Why apologise for being white and male?

PETER COSTELLO finds the Australian of the Year award fascinating because it tells us so much about what our society prizes and values.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

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IT’S traditional to honour generals for their military feats. Monash on the Western Front, Montgomery at Alamein, Wellington at Waterloo. Bestowing honours on successful generals is something that’s been going on since the days of Julius Caesar.

What made this year’s award of Australian of the Year to Lieutenant General David Morrison so different, was that he was honoured not for military feats but as an “equality advocate” in particular for opposing sexism in the Army. I don’t think the generals of yesteryear worried too much about that kind of thing, not the least because there were no women in their armies.

In the aftermath of the award an ugly spat developed between the general and his speechwriter worthy of a Hollywood script.

But before going to that I want to register just how much has changed. Once a military chief was assessed by the feats of his soldiers in battle. Now he is assessed by his response to the great societal evils of the day — sexism and gender issues.

I find the Australian of the Year award fascinating because it tells us so much about what our society prizes and values, at least in the eyes of the official judges. And the official judges are chosen by the Prime Minister and to that degree represent official thinking.

The current-day era is the era of the social activist.

Recent awards have recognised Adam Goodes for opposing racism, Rosie Batty for campaigning against domestic violence and, of course, Morrison for opposing sexism.

All these people are worthy winners.

It would be hard to wear the weight of being “the” Australian of the Year. But the judges have to choose one person and to do that they must decide which achievements are more significant than others. The person they choose gives us an insight about their priorities and, through them, ours as a nation.

In a very widely reported speech on International Women’s Day in 2013, Lieutenant General David Morrison bemoaned an Army culture that badly treated “ … our female soldiers, those from ethnic minorities, and those with alternative sexual preferences”. He pledged to take action to stop it.

Australian of the Year David Morrison / Picture: Ray Strange

As is well known, the speech was written largely by Cate McGregor, now a Group Captain in the RAAF and formerly a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army. McGregor changed her gender from male to female in 2012. She has since become a transgender activist and was herself nominated, in competition with General Morrison, to be Australian of the Year.

After Morrison’s award, McGregor was scathing, describing it as a “weak and conventional choice” and saying that “he (Morrison) is on a steep learning curve when it comes to LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) and trans issues”. McGregor has since apologised but, of course, the damage was done.

The suspicion is that a good deal of Morrison’s interest in promoting change came from McGregor rather than reflecting long and careful reflection.

McGregor said: “He needs to learn a lot”.

McGregor wouldn’t be the first speechwriter to think she made a boss look better than he is.

You can understand how McGregor might be a little miffed. But she took the job of writing good speeches for the general and getting them noticed. She should be pleased at her success.

The first rule of being a speechwriter is to stay in the shadows. If a speech is received well the credit goes to the person who delivered it. They take the credit because they will bear the ridicule if it bombs. If you want to take credit for a speech, write your own and deliver it yourself. Otherwise shut up.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

Some years ago at a function in New York, an elderly lawyer with a pockmarked face introduced himself to me as Ted Sorenson.

It took me a while to figure out why the name sounded familiar. When I told him I regarded a speech he wrote as one of the greatest political speeches ever written, he knew exactly what I was talking about.

But he never claimed credit for John Kennedy’s Presidential Inaugural, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. What made it famous was who delivered it and when.

Speeches against racism and sexism are a dime a dozen. What got McGregor’s noted was the Chief of Army delivered it.

And whether they were McGregor’s words or not, it was a serving general who got up and apologised for taking the benefits of “masculinity and patriarchy”.

This kind of language is music to the ears of modern social activists because it implies there are not only victims of racism and sexism but beneficiaries as well. Whether they have done anything wrong or not, they believe these beneficiaries should apologise.

There is, of course, another view that says that none of us is responsible for our race or sex and that being white and male gives someone no more reason to apologise than being black and female. This is the view that people should be judged for what they do rather than what they are. It’s a belief about individual responsibility for individual behaviour. It’s still the basis of our criminal law, if not the favoured view of the “human rights” movement at the moment.

It’s not the kind of view that will get you to be the Australian of the Year.