26 May

Speculation starts about who will be appointed the next Governor-General and how the Prime Minister should go about deciding who is to fill the job by using a broader selection and vetting process involving consultation with other people. There were calls for a woman to be appointed to the job to aid national healing after the Hollingworth appointment. However, there not many suggestions in the national media about who a suitable female Governor-General might be. Most of the names were recycled from the lead-up to the 2001 appointment of Dr Hollingworth including Jocelyn Newman, Lowitja O’Donoghue, Margaret Jackson and Fiona Stanley. The only known criterion applied by the Prime Minister is that the appointee should be a supporter of the monarchy, which narrows the field.
WfaAR considers that it is inappropriate to automatically turn to women to fill high public office when there is a crisis or if the position is undesirable and/or tainted. Women should be appointed to such jobs without qualification and in any circumstances. WfaAR notes that male appointee, Sir Zelman Cowen, was well able to carry out the role of rebuilding the office of Governor-General after the controversy surrounding his predecessor, Sir John Kerr, and the divisiveness that followed in the 1970s.