Is pointing out Rae Cooper’s Labor links sexism – or scrutiny?

Professor Rae Cooper. Picture: USyd

Moral outrage crash-landed into our inboxes here at The Australian on Thursday over a column item we ran earlier this week, a devilish morsel we thought was pretty funny and incisive. Turns out it was severely sexist – or so went the charge in a searing Letter to the Editor we received.

“The outdated and sexist column item, ‘Labor minister’s partner snags funding victory,’ undermines the significant contributions of Professor Rae Cooper AO, FASSA, to workplace gender equality and employment relations policy.”

Penned by University of Sydney Professor Leisa Sargent and former Mirvac CEO Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, the letter fumed at our analysis of a $5m grant that was announced on Tuesday and bestowed upon Cooper and her workplace gender equality centre, housed at the University of Sydney.

Snark is the name of the game around here, so of course we pointed to the bleeding obvious at the time of the announcement – that Cooper is a pro-union, pro-Labor academic with impeccable ties across government reaching right into the office of Assistant Minister for Trade Tim Ayres. He’s her husband.

“While it is true that she is the partner of a Labor assistant minister – a fact transparently stated in the grant submission – the implication of favouritism unfairly diminishes the achievements of a highly distinguished academic and researcher,” wrote Sargent and Lloyd-Hurwitz.

Former Mirvac CEO Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz. Picture: Richard Walker

Cooper is undoubtedly a Labor favourite. Here’s a tiny example: her pro-government opinions are quick to be found inside an “independent” review released last month examining the Albanese government’s contentious IR reforms. Cooper is cited eight times across the document and three of her publications are listed in the bibliography. She’s an eminent scholar so perhaps that’s to be expected. But was it necessary for the report’s authors to call her “Professor Rae” on page 106?

That kind of familiarity could be a typo, or maybe it’s a result of Cooper co-writing at least two books with one of the review’s authors, Emeritus Professor Mark Bray. So yes, all very independent.

But back to the letter …

Sargent is the Dean of USyd’s Business School. Lloyd-Hurwitz chairs the advisory board for the Australian Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusion at Work, which Cooper runs. The centre’s grand opening was held at USyd in August and was attended by three federal Labor ministers, among them Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who praised Cooper as a shaper of government policy and then announced $5m in funding for the centre this week.

We thought this was all sounding a bit cosy, and so did our readers. But in the minds of Sargent and Lloyd-Hurwitz, any magnification of these curiosities isn’t at all indicative of a robust and free press doing its job scrutinising taxpayer expenditure – it’s just more sexist garbage from a couple of pub-room boars.

“As an internationally respected scholar, Professor Cooper has built a reputation as a trusted adviser to governments of all political persuasions at both state and federal levels, as well as to industry and business,” Sargent and Lloyd-Hurwitz wrote.

Well, yes, that’s one way of putting it.

Senator Tim Ayres. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Cooper is clearly an academic of exceptional accomplishment – a point we made in the original item. But it’s facile to pretend she hasn’t been a beneficiary of substantial Labor government patronage at the state and federal level, and not least of all from Anthony Albanese.

Last year, the Albanese government appointed Cooper to the ministerial advisory board serving Jobs and Skills Australia. She was separately appointed to a Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce just months after Labor was elected in 2022.

Cooper and the PM actually go way back. Their friendly bants are still recoverable from deep behind the seat cushions of the ancient ­internet.

“I suspect @ayrestim will be pleased – @Raecooper1 not as much,” Albo tweeted in 2015 when he was shadow transport minister. At the time he was quoting a deleted post, so we don’t know to what he was referring, but he added a little beer jug emoji to the message.

“Yes,” Cooper replied. “I am way too ladylike to drink beer.” What? Beer too masculine now? And here we were, sexist pigs, thinking beer was the most gender-equal beverage of them all.

Trawl back further and you’ll find the Gillard government appointed Cooper chair of Hearing Australia in 2011. The Rudd government named her to its productivity agenda panel for the 2020 Summit (appalling boondoggle that turned out to be). Kristina Keneally’s Labor government in NSW made Cooper deputy chair of an advisory council on women, then appointed her to the board of the NSW TAFE Commission. And Bob Carr selected Cooper in 2005 for the board of the Rural Assistance Authority.

We wouldn’t be so foolish to suggest Cooper’s husband had a bearing on the $5m grant decision. Of course he didn’t. She’s clearly more powerful and connected. Still, Sargent and Lloyd-Hurwitz didn’t waste an opportunity to staggeringly miss the point.

“Professor Cooper’s leadership and decades of collaboration with colleagues across institutions secured this grant – not her marital status. Her work has shaped public policy and industry practice in many meaningful ways.

“To imply otherwise is unfair, sexist, and dismissive of her substantial achievements.”

And likewise to sweep aside Cooper’s blaring affiliations to the Labor Party and the union movement is droolingly stupid, as is calling these observations sexist, which is actually worse than stupid; it’s boring – as boring as Mehreen Faruqi looking for racism in a bowl of white rice. And it’s humourless, which is a capital offence to us. Be anything, but don’t be humourless.

But that’s what you get from Lloyd-Hurwitz, president of Chief Executive Women, the greatest self-love club in the history of self-love clubs. But what did Maslow say? When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.