Sally McManus - On Fairness

Sally McManus is the tenth elected Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary in the organisations 90-year history and the first woman to hold the position. She was previously the NSW and ACT Secretary of the Australian Services Union and ACTU Campaigns Director.

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Sarah Hanson-Young En Garde

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Malcolm Knox On Obsession

Barrie Kosky On Ecstasy

David Malouf On Experience

Katharine Murphy On Disruption

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Tim Soutphommasane On Hate

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MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2019

Text Sally McManus, 2019

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2019

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Text design and typesetting by Alice Graphics

Cover design by Nada Backovic Design

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

Author photograph by Nikki Toole

The trade union banner reproduced on the endpapers is from a wood

engraving published in 1873 in The Australasian Sketcher. State Library

Victoria accession no: A/S14/06/73/44.

9780522874853 (paperback)

9780522874860 (ebook)

LEIGH SALES: Will the ACTU consider distancing itself from the CFMEU, which has faced 118 separate legal proceedings where its been found to have either broken the law or acted in contempt of court?

SALLY MCMANUS: Theres no way we will be doing that. Ill tell you this: the CFMEU, when they have been fined, they have been fined for taking industrial action

LEIGH SALES: Illegal industrial action?

SALLY MCMANUS: It might be illegal industrial actionaccording to our current laws and our current laws are wrong. It shouldnt be so hard for workers in our country to be able to take industrial action when they need to. Quite often these workers have stopped work because a worker has been killed on a building site. Andknow thisthat union gets fined more than the companies that actually kill workers

LEIGH SALES: Yet nonetheless, we live in a country where there are laws that are established by a parliament that all citizens are expected to abide by. So, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with those laws, you said that you believe in the rule of law?

SALLY MCMANUS: Yeah, I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair, when the law is right. But when its unjust, I dont think theres a problem with breaking it.

Fronting up to 7.30 is pretty much a rite of passage for a new ACTU Secretary.

You know the various media outlets will run a whole lot of stories. Theyll mainly be profile pieceswhich I hate. Their relentless focus is to discern a single eureka moment to explain what made you who you are, as the sum of your personal history and feelingsinevitably minimising what has actually shaped you, which, for an ACTU Secretary, is the collective history of, and activity within, the organised movement of working people. So many people just dont get this.

But appearing on 7.30 is another matter entirely. Becoming ACTU Secretary makes you the representative of 1.8 million people, and you have to stand and deliver for every member. Its a bit like being an opening bats-person in their first test match, andin terms of fast bowlerspresenter Leigh Sales is Glenn McGrath in his prime. You know there will be bouncers coming right at your head. You can duck, you can try to block, or you can get on the front foot but you have less than a second to make up your mind how you will respond.

My Leigh Sales encounter occurred less than four hours after I became ACTU Secretary. That morning, the leadership of all Australias unions had met in Melbourne to decide the formal appointment. I waited, the meeting announced its decision, then I stood to take the Secretarys seat, next to the President, Ged Kearney. There was excitement; for the first time in its 90-year history, the ACTU had a woman Secretary, as well as a woman presidentpositions that, twenty years ago, were exclusively held by men. The formalities were concluded, photos were taken, and I was whisked away to the ABC studio, and thrust into a makeup chair.

Ive never been one for wearing makeup, and, at forty-five years of age, was confronted both with the immediate need to prepare for Sales impending bouncers, and my disem-powering lack of capacity to issue any clear preferences to the ABC makeup staff. I felt growing horror when my face as I knew it disappeared under the makeup-mirror lights. I dont mind pressureI rather like itbut the reflection of a pancaked face I did not recognise was truly disconcerting.

The Melbourne ABC studio was like something from a 1970s sci-fi set; a small, dark box of a room, with bits of gaffer tape all over the place, and the crew behind a glass wall. Someone put a flesh-coloured screw that looked like a medical instrument into my ear. My swivel chair was not comfortable. I asked, Wheres Leigh Sales?

Oh, shes in Sydney.

How will I talk to her?

A technician pointed at the other side of the room, to a camera with a screen: Shell appear there. I was left alone with the dead lens looking at me, unblinking and silent.

Then into my earpiece came a voice: Sally, can you hear me? Well start in five minutes.

Five minutes is a long time to sit in a silent black box, waiting for a fast bowler you cant see.

Four minutes.

The camera remained silent.

Three minutes Two minutes

God.

One minute

Jesus.

Thirty seconds.

Like a hologram, Leigh Sales appeared in the camera, distant and small. Makeup artists hovered around her, and I wondered if she could even see me, until the precise moment she said, All right, Sallylets go. Then, it all sprang suddenly to lifethe camera in front of me, Leigh, and my new reality as ACTU Secretary.