When a woman has her own magazine and TV network, she doesn’t really need to go looking for people to interview her. So securing Oprah Winfrey for an interview – any interview – has proved to be harder than Hillary Clinton or Crown Princess Mary combined. This month, we finally cracked it as she prepares to return to Australia in December. And as it turns out, while there were a few minor hurdles such as a time zone difference, talking to one of the best loved women on the planet was remarkably painless.
As I’ve said before, it is common for celebrities big and small to make all sorts of demands on magazines. Often it is for copy or picture approval, demands for sponsor mentions and payment. Then there are the questions/subjects which are off limits. Yet it won’t surprise you to know that this didn’t happen with Oprah, who was predictably candid in this revealing interview. I won’t spoil it for you, but our journalist Caroline Overington has done a brilliant job, especially since readers may have wrongly thought everything that could be said about Oprah has been.
It is especially fitting to have this cover for the announcement of our 2015 list of the most powerful women in Australia, as Oprah regularly tops global lists.
Our list serves as a way to bring you stories about women who for the most part go under the radar. Many of them are business leaders, philanthropists or political figures who are overshadowed by either the men who dominate these fields or our human tendency to follow the lives of a celebrity over a philanthropist.
In total, 32 per cent of the Power List is made up of businesswomen, 15 per cent from the public service and 13 per cent from the media. Another interesting titbit for ambitious women living in rural or regional Australia is that 61 per cent of the list did not grow up in Sydney or Melbourne.
However, so fickle is political power in Australia, at the time of writing, Tony Abbott was being ousted by rival Malcolm Turnbull, which immediately shifted the balance of power at the very top of our Power List.
When our independent panel of judges sat together last month to compile the 2015 The Australian Women’s Weekly/CPA Australia Power List, they voted narrowly in favour of Mr Abbott’s Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, as the most powerful woman of the past calendar year, with the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop slipping into second place.
Yet, as we later witnessed, Ms Bishop’s role in backing Mr Turnbull proved instrumental in helping to overthrow another sitting Prime Minister and, as a result, his formidable Chief of Staff.
So while the Power List has been overrun by events, it is an opportunity to pay tribute to Ms Credlin’s extraordinary career, from her early years in a country town to the highest office in the land.
Labor’s Deputy Leader Tanya Plibersek made it into the number three position this year and, as we noted, there is only an election between positions one and three.
The other notable entrant to the Power List is the previously unknown Rosie Batty, for her tireless campaign to prevent family violence. An extract from her new book, which was written in collaboration with The Weekly’s Executive Editor Bryce Corbett, is also in this month’s issue, and for the first time it details the day her son Luke was murdered by his mentally ill father.
Coincidentally, when we popped into South Australia to feature the love story of former Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja and her husband, former Liberal adviser Ian Smith, we also encountered Rosie, who had stopped over on her way to give a speech in Adelaide. It can feel like a very small world at The Weekly, but certainly in 2015 all roads seem to lead to Rosie.
Finally, this month I would like to congratulate all the winners of our The Australian Women’s Weekly Qantas scholarship fund for young women. I would especially like to single out our joint winners Genevieve Clay-Smith, 27, of NSW, and Marita Cheng, 26, of Victoria.
The judges found it too hard to separate Genevieve’s program to help students with intellectual difficulties make great films from Marita’s space-age invention to help people with their mobility. So, in the end our generous sponsor Qantas came to the rescue with extra prize money.
Well done to all nine of the young women whom we have labelled as our Women of the Future and we look forward to following your progress in the years to come.
