Battle of the sexes null and void in race to lead new indigenous congress

March 5, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald

A man and a woman will be voted in to jointly lead a new national organisation, writes Debra Jopson.

VOTERS in a revolutionary election being held across Australia already know a woman will lead their organisation, even though only four of the 10 candidates are female.

The fledgling National Congress of Australia's First Peoples is the first corporation which specifies in its constitution that at every level of decision-making, half of its elected representatives must be women.

When voting closes on March 25, either the public servant and painter Jody Broun, the political science major and sportswoman Michelle Deshong, the nursing academic Rhonda Gilchrist or the Sydney child protection worker Jennifer Stefanac will become co-chairman of the congress.

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''The decision to have two co-chairs, one male and one female, is important. A lot of ATSIC regional councils didn't have that equality of representation,'' said Ms Broun, who was director-general of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs for more than six years.

Mrs Stefanac, who has run as an independent for the Senate twice, said: ''My interest is in standing up against inequality … It is good to be part of something new and fresh which I hope won't get to a place of corruption and mismanagement.''

Les Malezer, an indigenous rights campaigner at the United Nations who is standing for the male co-chairman position, has drawn flak for writing that having two leaders ''will be something like running in a three-legged race where the two individuals are bound to the movements of the other.''

But Jason Glanville, an opponent, said even the congress founders opposed to quotas felt it was worth leading Australia on the issue.

The appointed female co-chairman, Josephine Bourne, will bow out after the election. She said: ''The roles of men and women are equally appreciated in the traditional cultural context and it is not the same as the Western context, where there was male dominance.''

Strangely, the women of Australia may need to credit the controversial Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission chairman Geoff Clark for this new landmark in gender representation.

There was ''animosity and angst'' across the commission when Mr Clark thanked ''all those Aboriginal females'' who had voted when he was re-elected chairman of the board despite facing rape allegations, according to a former ATSIC regional councillor, Sam Jeffries.

''You've given us a mandate. You've returned the traditional role to Aboriginal men,'' Mr Clark said.

He was found not guilty of criminal rape charges, but his words sparked an outcry which still reverberated seven years later when a different board met last March to fashion a new, better organisation to succeed ATSIC.

''It was 80-20 per cent in the split between men and women and there were more than 400 councillors across ATSIC,'' said Mr Jeffries, the appointed male co-chairman.

''The [new congress] board was emphatic when we first met about having a gender equity policy.''

The congress, which will have life breathed into it at Sydney Olympic Park over three days in June when indigenous people vote for up to 120 delegates spread through three chambers, is different in other ways.

The new body's founders were told by indigenous people nation-wide that any new national representative body should be at arms-length from government. So the congress has been established as an independent corporation which will have to raise funds when a $30 million federal government establishment grant runs out.

All candidates for election must sign a ''declaration of fitness to hold office'', authorising a police check. They must swear in a 20-point checklist that they are not bankrupt, have not falsified any official documents, they are ''of good fame and character'' and uphold the law.

Like other parts of the organisation, they can be scrutinised by an ethics council of three men and three women, which the co-chairman candidate Mr Glanville believes is unique in Australia.

''We got smacked around by some Aboriginal leaders … [but] every check and balance we can put in place is worthwhile doing,'' he said.

Only signed-up members can vote. By the opening of the rolls for co-chairman on February 25, that was about 2000 members.

''I'd like in three to four years to have 40,000 members and I think it is doable. If each of those 2000 brought 10 members to the congress [in June], that would take it to 20,000,'' Mr Jeffries said.