Correspondence: Natasha Cica.

The publication of Anne Manne's Quarterly Essay on the family and the free market was well timed. It hit news-stands just as it was becoming clear, several months after federal election 07, that in important respects Kevin Rudd's unfurling social and economic blueprint for Australia is very different from John Howard's.

One point of difference should prove to be a readiness to pull policy levers to make it easier for Australians who either have or want children to negotiate a healthier, happier space between the twin tugs of Care and Mammon. This I understood to be the core of Manne's argument. She rightly pointed out that this will demand payment of more than lip-service to notions of choice and work-life balance, and real recognition that neo-liberalism isn't all it's cracked up to be. She closed her essay by presenting a wishlist of twelve suggestions to further these aims. These suggestions deserve consideration, especially her urgings to improve the quality of child-care and to learn lessons from European (particularly Scandinavian) parental-leave initiatives.

I hope that the manner and form of that consideration will play a part in establishing another key point of difference between the Howard and Rudd eras. One of the hallmarks of the former was a tendency to characterise positions that did not match the government's agenda as "elite" (this was not meant as a compliment) and to caricature those advancing them as members of the "commentariat" (ditto). Accompanying this was not inconsiderable resistance to the participation of women, especially pre-menopausal ones, in debates on matters not connected with their reproductive capacity ... unless their published persona was gung-ho neo-con, which tended to bring rapid career rewards relative to merit. The triple whammy was that smart women expressing opinions about Australia's revived population anxiety soon realised they'd walked into a particularly toxic cul-de-sac of the culture wars--a kind of naked mud-wrestling bout with footnotes.

Manne apparently acknowledged this last fact in the introduction to her essay, lamenting the "intolerant atmosphere of the interminable mother wars." It was disappointing, then, to see slogans like "commentariat" and "elite cultural script" cranked out too many times in the following pages. In an echo of past habit, these labels were pinned only on positions with which Manne disagreed.

Or imputed positions. I was surprised to find my own name on Manne's hit list, both as a "work-centred careerist" preoccupied with the so-called baby versus briefcase dilemma, and as a member of the commentariat, "most of whom are themselves leading that life." Beyond that, I allegedly hold "contempt for stay-at-home mothers."

All that was a very wild stretch of Manne's imagination. My May 2007 column from which Manne selectively quoted wasn't dumping on women who, like Therese Rein and most Australian mothers, spend time out of the paid workforce caring for their children. Rather I was using the Rudd/Rein "appendage" furore to make a larger democratic point about what was and wasn't getting due attention in the lead-up to November's federal election. Here's the relevant passage:

   The intense speculation surrounding the business affairs of Therese
   Rein, and their potential political implications for prime
   ministerial contender Kevin Rudd, probably reveal more about us
   than about either of them.

      It suggests we've turned into a nation of voyeurs, alive and
   reactive to any deviation from prevailing norms. "Reining her in"
   and "Firm grip on rudder," the headlines have tittered since Rein
   announced her decision to divest local operations. Granted, it's
   not the average Australian wife--certainly not the average
   Australian political wife--who has the entrepreneurial drive and
   talent to set up a booming global business, never mind referring to
   it on the record as her "life support."

      Then again, it's not the average middle-aged Australian woman
   who's also a cheerfully practising Christian, evidently still
   happily married (but not joined at the hip) to the man she met at
   university, and clearly satisfied with the balance she's struck
   between family and fortune.

      Having said that, in many respects Rein is pretty stock
   standard--most able-bodied Australian mothers work, or they want to.
   As is her husband--most able-minded Australian men don't want a
   dependent appendage and are prepared to stand up and say so. So why
   the fevered commentary pitch?

      One reason might be that it's still not crystal clear why Rein
   and Rudd didn't have their private pow-wow on conflict of interest
   before it blew up in their faces. The reason may never be revealed,
   especially now both parties must surely be supersensitive to the
   dangers of one misplaced public utterance, like the politically
   incorrect "appendage." But do we really need to know this?

      Without evidence of any intention to wilfully deceive the
   public--Rein and Rudd have hardly kept the Ingeus empire and its
   government contracting secret--it's hard to see there's any
   meaningful issue, especially as earlier this month Rein explicitly
   flagged her intention to seek advice on this matter from the head
   of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet should Rudd be
   elected, and further to give the new opposition leader a chance to
   review any suggested probity arrangements. [...]

      Every word from every bylined commentator and ranting blogger
   this week about Rein was a space that wasn't devoted to issues that
   should matter a whole lot more to Australians in an election year,
   like, say, the policies on offer.

Announcing Quentin Bryce as Australia's next governor-general, Kevin Rudd emphasised that the appointment was "a great reflection on the fact that modern Australia is about the proper role of women in our society, unconstrained." That was a substantial, and welcome, break from both long tradition and recent Australian practice. Not least because Bryce is widely admired for elegantly combining her more private roles (as wife, friend, mentor, mother of five and grandmother of more) with her professionalism (as lawyer, academic, feminist, human-rights advocate, federal sex-discrimination commissioner, National Childcare Accreditation Council chief executive, Women's College principal at the University of Sydney, and governor of Queensland). This might just herald the dawn of a classier, more collaborative chapter in Australian public life.