One down, two to go!
Apr 14th, 2008 by Rebecca
Last night brought the best news so far of the Rudd government: the appointment of Quentin Bryce as our first woman Governor-General, the first woman in history to fill that role. I couldn’t be more thrilled.
We’ve had two awful, conservative male Governor-Generals in a row: no one could really get worse than archbishop Peter Hollingworth, but former general Michael Jeffery certainly tried. Neither of them could ever come close to their predecessor, the humanitarian former High Court judge William Deane. And I was expecting a similarly conservative - if not quite so obnoxious - choice from Rudd, in the vein of the earlier rumors about appointing former Labor leader Kim Beazley, for gods sake.
Bryce couldn’t be further from that. She’s a former federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, a former Queensland equal opportunity commissioner, and before that, one of the first female barristers in Australia. She’s an unabashed feminist, with a history of fighting for progressive causes. Put simply, she’s awesome. It’s the first major step forward in the Rudd government that I’ve been able to wholly cheer. Just…this is awesome.
Still, I hope it doesn’t end there. To paraphrase what Joan Kirner said - now all we need is a female Chief Justice and a female Prime Minister. The Chief Justice of the High Court, Murray Gleeson, is set to retire in the not too distant future. I would love to see the Victorian Chief Justice, Marilyn Warren - who was initially tipped for Gleeson’s job when he got it, and was persistently overlooked by Howard for being too liberal - get that job. The media seems to be tipping that it’ll go to the rather more bland Chief Justice of New South Wales, Jim Spigelman. I’d really be impressed if Rudd would actually step up and make a decent stand in his judicial appointments as well.