When The Australian began publication out of Canberra in 1964, I was one of the youngest journalists on staff. I worked for editors Maxwell Newton, Adrian Deamer and Walter Kommer. I covered education and immigration, and wrote a fortnightly column on social issues: conscription, the Vietnam War, civil liberties, racism, policing, and the White Australia policy. I also wrote about women, often: about marriage, sex education, abortion, unequal pay, childbirth, childcare and all the issues attitudes and structures that constrained us. In this article, I tell some stories from those years, and reflect on the editorial attitudes I encountered.
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