Abstract
I received the news that the Legal Service Bulletin/Alternative Law Journal (LSB/AltLJ) turns 50 this year with a shock. My mind flashed back to just over 30 years ago when I was asked to write a column presenting legal issues from a feminist perspective. I’ve been writing it (with a bit of help from my friends) ever since, so that must make me about 74. How did that even happen?
Over the years, this Girlie has occasionally had to hand the column over to others because of work-related responsibilities, and to give someone else a go so the column would have a fresh look. I am grateful to all the other Girlies who stood up when this Girlie had to stand down. The column always found its way back to me when these friends also found themselves overwhelmed by work, having and raising babies, and the many other roles that new opportunities have provided for women. Thank you all. I dare not name you because if I do, I may miss someone, but you know who you are. I sincerely hope Sit Down Girlie! survives until we achieve full equality and there is no longer a need for people with ‘radical views’ to keep calling out bad behaviour. Underneath the bravado, Girlie has always been an optimist however that stance is becoming harder to maintain in a world increasingly dominated by a model of ‘strong man’ dictatorships that threaten our very democracies.
In 1991, in the very first published column, I wrote about the origins of the title: Acknowledgements are due to a certain Judicial Registrar of the Family Court of Australia for the title of this column. A solicitor who was appearing before him was waiting patiently for a male colleague to finish addressing the JR. Assuming he had completed his submission she rose to her feet – prematurely it appears – and the JR roared ‘Sit down girlie’! Thanks to the solicitor (who also happens to be the Convenor of Feminist Lawyers) for the story.
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The solicitor was Renata Alexander who then worked at Victoria Legal Aid – a wonderfully stoical and chronically under-funded organisation that only had a couple of wigs back then. It was a matter of first in, best wig, and Renata was late to work that day so she got the daggiest wig. When she told me what had happened, I was sympathetic but also thrilled. At last! I had the title that I needed and Sit Down Girlie! was born. Later, one ‘well-proportioned, if not well-intentioned, QC from Melbourne’ subsequently claimed it was one of his indiscretions towards a woman solicitor that was the inspiration for the title. Sorry mate, you’re wrong, so sit down boyo!
Not everyone liked the title with one angry reader writing in to then Journal editorial coordinator, Liz Boulton, decrying it as sexist and announcing her decision to boycott the journal. (A lack of appreciation of irony was ‘a thing’ long before the Woke Movement got its name.) Justice Michael Kirby also wrote to express his annoyance at Girlie for being sexist by referring to him as ‘Mr Justice Kirby’ instead of the more neutral ‘Justice Kirby’. His letter, however, was written with his typical wit and humour and he has remained a very good friend of the AltLJ.
Years later, as President of ANZAPPL (Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law), I was at the front door of a venue, waiting to welcome Justice Kirby, who was our guest speaker. There was great excitement and anticipation, with a sizeable press contingent attending as he was about to out himself again. I hesitated, stopped him, and said, ‘The man in charge of lighting wants to know if you want the full flood lights?’ He tenderly put his hand on my shoulder, inclined his handsome head towards mine and said, ‘Why ever not, Beth?’ So full floodlights it was, and a wonderful Keynote Address.
In 1992, the name change – from Legal Service Bulletin to Alternative Law Journal – involved a sometimes excruciating transitional journey. Discussions about the proposed title change would invariably take place at the end of the agendas of the editorial committee. Meetings were often at the editorial coordinator’s home, but I recall one at my place that dragged on late into the night – unfortunate, at the time, as one delegate monopolised the bathroom for 45 minutes. I sometimes wonder if my current role as Patron of the Continence Foundation of Australia had its genesis that night, especially as someone asked me the other day why I was wheeling a port-a-loo to Prahran Market. That was my wheelie walker. When the new title was finally agreed on, we all wondered why we hadn’t thought of it sooner. I recollect a discussion of the tortuous process with Julian Gardner, then Chair of the WorkCare Appeals Board, when he responded with, ‘Why don’t you just call it the AltLJ?’ 2 However, I’m equally sure there will be as many versions of that story as there are founders of the Fitzroy Legal Service.
The only other topic that attracted as much discussion as the title of the journal was whether to invest in an office for Dorothy Carter (known by all as Dot) at Monash University. Liz Boulton described Dot’s original work space as a ‘little dungeon of a room with no window’ that used to be a law library storeroom. Dot was the initial hardworking administrative officer for the journal and is remembered with warmth and gratitude. The journal was finally allocated a suitable office of its own, but only because Liz also worked for the Lawyers Practice Manual, initially published by the Springvale Legal Service, and it was Simon Smith from that service who provided the office space.
Liz Boulton, the first Editorial Coordinator of the LSB and later the AltLJ, stayed in that position for 140 issues. In her farewell Comment, Liz wrote: The 24 years I have worked on the journal has been a period of enormous technological change in publication production processes. In 1983 I used my own dining room table to spread out the layout boards for checking. Corrections involved trimming tiny lines of type and sticking them over the mistakes. In 1983 I had to do the rounds of the typesetter, layout artist, cartoonists, and printer. In 2006 I don’t leave my office – everything is done from my computer. I’m no longer reliant on post and couriers – one click of the mouse and a pdf proof is in the inbox of the author. The first National Meeting of Editorial Committees that I attended in Sydney, in 1983, was somewhat overwhelming for a naïve kiwi lass. The sparkling intellects of the participants, who have since moved on to illustrious careers (judge, QC, broadcaster, dean, professor, and so on), made for spirited discussion. I learned the meaning of the word dendrophiliac and the Minutes are sprinkled with ‘tree’ puns and make very amusing reading.
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Liz also noted the move to it becoming a refereed journal in 1997, attracting more authors from academia rather than from legal practice or community legal centres, and writing that: [t]his has resulted in a shift in emphasis from political/activist to more mainstream, and an increasing focus on human rights. However, the core issues of access to justice for the disadvantaged, the delivery of legal services, and legal education – both for the community, and for law and legal studies students – remain clearly in the journal’s focus.
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In the first AltLJ Opinion, in February 1992, Ian Freckelton and I made it clear the journal would remain an ally and staunch supporter of the community legal service movement, as well as heeding the voices of the underdog by focussing on alternative views and narratives. 5 Flicking through past issues, I feel we have achieved this; the law has changed in many ways but, as David Brown and Chrissie Hynde have pointed out, ‘some things change, some stay the same’. 6 While sexual assault trials have introduced some changes such as the ability of victims to give evidence via video, victims are still rigorously cross-examined in every aspect of their lives and far too many never proceed to trial because of the trauma involved. It is still deeply disturbing to face the current reality of sexual harassment in our law firms, legal system and institutions – all the way up to the High Court and Parliament. It is heartening, however, to note that for a short while – until the retirement of Chief Justice Susan Kiefel at the end of 2023 – four of the seven judges in the High Court of Australia were women. In 2020, Kiefel’s handling of the results of an inquiry into allegations of sexual harassment made by six judges’ associates against a judge of the Court, was timely and appropriate. A public statement containing sincere apologies, made to the complainants and announcing action taken to support them and to improve the Court’s HR processes, was released proving that women judges do make a difference. 7
Back in 1993 under the heading, ‘Down with the Lavatory Barrier’, Girlie congratulated Rosemary Balmford on her appointment to the County Court of Victoria.
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She was later the first woman to be appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court of Victoria following in the footsteps of her father, Sir John Norris. Her mother, Dame Ada Norris, who represented Australia on several United Nations Committees, had written: The reasons given for refusing jury service to women sounded more like excuses. Governments of all political views reacted in the same way – horrified at the prospect of women jurors, the lavatory barrier … was raised.
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In 1930, Jessie Street had also raised the ‘lavatory barrier’: Are the sensibilities of Australian men jurors so highly developed that their natural functions would be stimulated or inhibited by having to share lavatory facilities with women? If so, they must be a race apart. I have travelled all over the world in aeroplanes where people are at closer quarters than in court houses and usually the lavatories are at closer quarters than they are in our courthouses and usually the lavatories are for the use of either sex.
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Girlie began positively even while exposing all manner of sexism, racism, disadvantage and discrimination. At the time, The Age newspaper had allocated a small space to a feminist perspective on the news, and life in general, that included Pig Pen, a brief exposé of men behaving badly. Girlie, hoping encouragement rather than a rubbishing might elicit better behaviour, began featuring Girlie’s Man of the Month including men like Des Ryan, senior partner of law firm Davies Ryan De Boos who donated seven desks to the Women’s Legal Resources Group and the 15 police who, in September 1991, acted as pallbearers for a Fitzroy character, Norma Annie Quinton who, for 15 years had reported in on bail daily, although she never was on bail. 11 On 14 January 1992, the officer in charge wrote to the journal in response to that piece advising how proud and pleased they were, and that the column was now on their noticeboard.
Girlie was always keen to receive contributions from readers’ experiences of working in the law and there was no shortage of stories about the indignities to which women were subjected while struggling to establish themselves in legal work. On 20 September 1993, Justice Adrian Smithers in the Family Court soundly castigated solicitor Sue Macgregor. The following then appeared in Sit Down Girlie under the heading, ‘I can see you and I don’t like it!’: Girlie … listened in total amazement as Justice Smithers soundly castigated solicitor Sue Macgregor for about ten minutes, presumably on her physical appearance. It was unclear exactly what had upset the judge before whom the good Sue had previously appeared many, many times. On this occasion she was wearing a black skirt and matching jacket with white cuffs and collar, white patterned tights and a pair of black shoes, possible Italian and very swish. To the bemused Girlie [she] looked terrific. The judge however, was ‘shocked’ and ‘distressed’, ‘upset’, ‘literally shocked’, ‘in a state of shock’ and eventually ‘recovered’ and even went so far as to suggest, ‘Perhaps it is time I retired’. Ms Macgregor was the instructing solicitor at the time and her client was represented by counsel. Counsel asked the judge if he would like Ms Macgregor to leave the court. His Honour conceded that it was important that she be there. At one stage in all these extraordinary proceedings the judge bemoaned the fact that if you say anything at all these days you get the popular press and ‘people with radical views’ who say, ‘oh, that’s fine’, but the judge said, ‘it’ was ‘not what he was used to’. This all occurred on the very week that Justice Elizabeth Evatt was conducting public hearings on gender bias for the Australian Law Reform Commission just up the road and around the corner from the Family Court in Melbourne.
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Girlie was calling out the judge’s behaviour and that of others who women in the law had to face every day: ‘This is gender bias, it exists, it is blatant and it is unfair.’ Girlie vowed to continue to fight, and even made it into Vogue Magazine
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which republished the following: Girlie can only wonder why … judges, of all people, have the cheek to castigate women for their dress sense. These blokes have been known to wear red robes with ermine trimmings (or is it rabbit fur?) of a style not seen since Santa was a lad. They don risqué platinum blonde wigs, festooned with ringlets and, horror of all horrors, Girlie has even heard it said that underneath all this extraordinary garb the judges actually wear suspenders! Girlie is shocked, dismayed, offended and is certainly not used to this sort of thing. It’s about time that judges paid some account to community standards when they dress to appear in court.
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Justice Smithers did retire, but not until 2002. He died in 2017 and his children wrote in his Obituary, ‘The only public controversy of Adrian's judicial career was when he upbraided a female lawyer for dressing in a manner that he regarded as not showing sufficient respect for the Court. Consistent with this, when debate arose about the introduction of wigs and gowns for Family Court judges and advocates, he was firmly in favour. … As it happened, the traditionalists won the day and in the 1980s wigs and gowns were introduced to the Family Court.’ 15
Women’s reproductive rights have always been a concern of the column and, while there have been some improvements since the 1990s, attacks on women’s rights have been persistent. The first column in 1991 featured the case of a 12-year-old British girl seeking an abortion. 16 Her parents objected to her having the procedure and social workers took her case to court, with the judge ruling the abortion should go ahead. Girlie noted, the ‘usual right-wing hysteria surrounded the case with conservative MPs and anti-abortion groups condemning the “serious violation of parental rights”.’ Over the years, Girlie has covered the rise and demise of Roe v Wade, the slow haul in Australia to get abortion de-criminalised – which saw Western Australia as the last jurisdiction to do so in 2023 – and the fight for women to be able to access abortion clinics without harassment. We now have safe access laws but, as with so many feminist concerns, the fight is never truly won. Roe v Wade 17 survived for almost half a century before being struck out by the US Supreme Court on 24 June 2022. The dissenting judges were Justices Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama. Guess who appointed the others? The dissenters wrote that the court decision means ‘from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs. … With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.’ 18
Sorrow seems to be all pervasive as we crawl nervously through 2024, emerging from the shocks and learnings of COVID-19, witnessing the rise of the right in ways that do not portend well for anyone else’s rights. In her February 2024 update to members Mary Crooks, Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust wrote, So. It is now four months since the devastating Voice Referendum. The billowing dust from the storm of racism, bigotry, indifference, and laziness created by the No campaign, has settled back onto the land. Apparently, there is now nothing to see. One of the particularly galling aspects of the No campaign, which has become even clearer over the months since 14 October [2023], is its duplicitous representation as being Indigenous-led. While Senator Nampijinpa Price and Warren Mundine were undoubtedly the public-facing people of the campaign, the real movers and funders were right wing, masculinist hardliners. These combative and shadowy conservatives, wilfully ignorant of the history of this land, were only interested in maintaining entrenched privilege and control over the national policy agenda addressing Indigenous justice. The eternal shame is that the impacts of their campaign are likely deep and long lasting.
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A 2024 Ipsos study (in conjunction with King’s College London’s Policy Institute and Global Institute for Women’s Leadership) has revealed worrying trends in the attitudes of young men with almost a third of respondents believing that, when there are job shortages, men should have more rights to work than women, with the younger male respondents expressing the most sexist views. 20 Lucia Stein et al predicted that elections in 2024 throughout the world will test democracy like never before, with almost half the world going to the polls. They foresee that a coalescence of worldwide factors – the pandemic, the effects of climate change, wars, the use of democracy by aspiring leaders who are anything but democratic – could have dire consequences for democracies and human rights. 21 The February result in Indonesia, with the election of military strongman Prabowo Subianto, is a portent given that Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy.
One of the most insightful comments anyone ever made about Girlie, within my earshot, was from Jon Faine when he noted the ‘extraordinary transformation’ in the law during our lifetime. Girlie, he said, ‘was picking up on some of the peccadilloes, some of the put downs and some of the more subtle forms of discrimination that no-one else was remarking on until [Girlie] started picking up on them … putting them down on paper in a national legal journal – even though it was a bit of a ratbag journal.’ When I protested that it was not a ‘ratbag’ journal, Jon responded with, ‘well, I was its editorial assistant and I absolutely vouch for the fact that it was a ratbag journal.’ 22 It seems to me, in 2024, that the times we are living in now are calling out for even more ratbaggery.
The discrimination against LGBTQIA+ communities was another of Girlie’s concerns and it was never subtle. The first Girlie column commented on research by Fiona Tasker and Susan Golombok that illustrated the difficulties of lesbian mothers in gaining care and control of their children. 23 A Court of Appeal case had just decided that the best living arrangements for a child were those nearest the ‘conventional’ heterosexual home.
It’s been a long journey from that kind of thinking to the passing of the Bill that legalised same-sex marriage in Australia 24 but there are still plenty of reasons to be aware of persisting prejudices, particularly against transgender people with the argument raging once again about dunnies. Without safe access to toilets, it isn’t possible for people to participate in workplaces, education and life in general! Moves to bar transgender people from restrooms threaten their health, and the attitudes that promote this kind of discrimination create a culture that increases the likelihood of assaults against them. As they say, ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ and Girlie doesn’t mind – and never has – whether you stand up or sit down, so long as you speak out and never shut up.