Extract from The Guardian
One woman shouted out ‘Good on you Joan’ and everyone – premiers, cabinet ministers, friends, strangers – began to clap
Joan
Kirner would have enjoyed every moment of it. People streamed down the
streets of her bayside suburb of Williamstown towards the town hall,
lining up an hour before the doors opened. The dignitaries and
politicians were there, as befitting a state funeral, but this was a
community send-off. Community was a word the first female premier in Victoria used again and again, even when it was unfashionable in the neoliberal 1980s and 1990s.
Among the suits were bright pink hair, Essendon football club scarves and Aboriginal flags. Those that couldn’t fit in went to the local secondary school gym to watch the funeral streamed in, and the local RSL opened its doors afterwards to all-comers.
Kirner rose high in the political world, becoming Victoria’s first – and Australia’s second – female premier. Her achievements were impressive – minister for conservation, forests and lands, minister for education, minister for women. She established Landcare, co-founded Emily’s List, pushed Labor to introduce quotas for female candidates in winnable seats and modernised the Victorian education curriculum.
Yet it was the way she went about it that was remembered most, her commitment to fairness, social justice, feminism, working together to achieve practical things, the way she made people feel.
A painting of Kirner by a local Gippsland artist stood at the front of the congregation. As Bishop Philip Huggins noted, the painting was so Joan, “the open door, the welcoming gesture, very attentive, and it does appear that Joan is about to make a very definite point.”
The speakers were not especially well-known. They were deep friends, remembering a working-class only child whose parents – her fitter and turner father and music teacher mother – believed in her and fought for her to have a good education. She became a teacher and married a teacher, Ron, her “wise owl”, as he was called.
Jenny Beacham, the former state secretary of the ALP, remembered Kirner’s beginnings in public life not as a career politician or a union official but as the leader of mothers’ groups fighting for children in the outer suburbs to have more teachers and better classrooms. Famously, Kirner would tell the story of being told that her son would be in a class of 54 pupils. “No he won’t,” Kirner had said, organising a group of mothers to sit outside the minister’s office and demand change. They got it.
“Joan never changed,” Beacham said. “She was just as ready to stand up for something that she thought was right at the end of her life as she was 50 years ago.
“Joan knew more people than just about anyone in Victoria ... she made us believe in ourselves. You could do anything after talking to Joan.”
It was a theme of every speaker. Kirner was premier for just two years, from 1990, after John Cain resigned, to a landslide election defeat in 1992, when Victorians were tired of Labor government and weary of recession and debt. It was said at the time that Labor blokes chose a woman when they knew the party was doomed, yet Kirner’s toughness and spirit won many people over.
Her nemesis at the time, Jeff Kennett, was at the Williamson town hall, as was former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu and current leader Matthew Guy.
After politics, she co-founded Emily’s List in 1996 to encourage and support progressive women to stand for politics. A young woman who worked for Kirner at the time, Emily Lee-Ack, said she was “completely exhausting” to work for because “she was almost impossible to say no to”. The ethos of Emily’s List and of Joan, she said, was that “when women support women, women win.”
Aboriginal leader Paul Briggs remembered her commitment to disadvantaged people, and for her ability to listen.
Hutch Hussein, who works with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, wept as she spoke of Kirner mentoring a girl from the west, becoming her “surrogate mother” and “Nana Joan” to her children. Joan wasn’t scared of dying at 76; she was “just pissed off” that she had so much more to do.
“For many she’s not just given us wings, but taught us how to fly and along the way taught us to stretch those wings.”
State funerals are overwhelmingly male occasions in Australia, dominated by military figures, male political leaders, celebrities and sporting stars. Yet there was a strong female flavour to Joan Kirner’s send-off.
The nation’s first female premier, Western Australia’s Carmen Lawrence, was there, as were politicians who have been helped by Emily’s List, such as frontbencher Penny Wong. The only pity was that illness kept Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, away. Gillard has called Kirner a mentor and an inspiration.
Kirner was a proud and active feminist. When Helen Reddy’s I am Woman filled the hall, there was a warm kind of laughter. As it went on – “Oh, yes I am strong/but it’s wisdom born of pain”, people began to sing, quietly, then louder, especially the women who knew all the words. Kirner would have beamed.
Outside, when the hearse drove into the street, people lined up to say farewell. One woman shouted out “good on you Joan”, and everyone – premiers, former premiers, cabinet ministers, community workers, teachers, friends, neighbours, strangers – began to clap. It was fitting, somehow.
Among the suits were bright pink hair, Essendon football club scarves and Aboriginal flags. Those that couldn’t fit in went to the local secondary school gym to watch the funeral streamed in, and the local RSL opened its doors afterwards to all-comers.
Kirner rose high in the political world, becoming Victoria’s first – and Australia’s second – female premier. Her achievements were impressive – minister for conservation, forests and lands, minister for education, minister for women. She established Landcare, co-founded Emily’s List, pushed Labor to introduce quotas for female candidates in winnable seats and modernised the Victorian education curriculum.
Yet it was the way she went about it that was remembered most, her commitment to fairness, social justice, feminism, working together to achieve practical things, the way she made people feel.
A painting of Kirner by a local Gippsland artist stood at the front of the congregation. As Bishop Philip Huggins noted, the painting was so Joan, “the open door, the welcoming gesture, very attentive, and it does appear that Joan is about to make a very definite point.”
The speakers were not especially well-known. They were deep friends, remembering a working-class only child whose parents – her fitter and turner father and music teacher mother – believed in her and fought for her to have a good education. She became a teacher and married a teacher, Ron, her “wise owl”, as he was called.
Jenny Beacham, the former state secretary of the ALP, remembered Kirner’s beginnings in public life not as a career politician or a union official but as the leader of mothers’ groups fighting for children in the outer suburbs to have more teachers and better classrooms. Famously, Kirner would tell the story of being told that her son would be in a class of 54 pupils. “No he won’t,” Kirner had said, organising a group of mothers to sit outside the minister’s office and demand change. They got it.
“Joan never changed,” Beacham said. “She was just as ready to stand up for something that she thought was right at the end of her life as she was 50 years ago.
“Joan knew more people than just about anyone in Victoria ... she made us believe in ourselves. You could do anything after talking to Joan.”
It was a theme of every speaker. Kirner was premier for just two years, from 1990, after John Cain resigned, to a landslide election defeat in 1992, when Victorians were tired of Labor government and weary of recession and debt. It was said at the time that Labor blokes chose a woman when they knew the party was doomed, yet Kirner’s toughness and spirit won many people over.
Her nemesis at the time, Jeff Kennett, was at the Williamson town hall, as was former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu and current leader Matthew Guy.
After politics, she co-founded Emily’s List in 1996 to encourage and support progressive women to stand for politics. A young woman who worked for Kirner at the time, Emily Lee-Ack, said she was “completely exhausting” to work for because “she was almost impossible to say no to”. The ethos of Emily’s List and of Joan, she said, was that “when women support women, women win.”
Aboriginal leader Paul Briggs remembered her commitment to disadvantaged people, and for her ability to listen.
Hutch Hussein, who works with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, wept as she spoke of Kirner mentoring a girl from the west, becoming her “surrogate mother” and “Nana Joan” to her children. Joan wasn’t scared of dying at 76; she was “just pissed off” that she had so much more to do.
“For many she’s not just given us wings, but taught us how to fly and along the way taught us to stretch those wings.”
State funerals are overwhelmingly male occasions in Australia, dominated by military figures, male political leaders, celebrities and sporting stars. Yet there was a strong female flavour to Joan Kirner’s send-off.
The nation’s first female premier, Western Australia’s Carmen Lawrence, was there, as were politicians who have been helped by Emily’s List, such as frontbencher Penny Wong. The only pity was that illness kept Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, away. Gillard has called Kirner a mentor and an inspiration.
Kirner was a proud and active feminist. When Helen Reddy’s I am Woman filled the hall, there was a warm kind of laughter. As it went on – “Oh, yes I am strong/but it’s wisdom born of pain”, people began to sing, quietly, then louder, especially the women who knew all the words. Kirner would have beamed.
Outside, when the hearse drove into the street, people lined up to say farewell. One woman shouted out “good on you Joan”, and everyone – premiers, former premiers, cabinet ministers, community workers, teachers, friends, neighbours, strangers – began to clap. It was fitting, somehow.
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