Samantha Mostyn will be Australia’s 28th governor-general. The prominent businesswoman has worked with Reconciliation Australia, Beyond Blue, the Australia Council for the Arts, the National Mental Health Commission and the AFL, where she was integral to the formation of the AFLW. She also, lest you be allowed to forget, has a long history with the Labor Party.
Unsurprisingly, the country’s commentariat is having a typically normal one in response to her appointment.
“Mostyn is the worst kind of corporate activist who campaigned against the majority of Australians in the divisive Voice referendum,” said Matthew Sheahan, executive director of right-wing activists and noted unity experts Advance. “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’.”
“Someone who has so aggressively attacked the heritage of modern Australia should never be allowed to become its executive head of state,” railed the Australian Monarchist League (AML) in a typo-riddled email to subscribers this morning.
“This s [sic] but one of the media posts indicating what a divisive nomination this is,” writes AML national chair Philip Benwell beneath a link to the agenda setting work of Michael Smith News, in this case a two line blog entry about Mostyn. Smith calls Mostyn a “hard-core leftist feminist”, comparable to former PM Julia Gillard. To anyone still familiar with Smith’s contribution to the public debate, that lands as a serious insult.
Still, the AML’s decision to use Smith as a gauge of the national debate must have been deeply annoying to the commentariat at The Australian who expended far more words on Mostyn’s appointment than Smith. Take Janet Albrechtsen, who argued:
Mostyn reflects the worst of modern woke Australia. The same woke corporate Australia in which our biggest companies threw many millions of shareholder dollars into a referendum that sought to divide the country, using the Constitution, on the basis of race. The same woke corporate Australia that had no read on the country given the referendum failed so spectacularly.
Albrechtsen adds “the appointment of the former Chief Executive Women president is further evidence, if we needed it, that the old boys’ club has been replaced with a new girls’ club — one new group of oppressors putting the squeeze on a new group of oppressed”, which is very funny.
Meanwhile, an anonymous Coalition frontbencher told Geoff Chambers that “this is the most political pick for G-G in a long time”, presumably longing for the apolitical, symbolism-free appointments of military men to the post.
Mostyn’s stated support for last year’s failed referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament gave culture warriors an angle other than her Labor past to hammer.
For example, Sky News Australia proved its non-partisan commitment to intellectual diversity: rather than bring on a Liberal-affiliated talking head who hates Labor, they brought on GXO Strategies Director Cameron Milner, a Labor-affiliated talking head who hates Labor.
“She is the queen of woke,” Milner told Andrew Bolt. “But this is the prime minister’s choice, this is the prime minister’s captain’s pick. Quite frankly, Albanese’s given a middle finger salute to every single Australian who voted no to his Voice.”
Bolt, for his part, responded with that textbook combination of grievance and phrases no-one really uses anymore, in his piece, which opens, “Sam Mostyn sure has made affirmative action work for her. Demanding women get jobs ahead of men means she’s now our next governor-general.”
We must confess we share a sense of sadness at the change of Australia’s governor-general. Mainly because it means the end of the era of Linda Hurley, wife of the departing G-G. With her fondness for starting the day with a round of hula hooping and bible studies, and her now well-documented tendency to launch into accapella, self-penned songs at seemingly every public event she attends, she was the closest thing Australian politics had to a character from an early Belle and Sebastian song rendered into flesh, and she will be missed.
Not having heard of her before, I was skeptical about Mostyn. But I reckon if the likes of Sheahan, Albrechtson and Bolt are against her, she must be alright…
Your 2nd sentence saved my having to write it.
By their enemies we shall know them.
It would be more of a badge of honour if those town shriekers weren’t so prone to just making stuff up out of whole cloth.
Such a divisive figure that most of us had never heard of her…
Given the last GG was complicit in an administrative coup with the Morrison’s secret ministries, Mostyn is undoubtedly an improvement. (I don’t think the GG should have disobeyed the PM, that’s not their role, but they could have resigned and refused to comply with such an obvious abuse of process)
Or at least refused to keep the secret.
Why? He was one of them.
Two women out of how many GGs?
We are taking over … right
I remember there was a similar fuss when Quentin Bryce was appointed. Woman, articulate, supporter of causes, independent, looks smart – the end of the world is nigh!!
Later I was working in Asia with AusAID and G-G Bryce made a visit to the city I was working in. In those days AusAID not only provided aid workers but gave scholarships to people in neighbouring countries to undertake further study in Australia. Among my colleagues there were many who had held such scholarships. I lived in a homestay and my homestay host had also held an AusAID scholarship to study business.
The local hospital had a Fred Hollows clinic. G-G Bryce visited the hospital clinic. The embassy arranged a reception for all of the local former scholarship holders. One of my colleagues gave the address of welcome.
Bryce was marvellous. She was very friendly, met with everyone, asked where and what they had studied, absolutely looked the part, spoke so that she was easily understood. Many colleagues, my host, people from other organisations – all said how much they enjoyed the occasion. I felt really proud to be an Australian. Such soft diplomacy is of incalculable value.
Then Abbott became PM and AusAID had gone within months.
RWNJ Yanks have a nasty term I’m inclined to appropriate…
It’s actually supported by a lot of evidence when it points the other way, as it does in the Australian context, if you capitalise it – Libtards.
Why give oxygen to the right wing nutjobs?
Is shadenfreude oxygen though?
Isn’t that the same Janet Albrechtsen who got the first drop of the conclusions of Walter Sofronoff’s inquiry into the conduct of that notorious case?
Colour me very shocked!
Or decades started complaining about imagined, but imported US nativist PR, claiming anti-white racism…..