How many female police commissioners will Victoria cop from now on?The corrosive tragedy of affirmative action is that a more accomplished woman who might otherwise have made it on her own merits will be overlooked, because it takes a different set of skills to succeed in what essentially is a phony marketing game. Nixon's greatest asset was her sex.īut, like so many women propelled above their ability on the strength of their sex, Nixon proved a disappointment and has set back the cause of women. The real sexism in Nixon's career was the positive discrimination applied when she was hired for the top job in Victoria's police force.At the time it was regarded as a coup for a progressive government keen to feminise the image of the nation's most macho police force. What a contrast with Nixon, the very definition of Nero fiddling while Rome burns: a leader doing something trivial in the middle of a crisis.Īs for her charge of sexism, her chutzpah is beyond belief. Last thing at night and first thing in the morning she was there, looking the worse for wear, without enough sleep or time to do her hair properly. She was calm, reassuring and compassionate.
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SNOW ON THE BLUFF WHOLE BOOK TV
The Queensland Premier fronted up to the TV cameras hour after hour, on top of every detail of the unfolding crisis. This is what Anna Bligh understood so well during Queensland's summer floods, to her everlasting credit. If Nixon didn't grasp that, she had no business being a leader. It never enters a leader's head that a day of crisis is her rostered day off. A real leader does not get her hair done and go out to dinner. It is during times of crisis that the power of leadership must be put to good use, not hidden away in a handbag at a restaurant. She was the state's top cop, with primary operational responsibility for the emergency.Ī real leader adds value just by being there in a crisis, showing solidarity and confidence to inspire the troops, demonstrating compassion for victims, setting a calm tone and signalling to the world the seriousness of the situation. But I did not fail my own tests of integrity."īut she was the leader. It's not good enough to say "there were things I regretted, things I would do differently if given the gift of time back.
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It's not good enough to say, as Nixon does in her book: "The last thing any emergency team needs in the grip of a crisis is the boss breathing down their necks, second-guessing their decisions." It wasn't good enough to look at computer screens over people's shoulders.Īsked if she had considered during her brief sojourn in the control room whether people in the path of the fires had been warned, Nixon said she assumed they had been. It wasn't good enough just to turn up at the State Emergency Response Co-ordination Centre at 3pm, stay for three hours and never ask for a briefing, as she told the royal commission she did. What I didn't take into account was what would people think of me."
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I knew they were doing a good job and I trusted them. It's not good enough to say, as Nixon did on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week, "I had good people on the ground. Because not only did Nixon go out to dinner while the state was burning, but in her first day of testimony at the royal commission she did not tell the whole truth of her whereabouts on the day.Įver since, Nixon has seemed incapable of understanding why people are still dismayed that she went out to dinner when she knew the fires had already claimed lives.īy the time she met her friends at the restaurant 14 people were believed dead and Marysville and Kinglake were well alight.