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On this Page 17
BOOK TWO
SUNDAY FEATURES
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SUSAN AITKIN TRACKS
THE DETERMINED
JOURNEY OF
WENDY FATIN, WOMAN.
dt\ HAVE a very little
I friend who calls me the
1 Minister for Dinosaurs
because I took him to see Ques
taeon," says Wendy Fatin with a
grin.
She finds being Minister "for Di
nosaurs", the Arts and Territories
and Minister Assisting the Prime
Minister for the Status of Women
keeps her even busier than her previ
.?uS of Local Government,
'but that doesn't worry me",
Ms Fatin first became acquainted
wi;h hard work as a child on a small
aaii7 farm in Harvey, Western Aus
tralia. Life might have'been hard and
remote from the city, but the nuns at
the convent school, the wireless and
the local library all contributed a cul
tural background for the three Fim
mel children, Peter. Wendy and
Judy.
It. is a background which stands
ner in good stead in the Arts portfo
lio and also fuels her desire for all
Australians to have access to the arts.
"It was not exactly the well-filled
experience some children get but it
was enough certainly to whet my ap
petite, she recalls. "There were peo
ple reading to us all the time."
Mother Finbar, superior of the Ut
ile convent school at Harvey, would
cad aloud to the class from the lives
)f the martyrs, one of 12 volumes
taken from a "beautiful old cabinet
with a glass front". "We could choose
which one."
At home there was the wireless
powered by a large battery at the
back, which allowed the Fimmels to
»rlc,n & Programs su-h as Sunday
Night Play. }
"Radio was very much part of our
lives, and going to the pictures," she
said. 'I listened to Blue Hills, even
when 1 was little, because my mother
aid. all the way through to ihe last
episode when I was an adult. It was
very sad to hear it end."
Peter, 18 months older, was al
lowed to stay up half an hour Later till
opm and could listen to the serials.
Ms Fatin recalls this ruling as one
ot the first incidents in which her
feminist instincts were aroused:
How was it that this boy was able to
stay up and listen to the serials'' It
was just not fair!"
. She was mollified when her bed
time got later as she grew older, but
then there was the iniquity of being
given only half a cigarette while Peter
and her boyfriend helped themselves
to complete ones in their illicit baccy
sessions under the bridge at Harvey
Before her sister was born, she
snared a room with Peter and recalls
pictures of nurserv rhymes which
were stuck on the wall.
"One haunted me for years: Peter
Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife
and couldn't keep her. He put her 'in
a pumpkin shell and there he kept
her very well." Given that her broth
er was called Peter, was it her fate
shell''0 ensconcc<i 'n a pumpkin
The other pictures in the house
had been painted by her grandmoth
er, They were not particularly good
but arc very precious." She is glad
they are still in the family.
Farm chores meant that young
Wendy was not able to indulge dur
books6 dayhCr passion for readinS
"1 used to read at night under my
blankets when I was supposed to be
asleep. I used to collect batteries for
my torch. I would take a pile of ap
ples in with me - I loved apples, I
still do. But you couldn't leave any
, evidence. ] learned to eat the whole
apple. If there's a stalk 1 still eat that
too."
There were very few books at
home - "they were expensive" -
and she would borrow works of fic
tion from a friend she caught the bus
to school with. She also had a vora
cious appetite for her brother's large
collection of comics.
A treat came on her 10th birthday
when she received one of the Milly
Molly Mandy books, by Joyce Lan
kester Brisley, as a present. She re
grets that she no longer has the books
of her childhood.
"I have a passion for collecting
books. 1 have thousands of books.
These days when I go and buy books,
if I buy 10 I think, eight for retire
ment and two for now. That's my
justification for buying books I don't
read!
"I am not a serious collector in
that I try to find first editions. 1
collect books that I want to read and
that I like. 1 tend to read about peo
ple as opposed" to fiction, though I
also do read fiction. I have many,
many, many autobiographies and
biographies."
She has just finished Anne Deve
son's book about her son, Tell Me
I'm Here.
Back at Harvey in the 1940s, her
parents were members of the Roads
Board Library, "I have a vivid mem
ory of an elderly woman, she was
probably 33, standing on some steps
and getting a book down from the
top shelf."
When the family moved to Perth
in 1952, Mrs Fimmel worked as a
volunteer on the days Wendy and
Judy came to the library so she
would be able to take them home.
Wendy worked her way steadily
through the Twins series, by Lucy
Fitch Perkins.
"We were allowed one fiction and
two non-fiction and they were
classed as non-fiction because they
were about Eskimos or Indians."
The move came about because Pe
ter, after first opting for a career as a
clown in the circus or a paper boy,
had told his parents that he wanteid
to be a scientist.
"Everyone was saying, 'No, no, no,
you really want to be a farmer,* and
he just said, 'No way'. He became
quite a successful medical scientist
and now makes boutique wines.
"I wanted to be a farmer -'Please,
1 want to have the farm' - and
everybody laughed and said. 'Girls
don t have farms. That toughened
my spine a little. I thought again,
This is pretty unfair!'. "
Jim Fimmel, her father, was the
son of a railway stationmaster. He
had left school at 14 to work his
aunt's dairy farm with his brother
and had eventually received a half
share of 72 acres.
His wife, Nell, also had not been
able to complete her schooling but
had had the advantage of boarding
with the first vice-chancellor of the
University of Western Australia,
Professor H. E. Whitfcld, and his
wife.
"My parents had these three child
ren and a little farm that no-one
seemed to want, or the one who did
was not appropriate for the time, and
decided education was the way to
go." So the family moved to Perth.
"My father decided that he had to
educate himself so he could afford to
educate us.
"He went into this venture a little
like me going into Federal Parlia
ment - the first woman from WA
into the House of Representatives -
with no guiding model. It was very
much breaking ground all the way for
me and I think for him too in his
family."
By the time Jim Fimmel retired at
65, "he was a senior lecturer in mer
cantile law and accounting and all
sorts of other things at WAIT [West
ern Australian Institute of Tech
nology, now Curtin University]". All
his study had been done part-time
while he was earning the money to
put his children through school.
"When he died he had just come
back from the Goethe Institute,
where he was learning his third lan
guage, he was, by then, fluent in
French and Italian. He and my
mother had started that jaunt after
he was 65. They used to travel over
seas on his super payments and live
in Florence, say, for six months and
go to university as undergraduates.
"He was quite an amazing man."
Ms Fatin also acknowledges the
support of her mother, who still trav
els to Canberra to visit her.
However, as a girl, Wendy was
supposed to leave school at 15.
"My brother was staying on'at
school because he was going to get
married and keep a family but I was
going to get married and be kept - it
was simply the era.
"1 said I couldn't possibly leave yet
because 1 didn't know enough.
Please, could I stav at school? So I
had to work to pay my board because
we could not afford it.
UI was a very determined soul. 1
used to say I was going somewhere. I
wasn't quite sure where I was going
but I was going there and I knew that
I had to be educated on the way and
being educated meant staying at
school."
She worked at weekends and dur
ing the holidays from the age of 13,
and scaped up enough money to ask
a friend of her mother's to bring her
back a wind-up gramophone from
England.
"I subscribed to a Readers' Digest
series of 12 records." Her favourite
composers are Mozart and Vivaldi.
The nuns at St Joseph's and later
at adjacent Ladies' College at Victo-'
ria Square in Perth used to take their
charges to the theatre.
"My first experience of Shake
speare would have been at the Capi
tol Theatre in Perth. I saw Othello
and also Madame Butterfly.
"I started going to symphony con
certs once I was older. I remember
going to one concert being very preg
nant with my first child; within a
matter of days he was born. I had a
lovely red, velvet evening cloak
which was supposed to hide such
things, but it didn't - he was such a
large child!"
The chapel at the convent
contained beautiful paintings and
stained glass - "art was around for
me to grasp".
"The nuns also attempted to teach
me the piano on a beautiful grand,
but that did not work. I was an abys
mal failure, though I can still find
middle C. I decided it was much
better to appreciate it than to play
it."
She sang alto in the choir though "I
did learn to open my mouth and
make all the movements without
singing", and also attempted to learn
ballet.
She credits the nuns for their sup
port and for giving her "exposure to
ideas".
"If you look at all the women who
go into public office or in senior ex
ecutive positions you will find a lot
of us have been taught by Irish nuns.
They may very well have given us
the feeling that we could do things
where others may not have expected
us to."
Ms Fatin wanted to go to universi
ty very much "but there was just no
chance. I had to choose between
teaching or nursing because they
gave bursaries and that helped me
stay at school for that last two years."
She chose nursing - "I didn't
want to get stuck behind a typewrit
er" - but went along to the univer
sity extension centre asking if she
could go to university after she had
completed her training.
"They asked why, and the only
reason I could think of was that my
brother had been and I couldn't say
that.
"I wanted to say, 'Because I want
to learn, I don't know enough and
the university is a place where you go
[to learn]'. But that wasn't good
enough: you had to have a reason."
The subjects she had passed in the
Leaving Certificate were not appro
priate to gain her university entrance
and she was told she would have to
wait until she was 21.
"But I married not long after that,
and in about three years we had our
first child [born in 1965] and then we
went to Butterworth."
Soon after marriage, she left nurs
ing for a spell in a library. "I have this
passion for libraries - it was won
derful. It was the first job where I
used to rush to work ... to stack
books and put them on the shelves."
The advertisement for an assistant
librarian required someone with a
knowledge of the Dewey system and
of typing.
"I rang a school friend who was a
librarian at the university - her
daughter is about to marry my son -
and I said, 'You've got to come and
stay with me this weekend.' She said,
'I beg your pardon?'
"I said, 'You have got to teach me
the Dewey system on one day and
typing on the next.'
"So they whipped over with a por
table typewriter. We went for long
walks and I had long tutorials on the
Dewey system, and I understood the
Dewey system much better than 1
understood typewriters!
"I will never forget going down for
my interview. 1 had got through it
wonderfully - the Dewey system
was easy - and she said, 'Could you
type this?' I went cold.
"I had said I had a knowledge of
typing and 1 did - I had a knowl
edge of it.
"I tried unsuccessfully to get the
piece of paper in the typewriter and
she said, 'Why don't we just forget
the typing?"
"I got the job. It was wonderful.
We used to eat cakes at morning tea
- I mean, nurses just don't do that
- and we used to talk about books.
"I actually followed Angela Cha
ney, Fred's wife, into the job. [Fred
Chaney is federal Opposition spokes
man on the environment.] They
went off to Papua New Guinea and.
then we went off to Malaysia.
"My husband was a medical offi
cer at Butterworth, but of course we
were supporting our men in Viet
nam. He would do a lot of the medi
cal evacuations. He would go in for
six months at a time. It was awful,
awful."
Not only was she worried about
his physical safety, she had her hands
full with the birth of their second
child, a daughter born in 1966.
"Butterworth was where I was
challenged about what the war was
about and where I fitted in to the
point that when we came back to
Australia I got very much involved
in the peace movement and later in
Women's Electoral Lobby.
"There was no question that the
war was a catalyst that jolted me into
wanting to do something about lots
of things.
To "survive and stay sane" she
went to university. "1 had to put
myself into a rigid, formal learning
situation to keep the rest together. A
period of sanity in my life was going
to lectures, which 1 found marvellous
except I didn't have time to study."
She managed six units of an arts
degree at the University of Western
Australia, switching from history to
politics at the suggestion of her tutor.
Bob Hetherington, who later became
a Labor MLC.
In 1972, Ms' Fatin, a founding
member of WEL in WA, attended its
first conference at the ANU in Can
berra. She was one of five women
from WA, another of whom was Pat
Giles, now in the Senate, and a third
was her sister, Judy, now studying at
the University of Sydney.
Ms Fatin, in opening WEL's 20th
anniversary conference at the ANU
recently, pointed out that Premier
Carmen Lawrence and two of her
ministers, Kay Hallahan and
Yvonne Henderson, were also WEL
members, Ms Lawrence having at
tended the first meeting in Mel
bourne in 1972.
"A lot of the women that I knew
then... went into state politics, but 1
always focused on federal politics,"
she told the ABC's political com
mentator in WA, Peter Kennedy, in a
recent radio interview. In 1974, she
applied for a job with Senator John
Wheeldon, then federal Minister for
Repatriation and Compensation, as
an adviser on the compensation part
of his portfolio given her medical
background.
Much to the surprise of herself and
her husband, she won the job and cut
short her studies to go to Canberra.
The job gave her "the confidencc
to feel that I could think rationally in
the national political sphere".
She quickly became involved
"right across his portfolio" and ex
tended her work into his new portfo
lio of Social Security untiL the
dismissal of the Whitlam Govern
ment. (Also in 1975, International
Women's Year, came Lionel Mur
phy's reform of the divorce .laws,
"and my husband and 1 were able to
go into court together and get a digni
fied separation".) She believes it was
the dismissal which "headed me into
federal politics".
"I, by then, was very much in
volved in the peace movement and
the women's movement, and my
children's education and all of that,
and I was becoming very politically
... orientated," she told Peter Ken
nedy,
She was then "well and truly a
member of the Labor Party ... [but]
the dismissal sent me away from po
litics for years, I just withdrew total
ly. ...
"Many of us, I think, knew that we
would undoubtedly lose the next
election but the way of that dismissal
brought many of us to a hall and
[made us think] about our system."
University again offered solace
during a time of "enormous disillu
sionment". Instead of politics she re
turned to her first profession and
completed a science degree in nurs
ing at WAIT.
"It was at WAIT that I learned the
value of being able to sit in cofTce
shops in between tutes and lectures
and talk with people and relax as a
full-time student." It had been a lux
ury denied her in her struggling days
at the University of WA, taking time
out from two small children and a
husband doing postgraduate work.
Her soul restored at WAIT, she
worked again as a research assistant
before winning the Federal scat of
Canning in 1983, the first female
MHR from WA, and then the seat of
Brand created in the 1984 redistribu
tion of federal electorate boundaries.
She became the first Western Austra
lian woman to join the federal Minis
try when she was appointed Minister
for Local Government in 1990, and
became Minister for Arts and Terri
tories in last December.
Continued on Page 18.
Jim and Nell Fimmel with, from left, Peter, Wendy and Judy. Help
Jim and Nell Fimmel with, from left, Peter, Wendy and Judy.
Picture: GRAHAM TIDY Help
Picture: GRAHAM TIDY Help
Picture: GRAHAM TIDY

A minister
who is

still going

somewhere

Continued from Page 17.

AS MINISTER for the Arts she has been familiaris

ing herself with the 15 major institutions she is

responsible for, many of which lie in the ACT, the other
part of her portfolio.

She confesses to having seen very little of the Can
berra region in her earlier years in the capital, the life of
a ministerial staffer revolving around long nights at the
House and long flights home. "To this day, I haven't
seen the snow," she says

Despite the fact that, as an MP and later minister,
"you get buried as soon as you arrive in the morning",
she has walked around the lake and visited Red Hill
and Black Mountain - "the controversy about the
tower was used at UWA at one of the politics courses as
an example of lobbying".

After two months in the job, "I have, of course, had
extensive briefings about the ACT and watched with
interest the elections and the referendum the other day.
1 have a totally different feel for it now."

She hopes to visit Jervis Bay with its MP, John
Langmorc, in the next couple of weeks, and is also
planning visits to other territories such as Norfolk,
Christmas and the Cocos Islands. Dealing with their
needs "will be an interesting part of my work".

She finds the national capital "beautiful" and rejoices
that she can now wander in the gardens of the National
Gallery and admire Rodin's Burghers of Calais, "and
not feel guilty - this is work".

Her first aim is to develop a comprehensive strategy
on arts and culture "of the '90s", a policy, however,
which can be flexible and change with the years. "I
think it's something that you work on."

While she is talking about growth and vision, she is
aware of the recession, which rules against "grand plans
requiring grand amounts".

On the other hand, "you can't afford the $43 million
cut proposed in the Opposition's Fightback package...
you would either have to cut'everybody a lot, or some
body absolutely out of it. "Arts are an integral part of
our society, and as such they cannot afford that sort of

cut."

Her sccond aim is to increase all Australians' access
to the arts, and she applauds the efforts of the National
Library in this direction, both in developing a national
bibliographic computer system and in its recent work to
jopen the ground floor to the public. "The Library is one
of the things one first sees wljen one comes to Canberra
as a politician. It is a majestic building.

"I have to admit it was a library that confused me the
first time I visited it in the '70s. I recall thinking, 'How
do you use this library?' because you didn't sec any

books."

As a feminist, she relishes the opportunity to be able
to further women's issues "across 30 portfolios".

She notes that many of the reforms started by the
Whitlam Government were extended by the Hawke
Government and points to the legislation now in place
on sex discrimination, equal employment opportunity
and affirmative action.

"Now all that sdrt of legislation, the child-care pro
gram, the various committees on violence against
women, the health programs - all of [those] are with
out doubt the most progressive in the world," she told
Peter Kennedy.

"... but that does not say that it changes the fact that
one in three women in Australia are beaten in domestic
violence; that many, many small children - boys and
girls - are sexually abused; that women still don't have
equal pay."

As someone interested in history, what gives her a
sense of equilibrium and keeps her sane is the realis
ation that the position of women in all societies in the
world "has taken centuries to develop", and will also
take many years to change.

"... what we're seeing is a major social revolution".
Ms Fatin has come a long way in the 50 years since
she was born in Harvey.

"From looking at my past, and all the blind alleys
that one's got, it makes me a far better politician and
minister," she says.

Her childhood ambition of wanting to go somewhere
has led her to federal Parliament, but are there other
places that she still wants to go?

"A villa in Tuscany, preferably next to a pasta shop,
where I can spend six months reading all these books I
have bought!" She laughs.

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