Children’s Rights, the Family and ‘Sexual Permissiveness’: Conservative Mobilisations and the Australian Response to International Year of the Child (1979)

Abstract

In 1979, Australian social conservatives seized on the International Year of the Child (IYC) as an opportunity to reassert the importance of the family and warn against ‘sexual permissiveness’. This article traces their strategic appeals to children’s rights to underwrite their campaigns, drawing on case studies of three of the era’s most prominent organisations: the anti-feminist group, the Women’s Action Alliance; the National Right to Life Association and its associated state branches; and the Christian group, the Festival of Light. All three groups used the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) – whose twentieth anniversary coincided with IYC – to increase the credibility and political currency of their campaigns, thereby positioning themselves as key players in the year’s activities. While by no means uncontested, their interventions served to steer public debate and ensured that their concerns occupied a prominent place in the IYC agenda.

The author wishes to thank the AHS editorial team for their direction and encouragement while finalising this article, the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback, and fellow special issue editors, Michelle Arrow and Sophie Robinson, for their input on earlier drafts.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For an overview of conservative backlash through this period, addressing many of these themes, see Michelle Arrow, The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2019), ch. 7. On conservative groups’ objections to family law reforms, see Shurlee Swain, Born in Hope: The Early Years of the Family Court of Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2012), 16–19, 91–7. On their opposition to sex education, see: Sally E. Gibson, ‘Creating Controversy: Sex Education and the Christian Right in South Australia’ (PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2009), especially 55–8; Julie McLeod, ‘Incitement or Education? – Contesting Sex, Curriculum and Identity in Schools’, Melbourne Studies in Education 40, no. 2 (1999): 7–39. On the charge of homosexual ‘seduction’, see: Steven Angelides, The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), ch. 4; Frank Bongiorno, The Sex Lives of Australians (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2012), 281–4.

2 On anti-abortion activists’ use of human rights, see Jon Piccini, Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 143–51. On the global uptake of human rights discourse in this period, see for example Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds, The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

3 On these movements’ alternative visions of children’s rights, see for example Isobelle Barrett Meyering, ‘Liberating Children: The Australian Women’s Liberation Movement and Children’s Rights in the 1970s’, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 19 (2013): 60–74; Ashley Lavelle, Radical Challenges to the Family: From the Sixties to Same-Sex Marriage (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), ch. 6.

4 International Year of the Child, UN Doc. A/RES/31/169 (21 December 1976), https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/31/169 (accessed 6 June 2021).

5 Linde Lindkvist, ‘1979: A Year of the Child, But Not of Children’s Human Rights’, Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society 1 (2019): 208–11.

6 Ibid., 204–5.

7 International Year of the Child, UN Doc. A/RES/31/169.

8 Lindkvist, 208, 213–18.

9 Paula Fass, ‘A Historical Context for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 633, no. 1 (2011): 18.

10 Cabinet minute, decision no. 1564, 7 September 1977, series A12909, item 1564, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA).

11 Piccini, 161.

12 Margaret Guilfoyle, ‘Closing Remarks’, in Social Security: Proceedings of the International Year of the Child National Conference, Special Issue (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1979), 101.

13 Cabinet minute (Ad Hoc Committee), decision no. 4397 (ad hoc), series A13075, item 4397/AD HOC, NAA.

14 ‘Minding the Child’, The Canberra Times, 1 January 1979, 2.

15 On the funding for International Women’s Year, see Arrow, The Seventies, 112.

16 Greg Taylor, Address to the inaugural meeting of the IYC National Committee of Non-Government Organisations, 12 June 1978, Record of Meetings 1 and 2, series C2530, NAA.

17 Minutes of part 2 of the first meeting of the IYC National Committee of NGOs, 26 June 1978, Record of Meetings 1 and 2, series C2530, NAA.

18 International Year of the Child Unit, Catalogue of National Events and Projects in Australia, Department of Social Security, Canberra, July 1979, series C2544, NAA.

19 Michelle Arrow, ‘“How Much Longer Will We Allow This Country’s Affairs to Be Run by Radical Feminists?” Anti-Feminist Activism in Late 1970s Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 52, no. 3 (2021).

20 Ibid; Women’s Action Alliance (WAA), ‘Statement of Principles’, folder 1, box 23, Mark Aarons Papers, MLMSS 9329, State Library of New South Wales.

21 For an early example of WAA members’ use of their influence within the Liberal Party to advance their agenda, see the discussion of its campaign against the Victorian Women’s Advisory Officer Penny Ryan, in Arrow, ‘“How Much Longer Will We Allow This Country’s Affairs to Be Run by Radical Feminists?”’

22 Margaret Slattery was appointed as a representative of the Australian Parents Council and Clair Isbister was appointed as a representative of the Australasian College of Physicians. International Year of the Child National Committee of Non-Government Organisations Australia, Final Report (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1980), 6.

23 WAA, International Year of the Child 1979, submission, February 1978, folder 1, box 23, Mark Aarons Papers. On these policies and their place in the WAA’s wider political agenda, see also Arrow, ‘“How Much Longer Will We Allow This Country’s Affairs to Be Run by Radical Feminists?”’

24 John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health: A Report Prepared on Behalf of the World Health Organization as a Contribution to the United Nations Programme for the Welfare of Homeless Children (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1951).

25 Deborah Brennan, The Politics of Australian Child Care: Philanthropy to Feminism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 59, 63.

26 WAA, International Year of the Child 1979, submission, February 1978.

27 WAA, Preliminary recommendations for funding, submission, folder 1, box 23, Mark Aarons Papers.

28 Margaret Guilfoyle, Minister for Social Security, to Diane Boland, 20 June 1978, folder 1, box 23, Mark Aarons Papers.

29 Report of the Interim National President to the Second National Conference of Women’s Action Alliance, held at the YWCA, Melbourne, 24–25 March, folder 4, box 23, Mark Aarons Papers.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 ‘Specific Interest Group Resolutions at the Conference’, in Social Security, Special Issue, 127. The recommendations were recorded in the proceedings, but were not debated or voted upon by the conference as a whole.

33 ‘Need for Family Policy’, The Canberra Times, 18 March 1979.

34 Professor R.J. Lawrence, Convenor, Form letter, IYC National Conference Follow-Up Group, series C2544 IYC, NAA. Crowe’s appointment was noted in ‘National Executive News’, Women’s Action Alliance Newsletter (Victorian branch), June 1979, 4.

35 The concept of a national family policy had also previously been discussed by the Council of Social Welfare Ministers in 1977. Marian Sawer, ‘The Battle for the Family: Family Policy in Australian Electoral Politics in the 1980s’, Australian Journal of Political Science 25, no. 1 (1990): 54.

36 ‘1979 – The International Year of the Child’, Women’s Action Alliance Newsletter (Victorian branch), September 1978, 6.

37 ‘I.Y.C. Issues’, Women’s Action Alliance Newsletter (Victorian branch), November 1979, 4.

38 Women Who Want to Be Women member Babette Francis provided an account of the split in Robyn Rowland (ed.), Women Who Do and Women Who Don't Join the Women's Movement (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 134–5.

39 Piccini, 147–8. On anti-abortion activists’ mobilisation in response to the McKenzie-Lamb Bill, see Arrow, The Seventies, 146.

40 Erica Millar, ‘Mourned Choices and Grievable Lives: The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Influence in Defining the Abortion Experience in Australia since the 1960s’, Gender & History 28, no. 2 (2016): 504.

41 On the influence of the North American movement’s tactics, including the use of the Declaration, see Piccini, 147–8.

42 Michelle Arrow, ‘Public Intimacies: The Royal Commission on Human Relationships 1974–1977’, in Acts of Love and Lust: Sexuality in Australia from 1945–2010, eds Lisa Featherstone, Rebecca Jennings and Robert Reynolds (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 27; House of Representatives Official Hansard, no. 37, 13 September 1973, Commonwealth of Australia, 951. The amendment was moved by Malcolm Fraser.

43 Piccini, 151.

44 Royal Commission on Human Relationships, Final Report (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1977), vol. 3, 150.

45 Patricia Judge, Federal Secretary of the National Right to Life Association, to Elizabeth Jeffries, Department of Social Security, 10 March 1978, Record of Meetings 1 and 2, series C2530, NAA.

46 Arrow, The Seventies, 214.

47 Patricia Judge, NRLA, to Helen L’Orange, Executive Director, IYC National Committee of NGOs, 10 October 1978, Record of Meetings 3 and 4, series C2530, NAA.

48 Declaration of the Rights of the Child Sub-Committee of the IYC National Committee of NGOs, Final report, December 1979, C2544, NAA.

49 IYC National Committee of NGOs, Final Report, 99.

50 ‘Specific Interest Group Resolutions at the Conference’, 129–30.

51 ‘Participants’ Views and Concerns’, Social Security, Special Issue, 124.

52 ‘Anti-Abortion Petitions Presented’, The Canberra Times, 28 August 1978, 3.

53 House of Representatives Official Hansard, no. 33, 15 August 1978, Commonwealth of Australia, 3. The petition was first presented to the House of Representatives on 15 August 1978. A search of the parliamentary database shows it was presented another twenty-five times in 1978 and sixteen times in 1979.

54 Gay Davidson, ‘The Abortion Debate: Vote in the House Mirrors the Public’s Changing Attitudes’, The Canberra Times, 27 March 1979, 2.

55 Anita Byrnes, ‘Lusher Motion’, Right to Choose 18 (February/March 1979): 3.

56 Karen Coleman, ‘The Politics of Abortion in Australia: Freedom, Church and State’, Feminist Review 29 (1988): 90.

57 Gay Davidson, ‘Abortion Debate Continues Today’, The Canberra Times, 22 March 1979, 1; ‘300 at Protest’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1979, 2.

58 Erica Millar, ‘“Too Many”: Anxious White Nationalism and the Biopolitics of Abortion’, Australian Feminist Studies 30, no. 83 (2015): 86.

59 House of Representatives Official Hansard, no. 12, 21 March 1979, Commonwealth of Australia, 969.

60 Ibid., 1003.

61 Coleman, 89–90.

62 Catherine Kevin, ‘Maternity and Freedom: Australian Feminist Encounters with the Reproductive Body’, Australian Feminist Studies 20, no. 46 (2005): 6.

63 Piccini, 178–9.

64 Ibid., 179; ‘New Rights Bill Seeks to Neutralise Abortion Issue’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 1982, 14.

65 The Australian Festival of Light, ‘Background Sheet’, c. 1976, Festival of Light (hereafter FoL) Papers, folder 2, Australian Queer Archives, Melbourne.

66 The Australian Festival of Light, ‘Background Sheet’.

67 Timothy Jones, ‘Australian Secularism, the Sexual Revolution and the Making of the New Christian Right’, Australian Historical Studies 52, no 3 (2021).

68 Ibid. On FoL’s eschewal of sectarianism, see also Stuart Piggin and Robert D. Linder, Attending to the National Soul: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1914–2014 (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2020), 339.

69 See, for example, David Furse-Roberts, ‘Keepers of the Flame: The Australian Festival of Light, 1973–1981’, Lucas: An Evangelical History Review 2, no. 2 (2010): especially 54–5 on FoL’s opposition to family law reform; Maxwell Edwards, ‘Moral Reform Organisations in Australia: A Political Response to the Sexual Revolution’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 1997), especially 223–35 on sex education; Kate Gleeson, ‘From Suck Magazine to Corporate Pedophilia. Feminism and Pornography – Remembering the Australian Way’, Women’s Studies International Forum 38 (2013): 88.

70 ‘Moral Crusader to Visit’, Canberra Times, 27 December 1977, 3.

71 Mary Warnock, ‘Whitehouse [née Hutcheson], (Constance) Mary (1910–2001), Schoolteacher and Campaigner’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last modified 1 September 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/76525 (accessed 26 February 2020).

72 Fred Nile, ‘Mary Whitehouse: The Caped Crusader’, Light, November 1978, 10–11.

73 ‘Abuse Alarming, Guilfoyle Says’, The Canberra Times, 20 January 1979, 7.

74 Festival of Light, ‘Child Care Not Child Abuse!’, FoL Papers, Australian Queer Archives, Melbourne.

75 For an extended discussion of the report, see Arrow, The Seventies, ch. 5.

76 ‘Report Has No Moral Authority – Cardinal’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 1977, 8.

77 Hugh Chilton, Evangelicals and the End of Christendom: Religion, Australia, and the Crises of the 1960s (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2020), 39.

78 Nile, 10.

79 ‘Charter for the Child: A Contribution to the 1979 International Year of the Child by the Australian Festival of Light, November 1978’, Light, November 1978, 5–8.

80 Gavin Harris and John Witte, ‘The First Sydney Mardi Gras: What Happened on the Night of 24–25 June 1978?’, Kings Cross Arts & Cultural Festival Inc., last modified 29 January 2018, https://kxacf.org.au/the-first-sydney-mardi-gras-what-happened-on-the-night-of-24-25-june-1978/ (accessed 27 February 2020).

81 ‘Whitehouse Seen as “Agent of Darkness”’, The Canberra Times, 3 September 1978, 1.

82 ‘Charges of Assault’, The Canberra Times, 21 September 1978, 3; ‘Five Arrested’, The Canberra Times, 22 September 1978, 3.

83 The tour left FoL with a deficit of $14,467 from a total budget of $79,000 for 1978. Alex Gilchrist, Secretary/Treasurer, Festival of Light, to Michael Glass, 16 March 1979, FoL Papers, Australian Queer Archives, Melbourne.

84 Graham Willett, Living out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000), 138–9.

85 Nile, 11.

86 ‘Which Are the Most Urgent National Issues?’, Light, February 1979, 10–11.

87 ‘Questionnaire on Federal Campaign Priorities’, Light, May 1979, 4.

88 ‘Editorial’, Light, May 1979, 2; ‘Questionnaire on Federal Campaign Priorities’, Light, May 1979, 4.

89 David Phillips, ‘No-Fault No-Justice Divorce under the Family Law Act’, Light, May 1979, 5–12.

90 On FoL’s campaigns around education, see for example Edwards, 223–6. On the Young, Gay and Proud controversy, see Angelides, 87–9.

91 Australian Festival of Light, Submission to the National Inquiry into Teacher Education, Festival of Light Australia Records, 1974–2007, MLMSS 10488, State Library of New South Wales. Extracts from the submission also appeared in ‘Teacher Education: National Enquiry’, Light, August 1979, 4.

92 ‘International Conference on Total Child-Care’, Light, August 1979, back cover.

93 ‘From Denmark – Freedom Fighter’, Light, May 1979, 13. For a discussion of the unsuccessful case, see Jonathan Zimmerman, Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 95–6.

94 ‘Dr. Isbister Wins Good Citizen’s Award’, Light, May 1979, back cover.