Wendy McCathy

Chancellor of the University of Canberra and also a founding member of WIKed and they work on community awareness regarding education and Native Title issues.

Happy International Women’s Day everyone! I want to tell you two stories. About 30 years ago a group of women, most of whom had just had new babies sat around in my kitchen and said we need to change the way the council runs this electorate, none of us had any previous political experience but we decided we would run a little program and we called it "resident action" and we based upon what was happening here in the rocks and how the women form the rocks area showed us how you could save a particular area of the city. And so we got to running our first political campaign and to our enormous surprise we knocked off the developers and took control of the council. This offcourse went to our heads, as everyone said it did there all up themselves those women they said now, we said yes we are because 9 of us out of 15, not me I was the campaign manager, but 9 of are called councillors or alder persons and yes we are going to change the world and out of that grew an enormous commitment to the sense that you always go back to the grass roots when you want to change anything. And my next adventure in community politics was to confound the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) and again it started sitting talking with babies and food and in kitchens and a women from Victoria came and said if you find out what all the politicians think about women’s issues you will have the ammunition to change it and she was right her name was Beatrice Faust and this was only one tiny part of the women’s movement and I guess that is my point that there are lots and lots of ways to get to the destination and we all have to work together and in the case of WIKed one of the women I have know for a long time in fact we started teaching together in 1962 rang me up and said you have been a really successful person you have benefited form the women’s movement and it’s true I have and she said how come I can’t hear you voice on the WIK stuff what is your problem and I felt truly ashamed and she said if you have benefited you have to put it back on something you are not so comfortable with and I felt ashamed again because I have been very privileged to know and work with a lot of Aboriginal people. And this was a woman who would not come with me on the feminist journey although she has arrived at the same destination she thought I was confronting male hating and all sorts of other things but we are at the same place 30 years later 10 years we were so we met in the kitchen again the kitchen politics the babies have all gone we are waiting for the next generation but as my kids said stick to your day job mum so we were in the kitchen and we were thinking we are a group aged between 16 and 60 just ten of us and they said to me tell us how we do community politics and what do we need to know and the incredible shame of all of us that we are middle class Australians and we know bugger all about Aboriginality. And how is it that we can be well educated even leaders in our community and we know nothing about our indigenous people. And we said what we have to do is start a group and we will meet on a regular basis and we will work very hard at our part of the social contract as European Australians will be to foster some learning about Aboriginality. So we asked lots of people to talk to the group, this is a group like those early women’s groups it had no structure some people come some weeks it has no infrastructure and we decided strategically that the best thing we could do as a middle class group and we have no apologies for being like that was to go into blue ribbon middle class electorates and work on the assumption that there were many other people like us that we just unaware of what being indigenous in Australia meant today. And WIK gave us the opportunity to do that and it would only be women who would do that, men would come with us some men but by and large women are not frightened by lack of status that not knowing brings that is something that men will always hide behind. So we had our first meeting at Mosman and we thought people in Mosman need liberating people in Mosman actually need to understand something about Aboriginality and we put together what we thought was a good old fashioned political public meeting we said we would only hold it in town halls, RSL or Football clubs because that is where people who are not like us go. And so we had the first one in the RSL club in Mosman and the organisers said we will give you this small room it takes one hundred oh we said we think we will get a few more than that so we took the big room Well there were 500 people in the big room and there were 300 outside waiting to get in and it has been the most fantastic experience and full of things that sound bad when you say them but I want to share with you but actually have to be understood in the context of how we have been denied knowledge about our indigenous people. After the Mosman meeting a women walked up to me with a check and she said dear I want you to do something about Aboriginality whatever you want to do here it the money for WIKed to keep going she said I didn’t know Aboriginal people could speak publicly I have never been in the same room as an Aboriginal person someone else said to me I wouldn’t know how to speak to them. And I thought about this and I thought this is a only a variation of ignorance which we can change and so we have gone form Mosman into North Sydney we have gone to Southerland the night before in Manly and then we took it into the heart of Benelong the Prime Minister’s electorate we thought he needs this and Hunters Hill Council decide they would give us the facilities to run it and again the patter is the same the room is chock a block inside and there are people outside saying why can’t we get in so what does this tell us, it tells me two things, the first is there is an enormous hunger and embarrassment in the community to know about Aboriginality and an embarrassment about not knowing and a hunger to know and please can someone please help everyone find a way to find out. Australian people do want to welcome Aboriginal people and I think our part as European Australian’s of the social contract is to do the work for Aboriginal voices to be heard. And that is what WIKed and Women for WIK is all about, we need Aboriginal people to tell us their stories so that we understand something and we can walk forward together. Those public meetings we always have someone to talk about Native Title and the WIK Act we always have the Ten Point Plan we always have someone who sings just as Marlene has, we always have a group of children mostly the Lapa dancers from Laparose to welcome people and to dance and play the dige We have had people Linda Burney has always been a speaker, Adeen Ridgway Noel Pearson Lowija Odoahough and now what we are trying to do is to spread the range of speakers because what we are finding is that when people have heard these wonderful Aboriginal people tell their stories they want more and we can’t wear them out we are going to need them in parliament in the next 3 or 4 weeks. The world for Australian’s is going to be very tough in the next six months we are going to have to learn to debate these issues and work out not only where we stand but what we will stand for and we must not stand for a future Australia that does not say sorry and how can we help others understand and walk into the future together. We will run more WIKed meetings we run out of energy now and then but mostly we form a contract with someone in the local community we get the speakers we have it down to a reasonably easy format now and anyone who wants to do that can come and see me afterwards or find me in the phone book, McCarthy of Darlinhurst and we will get back to you somehow that is about as loose as the structure is but I urge you to think about how in your local community you confront the people you deal with everyday and remember you are part of the social contract as a person who came to visit a land that was already occupied that belonged to someone else is to say how do we reach out and find the opportunity for Aboriginal people to tell us their stories so that we can walk into the future together. It has always been women who walk into the future together it mustn’t change. Happy International Women’s Day and keep thinking reconciliation.

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