Senate debates

Thursday, 10 August 2017

Condolences

Giles, Senator Patricia Jessie AM

3:44 pm

Photo of Penny WongPenny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the opposition to acknowledge the passing of Pat Giles. At the outset, I convey our sympathy and condolences to her family and friends and acknowledge her daughter, who is here with us today, Dr Fiona Giles. I thank Senator Brandis for his very generous remarks in his contribution, and I acknowledge a number of my colleagues who will follow me.

Pat Giles served as a senator for Western Australia from 1981 until 1993. Along with others, like Ruth Coleman, Susan Ryan, Rosemary Crowley and Margaret Reynolds, she was one of a generation of Labor women who brought progressive policies affecting women and families to the very heart of this Senate and the government—women in whose footsteps we follow and we are proud to follow. Described as a 'good and passionate leftie', she was consistent and dedicated in pursuit of the principles in which she believed, and her achievements stand testament to her commitment, her endurance and her values.

I'm a senator for South Australia and I'm proud that she was born in Minlaton on the Yorke Peninsula and raised, as Senator Brandis said, in Woodville, now a suburb in Adelaide but probably at that time much less suburban. The Great Depression followed by World War II would have been a time of great hardship in which to grow up. After school, Pat Giles worked in a bank before qualifying as a nurse and then a midwife as well as in infant welfare. These qualifications and experience would serve her well in her later careers.

Moving to Western Australia with her husband, a Western Australian doctor, she would go on to have four daughters and a son in short time. Ms Giles's commitment towards the service of others was evident in the way in which she approached public life and in the activities she undertook in the community, often as a volunteer. It was through support of education and school funding that she first cut her political teeth, as a candidate for the Council for the Defence of Government Schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was followed by leadership positions in health, education and parents bodies. The shift from community work to political candidacy and engagement spurred Pat Giles to undertake further study, first matriculating and then completing a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in politics and industrial relations, in the early 1970s. Thereafter she continued to seize new opportunities for advocacy and activism.

Pat Giles was a feminist. She was a member of Women's Liberation and the Women's Electoral Lobby. She was also a trade unionist. With the election of the Whitlam government came a significant opportunity for her, when she was appointed as chair of the Western Australia Committee on Discrimination in Employment and Occupation. Prior to her appointment, this committee had been, perhaps unsurprisingly for the time, all male. Around the same time, she also brought together her tertiary studies and her nursing experience, as well as her involvement in feminist organisations, as an organiser with the Hospital Employees' Industrial Union of Western Australia. This appointment was pivotal in bringing the Whitlam government's policies for equal pay, maternity leave and antidiscrimination to the industrial coalface.

Pat Giles was an organiser. She knew how to forge alliances and build coalitions for change. The administrative and networking skills she had honed over previous years came to the fore as she negotiated industrial disputes and led public campaigns, particularly against the state government of Sir Charles Court. It was clear that her skills and ability were not isolated to any one area of policy. She was appointed, in recognition of that, as the first female executive member of the Trades and Labor Council of Western Australia, in 1975. She also chaired the first women's committee of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1978 to 1981.

Pat Giles joined the ALP while studying at university in 1971. Unsurprisingly, and thankfully for us, her advancement in the trade union movement was matched by increasing prominence within our party. This included being another 'first woman', this time the first woman to serve on the state Administrative Committee. In 1981 she was vice-president of the state branch of the party. Around the same time, after an earlier tilt in an unwinnable lower house seat, she was preselected in a winnable position on Labor's Senate ticket for the 1980 federal election, backed by two individuals she would come to serve alongside, Bob McMullan and Peter Cook.

Since 1943, when Dorothy Tangney, also a Labor senator from WA, entered, there has always been at least one woman in the Senate. We've done better in this chamber than the House of Representatives, which has only had women continuously represented since 1980. But, when Pat Giles arrived here in 1981, she was only the 17th woman elected to this chamber. She joined eight other women, and it is some measure of the progress made that this number had doubled by the time she departed some 12 years later, although, as she lamented in her valedictory, only 17 per cent of parliamentarians were women. She did also state:

I have remarked on occasions that women were conducting proceedings in the Senate—the Acting Deputy President was a woman, both clerks were women, both Hansard reporters were women, women were on the front benches on both sides of the chamber, the Black Rod was a woman and all the attendants one could see were women. We were actually running the place perfectly well. This excited no comment whatsoever. There is no doubt that we could run the country if given half a chance.

Policies for the advancement of women, the rights of children, and equality in families were a hugely significant part of Pat Giles's 12 years in the Senate. I will turn my attention to some of those specific accomplishments in a moment, but, unsurprisingly, they formed a significant part of the themes in her first speech. She drew heavily on her background in the labour movement, recognising the important role trade unions played and continue to play in advancing rights, such as minimum wages, maternity leave and equal pay for equal work. In many instances these were cases in which she had been directly involved as a union official. She saw in a very clear way the connection between rights for working families and support for those who suffered most in the circumstances of inequality, including women, young people, pensioners, people with disability, Indigenous Australians, single parents and the homeless. She used a variety of parliamentary mechanisms at her disposal to redress the balance.

She served extensively on Senate committees, beginning with the Select Committee on Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes—a subject matter to which she brought wideranging personal experience. In fact, I understand it was the first Senate committee to comprise only women senators. When the Hawke government took office in 1983 she became chair of this committee, taking over from another senator we recently acknowledged following her passing, Shirley Walters, and led it with practical compassion.

She served on the Standing Committee on Social Welfare and chaired from 1988 to 1993 the Senate Committee of Privileges. This was a time of real reform following the passage of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 and the passage of Senate privilege resolutions, which increased the burden of work on the chair and the committee and inevitably required skill and dedication from the chair. She was also the chair of the Regulations and Ordinances Committee. Despite the challenges that came from chairing two busy, highly technical committees, she said she found the experience 'absolutely memorable'.

When speaking on the valedictory in 1993 Gareth Evans spoke of Pat Giles as someone who was 'at the less flashy end of the politicians' spectrum'. She brought a practical and reliable approach that achieved much and also made her widely liked and much admired. Perhaps the best word on her experience of the parliamentary environment is by Pat Giles herself, who said in her valedictory:

From the day I arrived I was conscious of being cared for in a way that I had never before experienced, and I have never taken this for granted. Perhaps it has not really struck the males who come to Federal Parliament, but I realised that over the years the institution of the parliamentary system had been designed to provide a comprehensive network of support for totally helpless males bereft of their normal support systems. I was shocked on the first occasion when somebody found something for me that I did not even know I had lost.

Pat Giles was a force for and on behalf of women in the way she advocated for causes and needs in policy that for so long lacked clear and powerful voices in the corridors of power. She was part of an essential group of women who advanced major legislative and policy initiatives in the area of women's rights after the election of the Hawke government in 1983. These included ratification of the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1983, the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986. Without women like Pat Giles in our parliament many of these advances would not have been realised. She has been described to me as a critical part of the gang of women who persisted and succeeded in reshaping our legislative framework to promote a richer society on a more equal foundation.

I too was going to quote the same passage Senator Brandis did as to her discussion of some of the arguments against the ratification of the CEDAW or, as she said:

The hysterical emphasis on the sanctity of the family and well-being of children—

by those opposed to ratification—

is a shabby and unworthy ploy copied from the American opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment …

Also, in relation to the Sex Discrimination Act, she discussed the predictions of 'doom and gloom for the family in Australian society if and when this legislation becomes law'. I read that and I thought, 'Some things never change!' Some arguments never change.

Within the federal parliamentary Labor Party, Pat Giles convened the Caucus Committee on the Status of Women and chaired it throughout her tenure as a senator, a position which enabled her to promote women's issues and priorities within the government and to recognise positive initiatives as well as draw attention to those areas needing improvement. She wasn't afraid to call out inappropriate attitudes at high levels. Complaints submitted together with Senator Ruth Coleman about derogatory references towards women made by a senior naval officer to 9,000 visiting sailors earned them a letter of apology from the Royal Australian Navy. In 1984, the Status of Women committee first published the Women's Budget Program, designed to highlight the effects of budget policy on women and girls. It was the 'child' of that initiative, the Women's Budget Statement, that the Labor government ensured was published. It was a world-leading initiative that was emulated in other jurisdictions.

Ms Giles was appointed Special Parliamentary Adviser to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Violence Against Women in 1990. Her roles within the caucus came in addition to convening the Labor Party's National Status of Women Policy Committee in 1983 and 1985. Her standing was recognised internationally through election to leadership of bodies including World Women Parliamentarians for Peace and as a representative of the Commonwealth overseas on delegations and to events connected with women's issues on many occasions.

Before she was a senator, Pat Giles was an activist, and she continued to dedicate herself to change and activism in her post-parliamentary life. Her official involvement in various organisations at home and abroad extended to the Women's Electoral Lobby, the Women's Health Care House, the Centre for Research for Women, the WHO's Global Commission on Women's Health, and the International Alliance of Women. As she had done throughout her life, she often served as president or chair of these bodies.

Fittingly, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for service to the community through organisations and advisory bodies promoting the interests of women and to the Parliament of Australia. It was well-deserved recognition that came on top of others, including an honorary doctorate from Murdoch University in 1996.

In 1989, a counselling and support shelter in Perth was named in her honour. The Patricia Giles Centre is a feminist based, non-profit organisation committed to providing services to women and children who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence and to men who seek to improve the quality of their family relationships. I can't think of a more fitting service to bear her name, and it continues as a practical legacy of the durable and resourceful approach she brought to the advancement of women and equality in family life.

Like many women of her generation, Pat Giles was politically ahead of her time. She opened doors and walked through halls, including in Parliament House and of the labour movement, where the presence of women was the exception, not the rule. It is a testament to the efforts she and others like her made that saw great advances made for women during her time in public life. That has helped to make the way for those who follow. In preparing for this today, I did reflect how honoured I am to be one who has had the opportunity to follow her.

The policies she espoused and the causes she supported became practical realities that directly and indirectly improved the lives of so many, especially women and girls in this country. Our nation is poorer for the passing of Pat Giles but richer for the contribution she made throughout her life. We again extend our deepest sympathies to her family, friends and former colleagues at this time.

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