Richard and Ruby

I met Richard Neville in 1994. It wasn't a meeting he'd recollect. He was in Canberra to deliver the Ruby Hutchison Memorial Address at the National Press Club on 15 March. I was a young public servant, working for the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs. A bit starry-eyed. And he was a media star in a cream linen suit. Lanky, his deep fringe hid his forehead, emphasising his generous smile, disguising his critique of the 'sacred cow' of conspicuous consumption with wit and humour.

'Men and women are born free, ladies and gentleman,' he said, 'but today we are everywhere in chain stores.'

Last Sunday, Richard died. He was only 74. We have relived the founding of Oz Magazine, the court cases, the willingness to challenge the norms of the 1960s. For those of us who were too young to read Oz when it was first published, last year the University of Wollongong digitised it and, with Richard's blessing, made it available online for non-commercial purposes. Now we can read it and think about why it created the furore it did.

I, though, have been reliving that event at the Press Club. It turns out that the National Library of Australia (full disclosure: my employer) recorded the lecture. You can listen to it online. And there is Richard Neville's voice, his humour, his willingness to be a disruptor before 'disruption' was a thing. He argued for a 'Buy Nothing Day', saying that 'as long as we go on consuming it is the world that is going to die'. In less than an hour, he mashed up conspicuous consumerism, the Princess of Wales, Reeboks, Hey, Hey It's Saturday, the Body Shop, the Berlin Wall, poverty, wealth and cannabis.

Ruby Hutchison, after whom the lecture was named, was a disruptor too. Although if you compare photos of Ruby with her curled hair and cat's eye glasses with those of a young Richard Neville, it seems unlikely they would have anything in common. In 1954, she was the first woman to be elected to the West Australian Legislative Council. In her long parliamentary career, she argued for education, child welfare, and electoral reform. She was also a founder of the Australian Consumers' Association, publisher of Choice Magazine. When Choice Magazine was born in 1960 (three years before Oz), there was no consumer legislation as we know it today. Arguably, Ruby Hutchison's work helped to change Australian life as much as Richard's, paving the way for the passing of the Trade Practices Act in 1975. She died in 1974, a year before the legislation was enacted.

There is so much about the day at the Press Club that I've forgotten - but the recording of the lecture brings the memories back. Introducing Richard was the then Minister for Consumer Affairs, the Hon Jeannette McHugh MP. She launched a new resource for Australian school children, Consumer Power, the National Primary School Consumer Education Project. I sweated over that resource, working with colleagues in consumer affairs agencies across Australia and the ABC to produce a CD-rom, education kit and television series. There was a long evening in the State Library of South Australia, a few of us working on edits. I can see us hunched around a table in the reading room, searching the shelves in the children's section for references. What I can't see is what we were working on. Were we editing scripts, the education kit, the text for the CD-rom?

Consumer Power was distributed to every primary school in Australia. I still have a copy and there's one in the National Library too. But before we knew it, CD-roms were old technology, although the accompanying tv series was still being broadcast by the ABC in 2005.

I worked for the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs and its many incarnations until 2000. By then, it had changed shape significantly. It moved from under the umbrella of the Attorney-General's Department, eventually being absorbed into Treasury. But that's a story for another day and I wouldn't trust my memory to get the story right.

And it seems my memory is faulty in other ways too. For there was no cream linen suit. A photograph of Richard Neville published in The Canberra Times the next day, clearly shows him wearing a dark suit - and a tie covered in large white polkadots.

Richard Neville and Ruby Hutchison have both died. The Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs is possibly only remembered by those of us who worked there. But Choice and the Australian Consumer Association still exist. So too does the Ruby Hutchison Memorial Lecture. Supported by Choice and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, it is held on the eve of World Consumer Rights Day (15 March). And perhaps the creators of The Checkout, which has brought consumer education into the home, heard Richard Neville's Ruby Hutchison Memorial Address and are carrying the flame.

This post was written as part of the 2016 Sydney Story Factory Pen to Paper Challenge. I'm inspired by the work of Sydney Story Factory. I'd like to help them grow so that, one day, Martian Embassies will be all over this country. So during September I'm putting pen to paper - and hopefully rebooting my blog. If you enjoyed this post, please give whatever you can. Let's help the Sydney Story Factory grow.

Bookish Gifts for the Difficult to Buy For

I love a good 'best of' list and we've reached that time of year when it seems everyone (whoever she is) is sharing her favourites for 2014. I've been trying but I can't narrow it down to a manageable number - five becomes six becomes sixteen and 'best' becomes a nonsense.

So instead of a neverending story, here's a list of books you might buy for the difficult to buy for, drawn from my reading this year. It's not too late to pop into your local bookshop.


The world traveller you wish would come home
We all have one – the family member who makes their way somewhere else in the world and you wish you could tempt them home. Send them Nigel Featherstone’s novella, The Beach Volcano. It will remind your traveller of hot coastal nights, wintery Tasmanian days, and the powerful ties of family that never ever let go. It’s a slim volume, which means it will be cheaper to post than the latest volume of Thomas Keneally’s Australians series.

The family historian
 I will love Lloyd Jones forever for writing Mr Pip, a gutwrenching ode to the power of literature in the most unlikely place but his recent memoir, A History of Silence. A story of Christchurch as it struggles to heal after the earthquakes, it is also the story of writing across the silences in a family’s history to reveal the heartbreak at its core. It’s sad but exquisite – and anyone interested in family history will love sharing the research process with Lloyd Jones.

The new arrival
It's baby's first Christmas and baby already has everything: stuffed toys, rattles he can't hold, more clothes than anyone could possibly wear. The answer? Australia's children's classic, Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek. It only has just over 100 words but it will last for years. It will be one of the first books read to baby, read with baby and read by baby. And one day, it will be the first book baby will read to another new baby.

The 'creative'
I struggle with 'creative' being used as a noun but I'm ignoring that because 'entrepreneur' or 'thought leader' seemed even worse. This is the person in your life who wants to make a living out of their passion, and who may or may not work in the arts or hospitality or museums or online or in design (fashion, graphic) or who writes or draws or makes music or theatre around the edges of their day job. Encourage them to follow the dream and have an inspired, glossy 2015 with a subscription to Renegade Collective.

The struggling reader
You know that if she could just make it to the end of the book, she would fall in love with reading for the rest of her life. But books have so many words, she's terrified. Give her The 13 Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, a book (and sequels) where words and pictures combine to reveal the powerful effects of imagination on the lives to Andy and Terry, who don't have very long to finish writing and drawing their next book.

The sister or bff
Anita Heiss' Tiddas is my pick in this category this year - and I've already gifted it to one of my sisters. It offers best friends, book talk, secrets, messy lives and one of the most engaging depictions of Brisbane I've ever read. Made me want to hop on the plane with Tiddas as my guidebook. Perfect for book clubs too, it challenges how Indigenous Australians are depicted in much of our fiction.

The political junkie
You don't agree with their politics. You don't know what political memoirs they have recently read. And sometimes they take their politics so damn seriously. Lighten them up with Behind the Lines; The Best Political Cartoons of 2014, published by the National Museum of Australia.

The lover of tales
Kate Forsyth writes across genres but until this year I hadn’t read any of her work. Then I read Bitter Greens, her reimagining of Rapunzel, and followed it quickly with The Wild Girl, a novel based on the story of Dortchen Wild who lived next door to the Brothers Grimm and was the teller of many of the tales they made famous. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, its romantic and passionate and heartbreaking – and it puts a wonderful woman back into the picture.

The Rebus fan
He says he loves crime but only ever talks about Rebus. Introduce him to Cormoran Strike, a wounded war veteran and his sidekick Robin (couldn't help myself). Strke is the creation of JK Rowling's alter ego, Robert Galbraith, and in his first outing, The Cuckoo's Calling, I fell hard. He's a tortured soul (not unlike Rebus), the streets of London leap off the page, the crime is intriguing, and Robin holds Strike and the book together. The second book in the series, The Silkworm, is on my summer reading list.


The dreamer
Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a dream of a book for the dreamer in all of us. A contemporary fairytale, it’s a story about a young reader for readers everywhere. As the narrator says: ''I liked myths. They weren't adults' stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.'' Buy a copy for your dreamer and one for yourself as well.