On the next episode of In Conversation with Alex Malley, international activist, academic and author Germaine Greer unleashes her uncensored assessment of the state of Australian leadership, gender equality, and her life with an abusive mother on Sunday, November 6, at 10.00am on Channel Nine. 

In 1970, the Melbourne-born Commonwealth Scholarship winner was catapulted onto the international stage of the women’s liberation movement following the release of her seminal best-selling book, The Female Eunuch. 

Surprisingly, when reflecting on the global acclaim and controversy the ideas in her book triggered, Greer admits during the interview: “It’s not a very good book … I want it to be replaced by a completely different book, by a better book – why aren’t there hundreds of them? 

“There are more books on golf than there are on feminism. Misogyny is rife in English society. Men don’t like women. Now my problem is not that men don’t like women, I don’t care about that, I care about the fact that women don’t like women.” 

Greer also recounts her time in London at the height of the Vietnam War where she became an avid anti-war activist. 

“I can remember being so frightened on those demonstrations because the police would join us in plain clothes with their pockets full of stones, so at the opportune moment they could start throwing the stones and then we’d all be beaten up and the rest would follow,” she says. 

Arriving at her perspective on Australia’s current national leadership and international standing, Greer asserts: “Every now and then I ask myself whether the two-party system has not run out of steam. It isn’t working. Our two parties are too alike. There’s nothing to choose between them. 

“I cannot see the current incumbents (leaders of Australia) having the charisma to deal with the Indonesian heads of state, or Malaysian. These are very, very clever people and we should be a lot closer to them than we are. 

“I think Australia is gravitating towards Asia, but it still stands in the relationship of a primary producer, which is absurd and shameful. And we’re turning the interior (of Australia) into a mess of fine dust for this negative return.”

Thursday, November 3, 2016

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