Leigh Sales and Julia Gillard: A Podcast of One's Own Live
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What happens is, as a woman, if you're made to feel like from the start that things aren't designed for you, there's not an easily accessible toilet, you're not wearing the right clothes for the microphone, what that does, and also your appearance, is it dents your confidence a little bit and it makes just that little bit harder for you to go out there and perform. It just takes a little bit of a withdrawal from the bank.

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of a podcast of one's own. We recently held our first live podcast recording event in Australia in front of an incredible crowd at the Australian National University in Canberra, which is home to the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. At

the event I had the great pleasure of interviewing one of Australia's most respected journalists Lee Sales. It was huge fun for me to turn the tables and interview a journalist and of course Lee is a very well-known journalist as the long-running host of the ABC 730 program and she now anchors Australian Story and acts as a mentor and host on the hit show The Assembly.

I love chatting to Lee about what drew her to journalism, how she prepared for those Prime Ministerial interviews on 7.30, I know all about those, and why she knew it was time to step away from the program. I hope you enjoy this episode. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Lee. I'm really looking forward to this evening and to getting you back for all those 7.30 reports. I knew this was going to happen. She was nice as pie on the phone in the prep and I thought she's going to come in like a viper. LAUGHTER

Well, actually, I'm doing something different. I'm lulling you into a false sense of security and then I'm keeping the hard questions for later on. Do you recognise that technique? Another very valid technique. Yes, okay. So hopefully you're ready for this, but let me go easy on you at the start. I'm just going to take you back to your childhood, to the very beginning. You grew up in Brisbane. Just tell us a little bit about your childhood in the Sunshine State. Look, it was one of those childhoods that

I mean, I assume some people get them now, but it feels like a bit of a product of its era in the 1970s and 80s where, you know, we were told after breakfast, go and get your bike and get out of the house and just come home before the sun goes down. And you had a lot of freedom and liberty and

And my best friend Mandy lived around the corner. And so we were always on our bikes and having sleepovers and going down to the river and going to netball training and just all that kind of great stuff. So, yeah, I have very fond memories of it.

And what was the pathway from that childhood, having fun with your friends, sort of safe environment, able to get out and about, to wanting to study and go into journalism? What was the thought process? So I went to Ball Hill State School and then Aspley State High School. I'm a big believer in the power of public education. And I remember very distinctly in grade three, I had a teacher called Mrs Kantarouti and we did this creative writing assignment and

and she said, well, yours is so good, you can go and read it to the grade fours. And I just – I always loved reading and I really loved writing and I wanted to do something that involved, you know, that. But that wasn't really something that in, you know, the circles I grew up in that you considered it a job, right, because you needed something that earned a living and that was safe and reliable. And so –

And I kind of looked around and thought, all right, well, what's in that ballpark? And journalism seemed like it was the thing. And in fact, initially I applied – I did journalism at uni and then I applied for the cadetship at the Courier Mail, which I didn't get. And then I got a kind of very junior entry-level job at Channel 9 and so I kind of went into it there and then, you know, went off in that path. But I still do feel a little bit like –

Like, even though I have written books, it's all been nonfiction. I feel a little bit like eight-year-old Lee. You know, if I was to drop dead tomorrow, probably the only thing I feel like I'd be – well, there'd be many things, obviously, I'd be sad about. But I definitely feel like, oh, I never did get around to writing that novel, you know, which is what I kind of –

what started off the path? Well, I've taken two things from that answer. Number one, we should be looking forward to Lee Sales' The Great Australian Novel in the years to come. And number two, that's another thing to hold against Murdoch newspapers that they didn't offer you a cadetship. Like, that is not right. LAUGHTER

Now, see, I'm getting more scared of you because you've already demonstrated the most important skill in a good interviewer, which is listening. So she's not reading down a pre-prepared list of questions. She's responded to what I just said. And so now I know I'm in scary hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

And during childhood, going to journalism, how would you say your early views about gender were formed, your feminism was formed? Was it right back in school days, seeing that the boys got treated differently to the girls, or was it in newsrooms? What was it like? I think it was...

Mostly, to be honest, because my father was in the army, so he was away a lot and my grandmother lived with us. And so my mother and my grandmother were both very strong women. My grandmother had had a fairly difficult life, again, kind of typical of that era, and

And there was kind of – there was never any sense whatsoever in the household that women couldn't do whatever they wanted to do. And so that didn't really even strike me as kind of anything. In fact, mum used to say she was a feminist and I used to say, oh, I'm not a feminist. I hate the word feminist because I didn't – you know, I kind of associated it with –

sounds terrible, but like hairy armpits and hating men and, you know, stuff like this. And so it's only as an adult that I kind of realised, you know, I look back to that era when I was a child and it's fairly recent history that if you worked for the Australian Public Service, you're expected to give up your job, you know, if you got married. And so that was the era that, you know, my mother had me and my brother in. And so...

It's really interesting that I didn't even see it as an issue really because my mother and my grandmother were kind of such strong-willed women. And then when I got into the workplace, definitely, you know, a friend of mine said to me recently –

Because journalism kind of, I guess, was heavily dominated by men in that era, it rewarded women of a certain personality type. So you kind of had to be strong and forthright and hold your own with the boys to be able to kind of move ahead if you wanted

didn't have that personality type, you were going to kind of be weeded out or fall by the wayside or not kind of like the job. And I guess luckily for me, my personality type allowed me to kind of, you know, fit in with the guys, I suppose. But certainly there's things now, of course, that I look back on that seemed at the time kind of unremarkable.

Because it was just par for the course. And now I look back and just go, oh my God, I can't believe that things like that kind of happened. So yeah, I think I was just very lucky in that I had a very strong female-led environment that I grew up in.

And can you give us some examples of the kinds of things you look back on now? I mean, your journalism career, you started at Channel 9 on the Extra show and went to the ABC and then you were in Washington and it was a period where you needed to report on wars like the war... I'm throwing my notes away now. I think that's getting a little too confident, isn't it? LAUGHTER

like the war in Iraq. So, you know, you had a career that was clearly building and some very serious reporting to do. But, you know, what kind of thing do you look back on now in that culture? Was it appearance focused because you're a woman on camera or was it that it was a sort of, you know, hard drinking, devil may care kind of culture? Probably all of the above. I mean, I was never much into the big drinking culture, but...

Luckily for me, in the era when I first started doing – I was doing state politics in New South Wales, I didn't have children, so I didn't have to go racing, you know, home to try to juggle everything. So I was a bit lucky in that regard. But the things, strangely, that stick in my mind are mostly just minor things. Like I remember the first federal election that I hosted in 2016, asking one of the executives on it, say, you know, what happens if I need to go to the toilet? And he replied –

Kerry never needed to go to the toilet. And I didn't say it, but I was thinking like, well, maybe Kerry never had a period. Call me crazy. Yeah.

So, just little things like that sometimes where things were kind of – I mean, one of my pet hates and Annabelle Crabb shares this too is we don't like a lapel microphone because we feel like they're designed by men for men. And often I've show up at events. I mean, this will happen to you a million times. And I'll be wearing a dress or something or not have a jacket or I'll have something on that's too floppy and –

the person will kind of look me up and down as if I'm a bit of an inconvenience, like, oh, sort of like, oh, well, we need to clip this on. Or the other week I got asked could I take my earrings off and I said no. And, you know, I felt kind of rude and awkward but I also felt like I don't want to take my earrings off. I put thought into what earrings I'm wearing this morning and it annoys me that the gear is designed differently

for a man to wear. Hence why I always ask for a handheld mic. And very kindly at ANU, when I walked in, they said, what kind of a mic would you like? Which is much better because of course, what happens is as a woman, if you're made to feel like from the start that things aren't designed for you, there's not an easily accessible toilet, you're not wearing the right

clothes for the microphone what that does and also your appearance is it dents your confidence a little bit and it makes just that little bit harder for you to go out there um and perform it just like it takes a little bit of a withdrawal from the bank so I know they're all kind of minor things but they are like just little reminders that the space is not created for women I've gone for the Madonna mic but there will be no there will be no singing later um I

And you've kept your earrings on, I notice. And I've kept my earrings on. One thing I do notice about mic culture between Australia and the UK is in the UK, if you go to a TV studio, and very, very frequently the person doing the sound is a man, like I'd say disproportionately men. If you go to a UK TV studio, there's this very rare

respectful, would you like to clip it on yourself for? And, you know, all of this sort of tentative stuff. Here in Australia, like I used to do Channel 9 every week with Tony Abbott and you'd literally walk on and a man you'd never met before was unzipping the back of your dress to put the mic pack on the back of your bra. So true. And your name would be, you know, and they just never even thought twice about it.

So true. And I won't ask you to weigh in on this because maybe you don't want to share, you know, the state of your underwear. But, like, I'm always also just going, oh, God, I'm wearing the massive granny pants today or I'm wearing the, like, worst bra that's, like, you know, looked pretty nice in pound savers in 1983 but it's a bit grey and stretched now. Okay. I think we need to move on. LAUGHTER

I want to take you now, you mentioned Kerry O'Brien who of course did the 7.30 report for a long, long period of time. He was the first 7.30 report interview I did as Prime Minister on the first day I was Prime Minister and delivered the line, "A good day for redheads."

And then you took over the 7.30 report for a long period. Now, the received wisdom in politics back then was the 7.30 report, Laurie Oakes on Channel 9 on a Sunday morning. These were the make or break.

must see political interviews and you know if you're in say an election campaign and you went on one of them and you made a big gaffe that would run for days and days and equally if you're in the midst of a political scandal and you put yourself in front of Kerry O'Brien or Laurie Oakes and you stood up and you answered every question people would say to themselves in the press gallery well that scandal's at an end you know they've they've sealed it because she survived the interview

Did you see your role in those terms? Like this is the make or break interview on Australian television? I honestly didn't really think through that frame. The frame I felt like I always...

tried to bring to it is what does the average fair-minded person at home want me to ask? Because I feel like the Australian taxpayer pays my salary. I'm there to represent them. I'm not there to represent my own opinions, my own thoughts. I'm there to ask something that someone in their lounge room at home is going to go, oh, yeah, I want to know the answer to that. And to kind of sit forward and to feel like I'm there to

So I didn't ever go into it thinking, well, it's a huge, Julia's career's on the line tonight or Kevin's career's on the line or whoever it was. I would just think, what does the person at home want me to ask them tonight? And how much sort of flow is there in the interviews? I mean, my media team would say to me when I was prime minister and, you know, if I was going to go do 7.30 report with you, they'd say,

They'd say something like, Lee really hopped into Abbott last week when he was on 7.30, so she's got no option but to go really hard at you tonight. Like, she'll have to go hard. Did you see it like that? Did the ABC see it like that, that unless there was a comparable level of aggression in both interviews, that people would say it's not being unbiased? No, and I think...

I mean, I feel incredibly fortunate that never in the time that I did that job did anyone in ABC management go, you went pretty hard on Abbott last week or you went pretty hard on Julie last week. You've got to – you know, no one ever interfered in kind of what I was doing. I'd work with my executive producer to say, you know, what about this, what about that. But the reality is sometimes –

things are going kind of a bit better for one person than the other and it's hard to give them a tricky interview. The times when it would be hardest would be when there would be a change of prime minister because the nature of when somebody starts a new job is that there's not a lot yet to kind of quiz them on and you're just looking for a big picture kind of scene setter.

which, of course, you then refer to ever after in every interview. You said at this date, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what I would be hoping for, I would just be going into every individual encounter not thinking, well, I did this with someone the other day, so therefore I have to do this tonight. It would always be this is –

what I think the individual encounter tonight, you know, needs to be about. And then within that, you're thinking through the kind of stuff you said at the top, like, okay, well, is it better to start with just like a punch to the nose just to kind of wake everyone up? Is it better to ask an easy question now

to give a sense of security? Or is it better to ask a question because say someone's in the middle of a crisis, like I remember, for example, the night Barnaby Joyce came on when the Telegraph ran the story that his girlfriend was pregnant. Bundle of Joyce, I think the line was. Yeah, yeah.

You possibly look a bit inhumane to go off the top with a really, you know, kind of pointed personal question. And also you know that the other party is probably having one of the worst days of their life, so you maybe ask something a little more gentle before you get to the harder content. But I think the tricky thing with the prime ministerial interviews is...

It's such an interesting and hard job and I have a lot of respect for all the people that I've met who've done it because you kind of, in my job, had a box seat to the level of difficulty and the hard, you know, immense hard work that's in there. But the reality is, other than in my view treasurer, I don't think there's any portfolio that you can do in government that

that prepares you to do the kind of interview that you do on 7.30 when you're the Prime Minister. And the reason is, other than Treasury, there's no portfolio where you can be asked a question on any subject whatsoever.

And so what happens when the Prime Minister comes in for an interview, usually I had been keeping a file running for months and then I go through it and I go, all right, well, it's my chance to ask about that foreign policy thing that we never got to ask about or about this economic thing or what about that health thing or the story of the days, this school thing. Oh, they've got that gaffe or their colleagues after them or whatever the thing is. And so the Prime Minister shows up who's most

most of the time, and the news never reflects this, most of the time they're getting stuff done. Legislation's going through parliament. 90% of what they're doing is actually occurring and things are running smoothly. But the nature of the media is that it focuses on the things that aren't running smoothly. And so I would feel like what happens is the prime ministers come in and then they just get box and dice from me on eight different subjects because it's your one chance to go through all of that stuff. And I think with the other portfolios, say if you've

you've got health or something, maybe you've made a big announcement and you come in and half the interview is on your big positive announcement and then the other half is on problems. The prime ministerial interviews, it's almost always 100% about problems and every time they come on, it's always about problems. And so over time, I think, it becomes –

just difficult because, you know, it feels like they're always getting a hard time. And I think it's socially awkward. I mean, I don't know if you felt like that, but for me, with all of them, because I'm not a naturally, I don't love conflict and I would never, if I was in reality with a person, I would never, if you said something, I'd never go, well, Julia, at a party three years ago, you actually said something.

You said you love chocolate mousse. You would never behave in that way in a social interaction. And so in that television sense, it's not a social interaction. It's a different thing, but it's not any less socially awkward. So for me, I used to feel like it really would take a fair bit of me psyching myself up, which would be me reminding myself I'm here not to be friends with that person. I'm here to ask what someone at home wants them to be asked. ♪

I'm Professor Michelle Ryan and I'm the Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University.

Julia Gillard founded the Institute with a simple mission: to address the root causes of gender inequality and create safe, fair and equitable cultures where all people thrive. To do that, we bring together world-leading research, practice and advocacy, working with governments, NGOs, non-profits, businesses and passionate individuals to connect those with the expertise on what works to advance gender equality with those in a position to make lasting change.

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I'm going to ask you if you used to do any special preparation for an interview with me compared, for example, with Tony Abbott. Everyone's got their own little things that you kind of learn about. So Tony would leave long pauses. He was quite easy to interrupt. So you've got that level of stuff. You've got that level of kind of prep. Yeah.

But mostly it was things like... So when you became the Prime Minister, I had a short red bob and then you became the Prime Minister and you had a short red bob. And...

So I felt like we really look quite a lot alike. And so I ended up making my hair lighter and grew it longer to try to make us look a bit different. And I would sometimes ring your press secretary and go, which I should have done today, and say, what colour is Julia wearing? LAUGHTER

to try to be ensuring that we didn't both show up in a navy suit with red bobs looking, you know, like twins. I remember one time at the gym, because most people don't follow politics or media that closely, so they see someone like us and they go, familiar person, on the TV, red hair. I remember one time at the gym, I walked past and I go, oh my God, it's Julia Gillard. So yeah, I'm like Tony where I didn't feel such the need to differentiate my appearance. LAUGHTER

Whereas I'm happily wandering around the country and people say to me, oh, you do that podcast with Annabelle Crabbe? And I'm like, yes, I do. Very happy to own it.

Now, you moved away from the 7.30 report, which is viewed as, you know, in terms of the prestige gigs in Australian politics and Australian political media, I should say. It's right up there. You know, when did you know it was time? What made you make that decision? It's a big job to walk away from. It was a big job to walk away from. Yeah.

A few things. One was right from the start, I never wanted to be someone that overstayed their welcome and that behind my back everyone was saying, oh, well, you know, she's kind of stale, we've had enough of her, blah, blah, blah. I always wanted to leave when people were like, oh, but why are you leaving, you know, blah, blah, blah. So that was part of it.

And I do think those jobs benefit from – they obviously benefit from experience but they also benefit from freshness and from someone that's, you know, not tired and it is tiring. One of the things that I –

you know, moments where I felt like I'm done was I had this interview with Tom Hanks and Tom Hanks, I know he'd been on my wishlist for years and years. He's one of the great interviewees in the world because he's a wonderful raconteur. He's a very, you don't have to do much with him. You just give him an underarm bowl and he kind of runs with it and tells funny anecdotes and stuff.

And it was on a Saturday and I remember I woke up on the Saturday morning and I felt really grumpy because I thought, oh God, I've got to go to work and do this Tom Hanks interview. And I remember thinking, wow, when you think that it's a great imposition on you to have to go and interview one of the great talents of the world, that people would give money to have an hour of his time, you need to let somebody else have that opportunity.

And so, you know, that was one of them. But also just along with 7.30, I've been a frontline news journalist for, you know, 30 years. And I think just the weight of like sad stories gets hard over time to just carry and carry

I just found it harder to keep a hold on emotions, both sadness. I'd often have to ask for things to get turned down so I didn't have to hear them because I felt like I won't be able to keep hosting.

after I watched that or also sometimes anger or irritation in an interview if I felt like the person was dodging something or had made a kind of egregious error that they weren't taking responsibility for that it hurt people. I would feel, you know, I won't go into who it was but I remember one time feeling like I wanted to throw the pen at the screen, the person was in the screen. Surely you can tell us who that was. Just give us the initials. LAUGHTER

As exciting a moment as that would have been on national television. I did go out. I burst into tears when I left from just like frustration and upset over it. And I just thought, yeah, I've just got to go. I need a rest from doing that. And...

So much has changed for you personally in the years since, the things you're doing, but so much has changed in media in the years since. And I think a crowd like this, I'm sure there are many people who follow events in the news very closely. They've been following what's been happening.

in the global news this year. And whilst it's not quite at the extreme that you're describing that you felt at the end of 7.30, I think many of us feel like we're walking around with a news burden, a news weight on our shoulders. Do you see it like that? What's your take on media today and how we're interacting with it? Yeah, I think the public, there's a thing that we call news avoidance, which is a lot of people, and I include myself among them,

You're hesitant to watch the news. You don't want to feel bad. You feel powerless. It makes you feel anxious all the time. And so people are choosing to kind of switch off rather than immerse in it. So one thing I did want to say to people that I often kind of at the moment say to rooms full of people is, especially women, because this is affecting women more than men, is

If you are somebody who feels anxious when you see the news, what you need to keep in mind is –

The nature of the news, as I kind of said before when we were talking about interviewing the Prime Minister, it focuses on the negative and the aberration basically. So when I was at university, we learned that when we were talking about the definition of news, the definition of news is 99 helicopters might fly safely today but one crashes and the one that crashes is the one that makes the news. Now, sometimes people go, well, why can't you just focus on the 99 that fly safely?

Like coroners, journalists, you have to look at the things that are going wrong because there might be lessons there that stop more things from going wrong. So to keep using the helicopter example, maybe there's a problem with pilot training. Maybe there's a faulty part that's going into a heap of helicopters. Maybe the flight path over that region has a big problem, a blind spot with it or something. Very, very unlikely to be DEI policies. Yeah. So true. Yeah.

We can pretty much rule out that correlation, I think. So you have to look at it because maybe there's a lesson there and something that could prevent further tragedy. So when I was a youngster, and that would happen, you might only see the average person, that vision of the helicopter crashing one time that day and it'd be on the six o'clock evening television news.

But now because of social media, you might see that helicopter crashing maybe 50 times a day when you open Instagram or the ABC News website or whatever you're looking at. Now our brains, which are hardwired to focus on risk and threats, they're not sophisticated enough to say to themselves, oh, that's the same helicopter we've seen 50 times. It feels to your brain in your subconscious like 50 helicopters, right?

And so suddenly you start feeling like helicopters are unsafe, even though helicopters aren't unsafe. And so what you need to remind yourself when you see something on the news, like somebody's died of a vaccine side effect, somebody's died of COVID, there's been a terrorist attack in a cafe in Sydney, there's been a shooting in a shopping centre.

and makes you feel anxious and unsettled, of course, naturally, you feel like, oh, I'm going to be scared if I've got to go to a big shopping centre or I don't want to go on a plane or I don't want to get a vaccine or whatever it is. Remind yourself that the mere fact you're seeing it on the news means it is the least likely thing to happen to you. That's why it's on the news. And you'll find that will help quite a bit with your anxiety. Yeah, I think they're very wise words. Thank you. Now, you're someone who's

thought deeply and written beautifully about life's chances, about the things that can happen on any ordinary day, a day that starts like any other. Can you talk to us about your own experiences that led to you writing that very beautiful book? So partly it was just many years of being in the news and that that is a staple of the news people, you know, that that happens to. And again, the nature of the news is it...

It's like a parade of those moments of the worst days of people's lives one after the other. And every now and again, like say on a show like Australian Story, you might see somebody later and what happened to them next after that. But mostly you see this person's children were killed by a drunk driver and then you never hear anything ever again. And so in your mind, they stay frozen as that person that you saw at this moment of immense pain.

tragedy and grief. And so there were two stories at the end of 2014 that really kind of smacked me a bit. One was the Lindt Cafe siege because it just felt so – I mean, I'm sure everyone remembers it just felt so visceral and like you could have so easily been in there yourself. And then the other one was Philip Hughes, the cricketer getting hit in the head with the ball, which also really rattled the community, you know, very badly.

And they just made me feel kind of like vulnerable and I felt like I'd had, as I said, you know, such a nice childhood and like, oh, one day my number's going to be up and so on. And I just, I had a rolling series of things in my personal life that were, you know, bad all at once. I had a very bad birth of my second child and his life was gravely endangered. Mine was gravely endangered. I was

very sick for a while afterwards. My marriage broke down. My other child was unwell. There's a whole lot of things that kind of coalesced that caused me to feel gigantically unsafe. And so I started writing. Now, at the time, I didn't really know. This is all now in hindsight that I know what I was doing. At the time, I didn't. At the time, I was just

it's survival mode basically. And I was just applying what's in my toolkit. My toolkit is trying to intellectualize everything, explain it, understand it, research it, be a good girly swat, get to the bottom of what it is, understand how our brains work and, you know, bingo, now I'm feeling better. Now, you know,

a decade on, I realised what I was doing was trying to impose control over stuff that is uncontrollable and it's really uncomfortable to think about, which is that,

you know even in the best case scenario of a great life you're still dying at the end of it there's no way around that it's very unpleasant truth um and you know there'll be people in this room who will have had already very unfortunate things happen to them and there'll be people that this might be one of the last days of your life that you consider to be oh that was in my old life my normal life whatever like it's just a very uncomfortable you know fact of life um

And I think what I was looking for was someone to like pat me on the arm and go, it's all right, all your bad things have happened to you. It's all smooth sailing from here, you know. I didn't know I was looking for that, but I think that was what I was looking for. What...

Writing that book did help me do and through meeting some of the people in it was to understand you actually can't control these things but that humans are actually amazing and that things you think you would never cope with. If I were in the Link Cafe or if my son died in a cricket accident or whatever, I wouldn't cope with that. I wouldn't be able to go on. If I lost all my limbs, I wouldn't be able to manage that.

people do somehow go on. And I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying they're, you know, as happy as they used to be or whatever. But amazingly, you know, joy and sorrow can kind of coexist. It's like the fundamental human condition. One of the people in that book was a man, I'm not sure if you've met Julia, called Walter Mickack, who his wife and his two little girls, who were six and three at the time, were murdered in the Port Arthur massacre.

And he, of the various people that I spoke to, he was the person I was most scared to meet because that was a big story when I was a young reporter. The images of him around that time are really seared in my head. The night before I met him, I had this dream that he arrived in a wheelchair and he was like, had this decaying body. And so like my subconscious felt like, clearly, how is this person going on?

And then I met Walter and, of course, he carries like huge pain but also he has a good productive life. He's a pharmacist. He lives in a country town. In fact, next month I'm going to his wedding. Oh. And so somebody like that, you kind of meet and you go, man, if human beings can endure that –

you know, people can get on and, you know, I'll be able to kind of, it'll suck, but I'll kind of manage. And so that's, in the end, I felt like, geez, I'd love the reassurance, nothing bad will ever happen to me ever again. But I kind of feel more like, well, I know it will at some point and I just somehow I'll muddle on like everyone does.

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You would have talked to people when you did the book and thought yourself about family, community, the bonds that are between people. And you, I think, and Annabelle Crabby, you're actually building your own community through your podcast, through Chat 10 Look

Can you talk to us, I'm sure there are many in the audience who love, love, love your podcast. Can you talk to us about what gave you the idea for that format for the podcast and that title? But have you been very surprised by the kind of community that

that it's creating and people, podcasts, listeners and lovers getting together and being chatters together. Yeah, it's been amazing. And we, again, I guess a bit like my book, it didn't, what the end result was, wasn't, you know, where it started. And that's why I think in life, it's good to be open to experiences and doing things that you think maybe you wouldn't like or whatever, just because they can go unexpected places.

It was born because she'd come to work at the ABC and we got on quite well. And we kept – every time we'd catch up, we'd just be fizzing with creative ideas and we'd say we should do something together. You know, we should write something. We should do something. And at the time, we both had, you know, kids under the age of three and there was never any time. And so we ended up saying what could we do that is the least amount of time and effort? And –

it just started becoming a thing. And we both loved stuff that we didn't get to indulge in much in our day jobs like the arts, plays, music, TV, books, whatever. And so we thought, well, maybe we could talk about the stuff that we tend to talk about when we're not at work, which is all that kind of stuff. Maybe we could talk about that and make a podcast out of it. And so we just started recording our conversations on an iPhone. It felt kind of, to be honest, narcissistic, like what we think this –

We're so entertaining that everyone wants to listen to us bang on. Um,

And then over time we started – the thing that made us think, oh, this is maybe a bit bigger than we thought. We did a thing together at Sydney Writers Festival and heaps of people stayed back to meet us at the end and they were all Chat 10 listeners, not ABC people. Or maybe they were ABC but they were talking about Chat 10. And I would notice people – when people come up to me in public, I can almost tell straightaway what – a bit less so now but when I was at 7.30, I could tell straightaway –

what they were coming up to me about because the 7.30 viewers would be like,

oh, excuse me, Leah, I just wanted to say, you know, I just really have a lot of respect for you, blah, blah, blah. The chatters would be like, Salzy, how are you going? I watched White Lotus or blah, blah, blah, whatever. Like I was their friend straight away. And so then we started thinking, all right, we set this Facebook group up because we realised we're like at the centre of a wheel with spokes but no one has any way to talk to anyone else. So we set up this Facebook group which now has got more than 50,000 members where everyone interacts and it's just –

It's a great – you know, I was saying to my friend Sarah who's here before, the great thing about people that love books is you've always got something to talk about with people that love reading and books. And you just know that they're your kind of people.

And so we've got that community going. And then it's also become a thing where people almost try to out kind each other. Like there's always acts of kindness going on and people helping each other and whatnot. So it feels, and we set very strong boundaries around the group. There's no politics. All divisive content is removed. We ask people not to post it in the first place. And they've kind of become well-trained that they, because our view is if you want to argue about the federal election, there's 8 million spots on the internet. You can go and do that. Don't mess up our nice little corner of it.

And so it's become this and we do sort of things like this that, you know, heaps of people come and it's just a really lovely sort of sense of community. So I guess we started thinking it was about culture, but actually it turned out that it's about friendship.

And can it be used as a sort of revenge tool? I do have an image of you and Annabelle who have had to put up with a fair bit of critique. Women in the media always do. Women in politics do. We study these things at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. You would have no doubt got, when you were hosting 7.30, any amount of free pointed advice about how you should be dressing, your make-up,

your hair, how you should be doing the job. Do you think having this kind of podcast where you can sort of yuck it up and tell jokes and show people you're vibrant and alive, there's a little bit of revenge in it? Yeah, maybe. It's nice to be obviously the kind of journalism I've done. You're not really showing your full personality because you're very, you know, a bit again like being Prime Minister, right? It's the nature of the job is you...

a certain way. You're not using the full palette of your kind of, you know, humour or your

So it's lovely in that kind of a regard. We try very hard to, particularly because we want to support Australian arts, if we read something the way you can tell that if we read something we don't like, if we've ever mentioned it and then we never mention it again, if we're like, I'm really looking forward to reading that and then you never hear a discussion, it means we didn't like it but we don't want to publicly say that. So we tend to save our critique of something that we don't like for like big things

international, you know, films or books. Although we did get stung by that when we were talking about an American author called Taffy Brodesser-Akner and a book that she had written. She wrote a book called Flushman is in Trouble that we really loved. And then she wrote something else we didn't love quite so much and banged on about it. And then she tweeted us

A chatter was in – she was in a bookshop in New York and a chatter went in and said, oh, these women, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then she listened and then sent us a message. We were like, oh, my God. So now any time I'm like, oh, I hated that new George Clooney film. But George, if you're listening, it's fine. Yeah.

I think George can probably take it. I'm sure, yeah. He'd be glued to chat 10 though. He'd love it. He should be. He should be listening, but I'm sure he can take it. You are getting to do some remarkable other things which sound incredibly uplifting. I mean, Australian stories, one of them, because the people you get to meet, the tales you get to tell, but also the Assembly, which has been a huge success.

For the audience who aren't familiar with it, can you talk about what the Assembly is trying to achieve? Yep. In fact, we've got shoot one of season two tomorrow back in Sydney. So, the Assembly is a show where we have a group of people who are autistic, who, you know, range in age and different capabilities and they come in and...

...a team of producers and I work with them... ...and they, as a group, interview a well-known Australian. So last season they had the Prime Minister... ...they had Adam Goodes, Amanda Keller, Sam Neill, various people... ...and so they can ask whatever they like... ...and so my job is to kind of, you know, not impose my thoughts... ...about what you should ask this person... ...it's to help them find the question in, you know... ...what it is that they would like to ask...

And then when we actually do the interview, I just kind of give it a gentle steer basically and assist anyone who needs a bit of assistance. And so the set is designed to take account of sensory issues. There's lots of things...

Things that we've introduced into the work process to make people feel at ease and to feel, for example, that they can stand up at any time and walk out and go to a quiet room. Unlike, you know, say something like this, you'd find it unusual if one of us walked out. We've created an environment where that's viable now.

And so what the interesting thing about it is firstly the group of people – I find it really hard actually tomorrow that I'm meeting a whole new group of people for season two because it's a different cast because the season one people I just loved so much and they ended up all getting on brilliantly. They've got a big WhatsApp group and they're just wonderful and that's been great because many of them felt a bit socially isolated so that's been really awesome.

Some of them, one of the guys is working at Triple J and some of them are doing other different projects and things. So it seems weird that I'll be meeting a whole, I can't imagine not doing it with the same people. But the end result was that because Hamish Blake actually summed it up really well, who was one of the interviewees, he was asked by one of the guys, Dylan, how much money do you have in dollars and cents?

Now, Hamish, often you'll read kind of slightly snarky stories about Hamish and his wife Zoe, who's a very, very successful businesswoman and it'll be about, you know, that they're very, very rich. They have a lot of money. And I can't remember how Hamish answered the question, but he answered it quite honestly. He basically said, yeah, I have a lot of money.

he said to me later, if a journalist from a newspaper asked me that question, I would immediately feel defensive because I know what's coming, which is going to be some sort of snarky something. But actually in that context, I could just see the genuineness of the curiosity. Um,

And so often what you could see was that the guest really relaxed and opened up because of the non-judgmental nature of the questions and just the genuine warmth and interest and curiosity. And it was amazing to see. The other thing that I think disarmed the guests enormously was –

If you're being interviewed by someone like me, it's going to follow a relatively logical A, B, C, D, E flow. Whereas somebody could be asked in one thing, what's the best lesson your parents taught you? And the next question would be,

have you ever ridden a horse on the beach at sunset? And so that would really keep people on their toes. And I think because a lot of famous people have been interviewed a lot, they're kind of bored of being asked the same stuff. So getting asked random, what's your favourite plant, you know, is actually quite fun. So yeah, it was a great experience.

And you are clearly valued by the team you're working with and you'll have, as you say, a whole new starting cast when you start filming again the second series tomorrow. But you are clearly really valued as a mentor. And I saw this quote and I absolutely loved it. One of the students working with you was asked to describe their experiences and said,

I don't want to make her feel old, but she's been doing this for longer than a lot of us have been alive. So true. And also they would say stuff like that to your face all the time, which was kind of good and refreshing. Yeah, it was just classic. One of them said right to my face that I had mum humour, which I don't think was a compliment at all.

Well, I am just absolutely delighted this kind of happens to you too because a very common experience for me is I will be walking somewhere and a perfectly competent looking young woman will walk up to me and she will go with the line, I was in primary school when you gave the misogyny speech and you're like, shouldn't you be in high school now? How's

And then, of course, you realise, no, it's not like that. That's it. I know. I get people saying to me all the time, young people when they come up to me, they go, I grew up with you. Mum and Dad always had the two of you. And I'm like, how?

you can't have grown up with me. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, you can have. And they have no memory of Kerry O'Brien. Like, I'm their Kerry O'Brien, you know. So, yeah, that freaks me out. At the moment I'm working on this political project and the two people that mostly work on it with me, the young woman just turned 22 and I'd say the guy's probably 24, 25. And it does freak me out all the time to think I literally am old enough to be your mother. Yeah.

Now, whilst that may or may not be true, not done yet. So apart from the great Australian novel, continuing conversations with Annabelle, more of the assembly, more of Australian story, what else have we got to look forward to from Leigh Sales? The thing that I'm most excited about at the moment is, if any chatters are in the room here, they're just going to laugh and groan, is my cello practice.

So I've been incredibly lucky that for the past three years I've been learning the cello, almost three years, from the principal cellist at the Sydney Symphony, which is such an incredible pleasure. And it's just I'm very disciplined. I do an hour of practice. I rarely miss it. So I got up early today to do it before I flew here. And it's just hitting the point now where it's starting to sound like actual music. LAUGHTER

I don't know how anyone learns – I could already play the piano so I could already sight read. I don't know how anyone – hats off if anyone here has learned a musical instrument as an adult because I don't think I would have been able to stick with it if I couldn't already sight read. But it's – I love the process of it so much and I'm trying to kind of –

After 30 years of, you know, relentless forward momentum, I'm trying to give myself a bit of permission to not all the time be going, right, what's next, what's next, what's the next project, what's the next thing I'm going to do? And with music, you cannot...

rush that at all. Just because you apply the force of your discipline and ambition to it, it's not going to come. In fact, if anything, that is counter to what you're trying to do. If I stiffen up and want, like, come on, it's going to sound good today, or that's a recipe that's going to sound bad because so much of your body's in contact with it, so will that tension kind of

gets into it. So I'm trying to just kind of, you know, the assembly came along serendipitously. And so I'm trying to just be a bit open to like, all right, well, let's just see what comes along. Let's not force things. Let's just roll. If there's a quiet day, let's not feel like, oh, what am I going to do? I'm trying to do less forward-facing work

so that I have more time to work with up and coming younger reporters to pass on you know the stuff that you really only learn by doing it and through experience so I do some group kind of like in the election campaign I've done training about press conferences and how do you ask a question that's going to be effective and how do you follow up a question and then

also with people, how do you do an interview? And one of the things people are always scared about is what I said before about confrontation. So how do you, people are always amazed when I say, well, you've got to like psych yourself up for it. Cause I think people think that that just, oh, well, Sarah Ferguson or Kerry O'Brien, that just comes naturally to them. Well, maybe it does. I don't know. But I think for most people, if you're going to stand in a press conference and ask an awkward question of somebody, you're going to have to put

the big girl undies on. So you need, and it's going to offend the sound man when he sees them when he puts the microphone on you. Unfortunately, our time is coming to an end, but I've got one other suggestion for your future work, which is Bluey the stage show with you as Bella, given you have voiced a character on Bluey. I thought you were going to say, and with Crab as the dad. LAUGHTER

This could be a whole new phenomenon. A whole new thing. I was in a public toilet the other day and a woman came out of a cubicle. I've got no idea where this story's going now. A woman came out of a cubicle with a little girl who looked about four and she recognised me and she said to the little girl,

This lady is the voice of one of the people on Bluey. And the little girl was like, what? And the mum said, yeah, she's Coco's mum. She's the one in that – there's an episode that's become very beloved among mothers called Baby Race where Coco's mum encourages Bluey's mum and there's this kind of line, you're doing great. And any kind of person that's ever had a newborn baby and feels like they're useless, it just dissolves you into like –

Anyway, she said to the child, she's Coco's mum. You know the episode where Coco's mum tells Bluey's mum that she's doing great? And the kid kind of looked like, wow, really? Looked at me like sort of a bit disbelieving. And so I said, do you want me to do it? And she's like, yes. So I said, you're doing great. And she was like, oh, well, it is you. Yeah.

Can I tell one more bluey anecdote or are we turning out of time? No, of course. Just it is the funniest experience, especially if you come from like a kind of serious journalism background like me. So when I go over there to do – I go to Fox Studios in Sydney. If there's a line for one of the characters that I do, I do Coco's mum and ice cream lady. They're just very minor characters. They might have one line a season or two lines a season. And you would think that if –

So the one that springs to mind, Coco's mum last season had a line. She was doing school pickup and the line was, come on, kids, it's time to go.

Now, I cannot tell you how many ways the director versions, the director wants of it. They're in Brisbane, so they're on the screen. So they'll say to me, okay, so what's going on here is that Coco's, they give you the context. Coco's mum's arrived at the school and she's chatting to the other mums. And so, okay, let's do a take and make it sound like this is the fifth time you've said to the kids it's time to go. So you'll be like, kids, hurry up. It's time to go. Okay, now make it sound like you're enjoying talking to the mums and you've got all the time in the world. Kids, it's time to go.

And you get to a point where you think, there can't possibly be any more ways to say this line. And then you're up to like take 32 of now do it like this, now do it like that. It's absolutely hilarious and very fun and impresses my children far more than anything else that I've done. Thank you. Thank you.

A podcast of one's own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister institute at King's College, London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the institute, which was founded by our host, Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership.

Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepard, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecott, with editing by Liz Kean from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwl at anu.edu.au.

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The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you join us next time. If you like detailed and immersive audio storytelling, you might like Canadian True Crime.

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