is: Virginia says, "The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking, the woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion". Are you agreeing with Virginia?
GALLAGHER: Absolutely. It's like she could be writing about me. There's a couple of things in that, isn't there? There's, one, you know talking about I guess how the world operates. And two, that women are always there and always watching and always working out how to contribute. Often in different ways, but hopefully we can give that a good old kick along, get it on more equal footing.
GILLARD: Absolutely. Thank you, Katy, for such a great conversation. And thank you for everything you and the Labor team are doing to make us a stronger and fairer nation. Thank you so much.
GALLAGHER: Thanks for having me on Julia. It's a real privilege and lovely to see you again.