It has been a week of mixed emotions for Samantha Mostyn AO, who no doubt feels a tad affronted. Her delight at being chosen as our next Governor-General has been marred by impertinent types questioning her suitability for the role.
This is most unfortunate. To quote an effusive Anthony Albanese, she is “an exceptional leader” who reflects the “values of equality, fairness and a responsibility to build a better future for the next generation”. Hear, hear. And it is not as if our Prime Minister would make a partisan pick for one of the top jobs in the country, surely?
Of course he would. Unfortunately for Mostyn, her critics have a point. Her new role will clash with her principles, or at least the principles she loudly espoused on social media.
She will be in her element in the bien pensant utopia of ACT, but Government House in Yarralumla symbolises constitutional propriety, not social engineering. The position requires the occupant not only to act apolitically, but also to be perceived as doing so. As Mostyn belatedly discovered last week, deleting her social media accounts only invited heightened scrutiny in this respect.
That’s not to say potential candidates must have a background free of politics. For example, it is not an issue in itself that Mostyn, a former Labor staffer, congratulated Anthony Albanese and his frontbenchers following their election win. But her reaction to last year’s Budget is revealing. Interviewed on RN Breakfast in her capacity as Chair of the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, she was asked by Patricia Karvelas about the Albanese government’s decision to increase welfare payments.
Contrary to Labor fanfare, these increases were minimal and unlikely to make a positive difference for recipients, Karvelas put to her. You would think by Mostyn’s reaction that it was Albanese being interviewed.
“This Minister for Women and Finance, and the Treasurer, and … the whole cabinet I think has come together to say, ‘We’ll do the big, heavy lifting’,” she said. “There are big, big payments in here.” That was a big, big plug for Labor. Small wonder that party officials considered pre-selecting her in 2022 for the federal seat of Reid in NSW (Mostyn told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time she was not an ALP member and would not run). Conversely, she is not averse to a little schadenfreude when it comes to the Coalition’s misfortunes. She was ecstatic when the Teals picked up seats at the expense of Liberal candidates in 2022. “Just in case you hadn’t already heard them roar!!”, she tweeted delightedly. To think next year Mostyn will commission a government from what is likely to be a hung parliament.
Mostyn would probably say in her defence that she has long lobbied for gender parity in parliament and thus it was natural she would hail the elevation of the all-female Teals. But she can be remarkably selective about which women in politics she champions.
Appearing on ABC’s The Drum in 2019, just before the federal election, Mostyn took aim at Liberal Celia Hammond, who was contesting the WA seat of Curtin. She “has almost declared herself to be also a climate sceptic and will not use the term ‘feminism’,” said Mostyn disapprovingly.
It must have slipped Mostyn’s mind that she herself has long been a supporter of the activist group Women for Election and that Hammond’s Labor opponent, Rob Meecham, was of the detested patriarchy. Her put down of Hammond bemused fellow panellist and ABC presenter Geraldine Doogue, who promptly reminded Mostyn that the Liberal candidate was a former vice-chancellor of the University of Notre Dame and had much local support.
Mostyn’s supporters have talked much of her experience in the commercial field, but that should be qualified. As Janet Albrechtsen noted last week, she is the golden child of corporate communications, HR, government relations and organisational culture development.
That assessment is similar to the view of former Financial Review columnist Joe Aston, who in 2020 labelled Mostyn a “professional company director” who “never in her executive career ran a profit and loss statement”. Veteran political correspondent Michelle Grattan, while cautiously praising Mostyn last week and defending her qualifications, did not exactly help her case in observing she was “unsurpassed as a networker”.
Speaking of unhelpful compliments, SMH columnist Peter FitzSimons also hailed Mostyn’s impending appointment, declaring her to be “very much a woman of the people”. Because nothing says common touch like an endorsement from a Sydney Harbour-side socialist, right? But his liking for Mostyn is genuine. As reported by this masthead, in 2015 she praised FitzSimons in his capacity as Australian Republic Movement (ARM) chair for his “passionate
advocacy”.
She also speaks highly of current ARM chair Craig Foster, who she assures us is “not an attention-seeker”. That says a lot about her judgement. This is the poseur who last year in an open letter wrote to our new monarch, smugly addressing him as “Dear Charles” and demanded he formally apologise for the “systemic racism, oppression and Crown-sponsored attempted genocide of the First Nations peoples of Australia”.
Mostyn has built a lucrative career on telling business leaders to ‘read the room’, but her sanctimony does not make for good spectacles. In another appearance on The Drum, in 2023, her enthusiastic appraisal of the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament was a textbook case of confirmation bias.
“What I’m seeing in boardrooms across the country, in groups of women at all levels across the country, is a desire to come together and actually stand up and acknowledge what was asked of us back in 2017, with the first Uluru Statement,” she said.
That is one cloistered existence. Agog with compassion and insight, Mostyn proclaimed that companies should take a lead in the Yes campaign. One need only look at the case of Aware Super, which she then chaired, for its public support of the voice. This was an example, she declared, of an organisation “educating the public as to why the voice would have a profound impact on policy”.
As the referendum result attested, it was not the public that needed to be educated. Mostyn’s first act as Governor-General should be talking to the great unwashed and ascertaining why she and her cohort were so out of touch. Think of it as being educated, Ms Mostyn.
But aside from her republican sympathies, her close association with Labor, and her antipathy for conservatives, surely our Governor-General designate has no other conflict of interest? Well, only that this future representative of the King has referred to January 26 as “Invasion Day” and claims that Indigenous land was “never ceded”, the activist corollary being that the constitutional monarchy we know as Australia is illegitimate.
Thankfully, her innate sense of public duty means she has put all other personal considerations aside. “I can think of no greater purpose … than to serve this country I love as Governor-General,” she said last week. That and the $495K salary, together with the $375K indexed pension for life, she might have added.
Her new role means she will also be the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. I know the position is nominal, but given another Pacific war looks increasingly likely, do you think perhaps we are sending mixed messages in giving the job to someone who wears the medals of quotas and diversity?
Think again. Defence Minister Richard Marles’s priority upon assuming his portfolio was to restore ‘rainbow’ morning teas, as well as recruit more women, LGBTI and ethnic minorities. What’s more, standard ration packs, formerly known as “combat-ration-one-man” will be
referred to as “combat-ration-one-person” from July. And the Australian Defence Force Academy now forces recruits into wearing purple for its annual LGBTIQ+ day.
Forget everything I said about mixed messages and Mostyn being a bad pick. On the
contrary, she is a perfect fit for this role.
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