Next Friday, on March 6 – two days away from the official International Women’s Day, when I sit down to chat with three highly visible and vocal women – the Hon Mary Delahunty; producer and writer Deb Cox and journalist and children’s book author Samantha Turnbull on the theme of ‘make it happen’, I think there will be a question that must be asked. And that is, how on earth did Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, become the victim of a merciless vendetta by a government apparently hell bent on undermining any progress we’ve made towards a more equal society?

Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, put it most succinctly in The Guardian online when he wrote that there has always been something deeply disturbing about the Abbott Government’s attitude to women. ‘Even in opposition,’ he writes, ‘such sleaze as the menu for a Mal Brough fundraiser depicting Julia Gillard in the most vile way went beyond the vicious into some psychopathology if not too bizarre to divine, then too awful to contemplate.’

Award winning journalist and writer Mary Delahunty will speak at this year’s International Women’s Day Lunch at the Byron at Byron

Mary Delahunty, a former Gold Walkley award winning ABC journalist, and education and arts minister in Victoria’s last Labor government, has brought her sense of compassion and justice to the book Gravity: Inside the PM’s office during her las year and final days, to create a portrait of a woman doing her best to withstand a siege of political and personal proportions rarely, if ever witnessed. Don’t forget Alan Jones’s low moment when he said on radio that Gillard’s father had “died of shame”, or that a Perth radio shock jock had asked her about her long-term partner Tim’s sexuality. At what point has the Australian media ever subjected a male Prime Minister to that kind of bitter and unscrupulous scrutiny?

Writer and producer Deb Cox from EveryCloud Productions.

Where Delahunty uses prose and journalism, writer and producer Deb Cox from Every Cloud Productions, has turned her writing talent to create fictional television and film content as varied as SeaChange, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and The Gods of Wheat Street. All of them gritty and real, and featuring women in starring roles as powerful forces – particularly of course the indomitable Miss Fisher originally created by Australian author Kerry Greenwood. “The attraction to the stories was definitely because Phryne Fisher was such an entertaining but wonderfully subversive, feminist character,” says Cox, “and that laced through with Fiona Eagger’s and my history of wanting to tackle social issues with a balance of grit and humour made it something we could proud of which would reflect the moral values we share.”

Author of The Anti-Princess Club Series, Samantha Turnbull.

Which brings me to the youngest of three who have ‘made ‘it’ (whatever it is) happen’ – Samantha Turnbull. Turnbull, and I’ve had the privilege of working with Sam on the Northern Star – is a force to be reckoned with. Funny, astute and also an award-winning journalist, she found her writing voice when she was searching for a book for her daughter Libby that didn’t feature a princess or a fairy. “I wanted to write stories about girls that don’t actually need rescuing,” says Turnbull, “and that’s how The Anti-Princess Club books were born.” The four-book series, published simultaneously this month, features Emily, Bella, Grace and Chloe – a group of ten-year-old girls determined to prove that it’s a girl’s world, full of adventure, sport and derring-do.

President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs.

In terms of derring-do, Gillian Triggs, as Tess Lawrence wrote in the Independent Australia Online, has proved a fearless public servant, a formidable human rights advocate and guardian of those denied a voice and consigned to the marginalia of justice — especially children.

Lawrence goes on to say: ‘In particular, both her public statements and a recently tabled report The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention (2014) damning Australia’s degraded legal and moral conduct on the plight of those children in offshore detention centres, has incurred the wrath of the Coalition Governent intent on daily painting a whitewash over the black history of our bulk violations of human rights and industrial strength abuse of children, including violence and sexual abuse.’

I hope that Gillian Triggs knows how much she is admired by so many of us – male and female – for her just advocacy of the powerless. Seeing her sad and somewhat haunted expression of late, I hope that Flanagan is right when he says that one day in the future another Prime Minister (perhaps, who knows, another woman brave enough to face the battle against mysogyny) will apologise for our treatment of asylum seekers, and of women and children, and I hope perhaps in the nearer future, that just maybe an apology to Triggs will happen. Perhaps, after the Byron Bay International Women’s Day lunch, taking place once more at the Byron at Byron resort, we can find a way to help make that happen.

Proceeds of the lunch will go to the S.H.I.F.T Project which is aimed at shifting lives, by firstly providing a 12-week transitional program of stable supported housing for women at risk. A few local volunteers and one very generous philanthropic donor have enabled S.H.I.F.T. to open its doors in Byron Bay.

‘Make it happen’ and make a difference by joining the lunch on March 6 at the Byron at Byron.  Cost $65. Tix www.byronunited.org.au <https://www.byronunited.org.au>  or call 0401 592 114.

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/theme.asp#.VO-r1ShpA98

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