Sam Mostyn promises ‘integrity, compassion, respect’ as governor-general
Our next governor-general built her reputation as a social justice advocate.
W hen several hundred people gathered in the Sydney Convention Centre last week for the annual Chief Executive Women dinner, attendees were surprised to learn that Sam Mostyn was not there.
As the immediate past president of the powerful lobby group of some of the country’s most well-connected business women (from 2021 to 2022), Mostyn was to sit on one of the head tables, to listen to an address by Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
“She was supposed to be there, but she was in Canberra,” says Perth-based company director, Diane Smith-Gander, herself a former CEW president who was to be seated at the same table.
“Now we all know why,” she told The Australian on Wednesday.
Mostyn, a Sydney-based business woman with a strong sense of social justice, who broke a significant glass ceiling when she was the first woman to be appointed an AFL commissioner in 2005, and who has had extensive connections with the Labor Party, has achieved another milestone in a jam-packed career with the announcemnet she will be Australia’s second female governor-general.
The tributes that flowed referred to her “exceptional” and “visionary” leadership, her “highly empowering and consultative” style and her “intelligence, curiosity and natural charm”.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Nationals Leader David Littleproud wished her well.
But her detractors include conservative political lobbying group Advance, which described her appointment an “insult to mainstream Australians”.
Advance executive director Matthew Sheahan described her as “the worst kind of corporate activist who campaigned against the majority of Australians in the divisive voice referendum”.
“In social media posts she has now deleted, she has argued to change the date of Australia Day, which she has also referred to as ‘Invasion Day’.”
Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra in September 2020, Mostyn spoke out in favour of the voice and the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Sheahan said Anthony Albanese had “rewarded a republican with a $500,000-a-year salary to represent an institution she doesn’t believe in”.
Like her predecessor Dame Quentin Bryce, Mostyn, 59, has a legal background, but she moved into the corporate world, taking executive roles at companies such as Optus, Cable & Wireless and insurer IAG (where she worked with chief executive and former Wallaby Michael Hawker) as well as directorships at companies including Virgin, Transurban and Mirvac, while also undertaking a range of sporting, social and philanthropic activities.
Her current roles include a directorship of building company Mirvac; chair of the Alberts Music Group; and chair of the Women’s Economic Opportunities Review. She was chair of the $150bn industry superannuation fund Aware Super, a role she took up last year, until she resigned after Wednesday’s announcement.
Mostyn has had active ties with Labor dating back to her work with Labor communications ministers Bob Collins and Michael Lee, and notably, in the mid-1990s, then prime minister Paul Keating.
Mostyn was born in Canberra and grew up watching AFL on a black-and-white television with her army colonel father. After taking an arts/law degree at the Australian National University, her passion for both law and social justice led her to seek work with Michael Kirby when he was president of NSW Court of Appeal.
“I’ve alwayswanted to work with people with a higher purpose. If you have a choice, use it well and make yourself useful,’’ Mostyn said in 2018, reflecting on her time there.
Her legal career also included stints at Freehills and at Gilbert + Tobin, a firm well known at the time for its strong interest in communications law. At the age of 29, she was working at the Seven Network when she was asked by Keating to join his office to advise on communications policies, a role she held from 1995 to 1996.
“He had a national curiosity and understanding of how society works and was courageous in his decisions,” she has said of the former PM.
During her time there she was appointed the government representative on the organising committee for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
She went on to become director of corporate affairs of what was then called Cable & Wireless Optus, a role where she answered to Ziggy Switkowski (later Telstra CEO), Peter Howell-Davies, and former Fairfax media group chief executive Chris Anderson.
That role brought her in contact with senior executives of Cable & Wireless. The US-born chief executive Dick Brown then appointed her group director of human resources for the whole group, based in London.
Her observation of this period is: “I learned at close range you need to have the right people on the board, the right chief executive and the right teamwork.”
She later returned to Sydney, becoming head of human resources for insurance group IAG, working closely with chief executive Hawker who was one of the early CEOs to be interested in climate change issues.
She moved on to a corporate director career, riding the wave of women taking their seats in the boardrooms of once male-dominated Australian companies and becoming a strong advocate for the promotion of women in business, as well as broader policies to assist women.
Smith-Gander and Mostyn had many discussions over ways to improve the role of women in business and the impact of quotas.
“She hasalways said she was a ‘quota candidate’ (on the AFL) because she was a woman,” Smith-Gander says, adding: “I have always said the same thing about myself and the Wesfarmers board.”
Smith-Gander said Mostyn was “an extremely good president of CEW and did a lot of work to improve its influence with government.”
“She did a lot of work which involved direct advocacy (for women’s issues) in Canberra,” she said. “This would have allowed government to see her up close and personal, being an advocate for something she is clearly very passionate about.”
The Albanese government was clearly impressed. In September 2022, Mostyn was appointed to chair the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce to advise the government on issues affecting women and developing a national strategy to achieve gender equality in Australia.
The announcement was made while Mostyn was in Canberra chairing a panel on equal pay and opportunities for women at the Jobs and Skills Summit, with Albanese describing her as “an exceptional leader who represents the best of modern Australia”.
“She haslived her life in the service of a powerful Australian principle, (believing that) when more people have the opportunity to fulfil their potential, the nation is a better place,” he said.
“Her leadership reflects our enduring Australian values of equality, fairness and a responsibility to build a better future for the next generation.”
When the Prime Minister announced on Wednesday that her latest appointment was as governor-general designate to succeed David Hurley in July, Mostyn’s extensive connections in the business and sporting world were quick to applaud the selection.
Her successor as CEW president, Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, called Mostyn a “visionary leader who transformed CEW’s advocacy agenda at a critical time for Australian women”.
“As the president of CEW from 2021-2022, Sam expanded and strengthened the organisation’s advocacy agenda, pushing for government to place care at the centre of the economy,” she said.
“During her tenure, Sam was influential in government advocacy that saw the reinstatement of the single-parenting payment, the expansion of commonwealth paid parental leave, and landmark investment in affordable early childhood” health and education.
“As a highly empowering and consultative leader, Sam will no doubt excel in her new role as governor-general.”
The chair of the Sydney Swans AFL team, Sydney businessman Andrew Pridham – who has known Mostyn for the past 15 years, first as an AFL commissioner and then as a director of the Swans – praised her “very strong social conscience”.
“She is a big advocate for improving the role of women and Indigenous people and multicultural issues,” Pridham said. “She had a big role in the introduction of the AFL women’s competition and a lot of the Indigenous programs.
“She has a very rounded experience in things that touch government, as well as charitable causes and business.”
The former chief executive of Virgin Australia, Paul Scurrah, who first knew Mostyn when she was an AFL commissioner and he was a founding director of the Gold Coast Suns AFL team, and then as a director of Virgin Australia, described her as an “outstanding individual and an inspired choice”.
(Another source said that Mostyn’s role as a director of Virgin saw an abrupt end to her membership of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge – a move that did not go down well at the time.)
AFL commissioner and Sydney businesswoman Gabrielle Trainor, who joined the AFL as Mostyn was stepping down and served with her as a director of State Rail in NSW, described her appointment as a “great choice”.
“Her extraordinary career and lifelong commitment to the community makes her an outstanding choice as governor-general,” Trainor said.
“Her intelligence, curiosity and natural charm will place her among our most loved and admired governors-general.”
Aware Super’s chief executive, Deanne Stewart, described her as “an exceptional leader with deep experience, vision and integrity”.
When she was at the Swans, she struck up a close relationship with Indigenous player Adam Goodes and later became a member of the GO Foundation set up by Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin, to help Indigenous youth.
Mostyn was awarded an Order of Australia in the 2021 Australia Day Honours for her services to business and sustainability and women. In an interview with The Australian at the time she spoke of the need for business to consider climate change as a key risk, arguing directors needed to take responsibility for making sure their companies were prepared for it.
As president of CEW, Mostyn was also a strong advocate for improved policies on childcare support and closing the gender pay gap.
Some of her comments on the Covid pandemic perhaps offer clues as to her where her heart lies as she takes up one of the most prominent leadership roles in Australian society. She described it as a “dress rehearsal” for the challenge of managing climate change issues.
“Our focus should be on how we work together now to ensure that we rebuild an economy that works for all including our most disadvantaged and that can make us better prepared for systemic shocks – and that above all supports Australia’s community cohesiveness and connectedness,” she said in 2020.
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