Sigrid Thornton and Peter Phelps in The Lighthorsemen, 1987. Image: IMDB
Last week Ita Buttrose came out fighting for the ABC she now chairs. It was pungent and inspiring.
‘In a frank conversation with the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher, yesterday, I said the raid, in its very public form and in the sweeping nature of the information sought, was clearly designed to intimidate,’ Buttrose said.
The Minister, Paul Fletcher, refused to assure Ms Buttrose this will not happen again. She supported the role of whistleblowers, and concluded
‘As ABC Chair, I will fight any attempts to muzzle the national broadcaster or interfere with its obligations to the Australian public.’
Three days later she was formally honoured by the Governor General as a Companion in the Order of Australia, the highest rank in the system. The timing is a coincidence, but it does reflect the passion she has brought to public life and the inner values of our culture.
She was joined by Hugh Jackman, as an actor and for his commitment to poverty eradication. In case anyone saw the government’s guiding hand in any of this, Kevin Rudd is a Companion as well.
Sigrid Thornton is now an Officer in the Order, again as an actor and for her ‘commitment to various arts organisations.’ That is a very condensed statement which includes a long career as a lead actress in television and film, work wth groups like World Vision, membership of agency boards and campaigns to defend Australian stories and Australian voices.
The modest but determined director, cinematographer, editor and former President of the Australian Director’s Guild Ray Argall will wear his honour lightly. He too is a man of strong convictions. His work extends to the general arts industry, as he is the Asia Pacific rep for the Australian Coalition for Cultural Diversity (ACCD).
Suzanne Baker honoured
Suzanne Baker leads off the screen people in the Members category, and heads that special group of people given a public presence who are mostly unknown for younger generations, but pioneered deep strands and directions in our society. Born accidentally in the UK in 1939 to Antipodean parents, she followed her step-father to New York when he ran the Fairfax office. She started in television at NBC, came back to the ABC, bounded off again to Thames TV in the UK, and went into print at the Sydney Morning Herald when she rebuilt the traditional women’s section into something broader and less condescending to women.
As the State Library of NSW remembers, ‘She was a founding member of the Media Women’s Action Group, established in Sydney in 1972 to collect and analyse evidence of discrimination against women in the media.
She became the first woman producer in the federal government’s documentary apparatus when she was employed by Film Australia in 1974, and converted that pioneering pleasure into something global – she won the first Academy Award by an Australian women for the animation film made with Bruce Petty, Leisure.
She went on to produce the documentary series, The Human Face of China, and a ten-episode drama series about one family in the labour movement, Land of Hope in 1983. She tried to get a couple of features up, and then called the business quits. to re-emerge with a history degree, a book about the history of Musica Viva which is heading to be a film, and ‘Due Recognition’, a feminist personal and family history.
Her first film is called On Being a Sheila, a 57 minute special about the role of women broadcast on Channel Nine on Saturday April 3rd 1965 at 8.30.
She is joined by Eric Bana (honoured with Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for ‘significant service to the performing arts, and to charitable organisations’), and sports journalist Ken Sutcliffe. Less in the public eye is producer Kerry Heysen-Hicks who has worked closely with her husband Scott Hicks for nearly forty years both here and the US while developing a full life with horses and winemaking. Dr Fiona Cochrane is a GP with a strong interest in women’s health and a redoubtable maker of low budget socially conscious documentaries.
