Media commentators have lost their minds in early over-reaction to Sam Mostyn’s Governor-General appointment | Samantha Maiden

You would think that Anthony Albanese had just appointed Che Guevara or Vladimir Lenin, writes Samantha Maiden.

Bloody hell. Didn’t the appointment of Samantha Joy Mostyn AO as Australia’s next governor-general make some of the commentariat lose their collective mind?

Never heard of Sam Mostyn? Don’t care?

Don’t worry, that means you’re normal.

And short of plonking Cleo’s Ita Buttrose into the gig (not a bad idea – we could have Australian Constitution sealed sections, a 1970s centrefold section, hot!) most people have never heard of the GG anyway.

Does anyone remember where they were standing when William Deane was appointed to the gig?

Probably, a few more people knew who Sir Peter Cosgrove was.

But Peter Hollingworth, a retired Anglican bishop? Michael Jeffery? Did any of these people run a publicly listed company?

Incoming Governor General Samantha Mostyn with partner Simeon Beckett. PIC: PMO

According to some commentators, Sam Mostyn is no good as governor-general before she’s even started because she doesn’t share the exact career progressions of her predecessors.

Or she’s a lady and to prove we are not being sucked into gender politics you’ve simply got to appoint another man?

She has not risen through the ranks to become an Anglican priest, or the head of the military, or a judge like William Deane.

Many commentators were in such a froth about her landing the gig you would think that Anthony Albanese had appointed Che Guevara, or Vladimir Lenin, or Valerie Solanas, that crazy lady who tried to shoot Andy Warhol.

Argentine-born revolutionary figure Ernesto "Che" Guevara with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana's famous "1830" restaurant four years after he and Fidel led the revolution that toppled Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Picture: AFP

Actor Jane Fonda singing an anti-war song near Hanoi in 1972 during the Vietnam War.

If there was a vibe, it was perversely suggested the Carla Zampatti-wearing Ms Mostyn was secretly a Jane-Fonda-during-her-Hanoi-Jane-period during the Vietnam War.

Should we be expecting Sam Mostyn to appear next in a mugshot and crewcut, getting arrested for some counterculture happening?

As an aside, even William Deane’s tenure as governor-general was not without controversy.

As the High Court’s own website notes, “his career was an unpredictable mix of conservative and radical elements.”

For example, he was an outspoken commentator on social issues.

He advocated for the rights of Indigenous peoples consistent with his judgment in Mabo, where the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples was identified as “the darkest aspect of the history of this nation”.

He defended multiculturalism, the reconciliation process, native title. On his last day, Sir William Deane had 27 people to lunch at Government House from Youth Off the Streets.

A teenage girl, aged 13, from a broken home, with a drunken mother and a survivor of sexual assaults told the lunch she was now pursuing her education and wanted to look after her mother.

Former Governor-General Sir William Deane during the opening of the City West campus of the University of SA in 1997.

William Deane offered his public thoughts as governor-general: “My final word is ... the principle that I’ve been trying to get over to the people of Australia for the whole of my time as governor-general.

“That is that the ultimate test of our worth as a nation is how we treat the most vulnerable and disadvantaged of our people.

“We’ve ended at Government House with an absolutely wonderful lunch with the children from Youth Off The Streets.”

Is that something the commentators would get in a froth about, too, if Sam Mostyn did it?

So who the hell is Samantha Mostyn?

She is an Australian businesswoman and climate change and gender equity advocate, and the first female AFL commissioner.

She was a member of numerous boards, including Mirvac, Transurban, GO Foundation, the Climate Council, Virgin Australia, and the Sydney Swans.

The Mostyn Medal, for “best and fairest” women in AFL Sydney, is named after her.

Born in Canberra in 1965, she was the eldest of four sisters and one of her sisters had an intellectual disability, so the family was involved in the disability sector.

She lived in Adelaide with her grandmother while her father, an army colonel, was in Vietnam.

Wikipedia reports she attended the ANZAC Dawn Service regularly, marking her father’s service.

Someone call the police on this radical!

She graduated with a law degree from the Australian National University before training as a solicitor while working part-time in the Magistrates Court of New South Wales and later as an associate to Michael Kirby in the NSW Court of Appeal.

And yes, she also had Labor Party links.

She worked for communications and arts minister Michael Lee.

Later, she worked for then prime minister Paul Keating as a communications policy adviser and was appointed to the organising committee for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Most recently, she was appointed by the Albanese government as chair of its Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce – that’s the taskforce that recommended paid parental leave should be extended to a year and banged on about childcare.

“The pandemic has left women exhausted and deepened their inequality, particularly in the workplace,’’ she said.

“For too long, the uncelebrated driving force behind our luck has been underpaid, or unpaid, women.”

But no more exhausted than the hot stream of froth and bubble about her appointment, before she even lingered to smell the hydrangeas at Yarralumla.

She might be good, she might be a disaster, but at the very least we should give her a fair go.

Originally published as Media commentators have lost their minds in early over-reaction to Sam Mostyn’s Governor-General appointment | Samantha Maiden