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Exploring the younger years and turning point moments of authentic, outstanding and inspiring people. See the world through the eyes of someone who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you.
Christine Nixon When I Was Young Podcast 2026
Nina: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to When I was Young, the podcast that explores the younger years of interesting people. This podcast is a chance to slow down and hear about the world through the eyes of someone else who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you. All stories are true and affirmed by my guests.
Nina: I'm your host, Nina Fromhold, and today my guest is Christine Nixon. Hello, Christine.
Christine: Good morning. Nice to talk with you.
Nina: This might be the first time that one of my guests literally needs no introduction. Christine used to be featured in the media in Victoria almost every week. First in her role as the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police from 2001 to 2009.
Nina: Then as the Chair of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority [00:01:00] following the devastating Bushfires in 2009.
Today we are going to go a little deeper than the sensational media headlines to learn about who Christine is and where she came from. We are going to hear how she has made a career of creating change in line with her values.
Nina: I am so delighted to be having this conversation. Welcome Christine and thank you for being my guest today.
Nina: So let's start with the Herald Sun headline. “Call me Christine”. It was one of the early Victorian headlines about you once you became our first female chief commissioner in the Victorian Police. Why was this even newsworthy?
Christine: I often wondered about that, but I think it was probably a few different things. One, because I was the first woman ever in Australia to be appointed as the Police Commissioner. And I think particularly for Victoria, it was even more of a shock. Victoria at that stage, fairly [00:02:00] conservative though.
Christine: Mind you, they just had a change of government to Labor. So I think that was part of it. It was also this idea that I'd said to the members of Victoria Police, “call me Christine”. I got this sort of shocked reaction because they were so used to calling the head of the organisation, Chief Commissioner or Boss, and I was just trying to be normal and to perhaps reduce some of the hierarchy.
Christine: So I think that was part of it, was also maybe the Police Association was a piece of this as well, because they'd been very dominant. They were a powerful organisation and I think they kind of thrived on that conservative, and you know, we are the ones that know everything. So I think there was a piece in there that they may have had chats with the editors at some time.
Nina: So you'd ruffled the old boys club?
Christine: Well, I gotta say, I think I've been ruffling the boys club for quite a while, but not the Victorian version of it. And so I think it was that, but it was also probably the newspapers as well in the way that they'd always portrayed [00:03:00] policing. And all of a sudden there was this youngish woman from New South Wales, I think they always thought we were a bit like the barbarians in New South Wales.
Christine: And in this case she'd been chosen to come to Victoria. So I think there was a piece of that as well.
Nina: So we are going to focus a lot today on your career of leading change in reform within policing. But let's start with your foundations. When and where were you born?
Christine: Actually I was born in Manly Hospital in 1953.
Christine: Two parents, both had been in the second World War and both had pretty tough lives. And then for much as my early days, I grew up in Manly and they're not far from Manly. So that was my early start. I was the second child and I learned second child, is a good place to be. And I have an older brother as well.
Nina: So what stands out the most to you when you think about each of your parents and who they were as people?
Christine: My father was a police officer when I was born and he had [00:04:00] joined the Navy towards the end of the second World War. And because he was pretty young and so he joined the Navy and then after the war was concluded, he came back and then became a Police Officer in the New South Wales police.
Christine: So he was making his career in policing and you can imagine pretty conservative. I used to say to him, he came from the right hand of Attila the Hun, as in that's when I got older. Of course. My mother was a woman who'd had a pretty tough life and was given away when she was very young and didn't ever talk about that, didn't really know a lot about it.
Christine: We found out later various things about it as time went on, but she was treated pretty badly in the family where she was fostered, I suppose is what you'd call it now. But in her case, she'd then been very independent, gone on with her life. She joined the army and then she'd worked, I guess as a nurse's aide.
Christine: And then of course Mom, when I was born, was working as an usherette in [00:05:00] a picture shop in Manly, but she worked all her life and that was sort of part of her independence. They're both pretty tough.
Nina: And how did you experience them as parents?
Christine: In dad's case, he was working and often had a job where he would go to different parts of New South Wales.
Christine: He became a ballistics expert and would go and investigate murders and shootings. We don't have a lot of money, but I saw them both trying to, like many people still do you look to struggle to get a house and then you look to build around you. I look back and think about the way they did things. They were very strong in making us independent.
Christine: It was like get on and do things and no matter kind of what age you were, I think that was a part of it because it was a new community that they built the house in brand new. Actually the roads weren't really all that developed and mind you, this is all of about 15 minutes from the GPO in Sydney. So you think about it now, they were part of a new and emerging [00:06:00] community and they were really significant contributors to it.
Christine: I guess it was just they kind of got in and did things. So mom always wanted to have a local church and so she became part of a group that looked to talk with the Methodist church and eventually got them to build a lovely little church in Allambie Heights and she then was part of that for 40 years. Both of them used to swim.
Christine: That was part of life for us, was the beach. Dad was also part of building the surf club. When they got the council to build them a building and fix the pool up so there could be a swimming club. He also became involved with the golf club. I said to him, you know, when he departed, I was gonna scatter his ashes there.
Christine: 'cause he'd actually spent so much time at the golf club for most of his life. He was a really good golfer too, but more importantly, his role within it was on the committee and the captain and different roles.
Christine: When I look back, my parents really took quite strong leadership roles as I'm thinking. The school was a brand new school.
Christine: They were [00:07:00] both on the school council committee. So yeah, that was what we saw around us. Mum started brownies when I was seven. She decided she wanted to become a brown owl. She did that for 25 years. It's interesting when you look back and your parents and think about the way they were. I mean, that's just the way they were to me.
Christine: They were strong, they were loving, mom more than dad. It took him a while really to lighten up and loosen up and be, and I mean, years and years. And that was probably the way he was brought up in the, you know, being in the war and then being in the police. That was the kind of life it was, and it was a really good life.
Nina: So it sounds like your parents really led by example with regards to getting out there, making the things you wanted to see in the world.
Christine: I think they did. I don't know where it came from in both of them, but they kind of just kept moving from one thing to the next to the next. Because we also grew up in a street where many people were new into the area as well, but it just seemed like the pair of them [00:08:00] were like, well, if it had to be done, then it was gonna be them, and they got in and did it.
Nina: And so you've mentioned Allambie Heights. This is the suburb you grew up in.
Christine: Yeah.
Nina: Tell me what it was like.
Christine: Well, first of all, it didn't have much of a main road as in a made road. I can't even vaguely remember. There was a bus service, but not very often. And it grew obviously as the suburb grew, but it was growing with things like the creation of the public school and a shopping centre.
Christine: But it was two, three bedroom houses, probably mostly fibro. Sometimes if people had money, they had brick. That was a big deal. The toilet's out the back because there was no sewage of course. And it originally, there was no water either. It was tank water, so that was what the place it was like, but it was also one where because people didn't have much money and because there were lots of kids, the kids all played together.
Christine: We would head off to picnics and things that either mom and dad or someone else would arrange, and some had cars, some didn't. So [00:09:00] everybody would pile into whoever had the cars and head off for a picnic most Sundays with all the kids and the adults. And the adults got on really well. It was all pretty basic barbecues and people would take salads.
Christine: It was a really nice place to grow up and one where I felt a lot of support. I didn't always get on with my parents, of course, like anybody, but there was always someone else to talk to. The teenage girl, you know, who's five years older than me who lived next door, or her mother or Auntie Betty across the road, that kind of a thing.
Christine: I think now I look at it and think, they say it takes a village. It does, and it is an interesting thing to watch when you've got that kind of support around you. The interesting thing about all of that is the last couple of people who were there like 60, 70 years ago have just moved out or died, and they were all in their nineties.
Christine: So now there's a whole new generation there, but it lasted for a long time.
Nina: A lifetime of community.
Christine: Yes.
Nina: Talk to me about summer holidays. [00:10:00] What would happen?
Christine: The sun, the beach has been such a significant part of our life. It had been for mum and dad, they'd both been born and lived over near Bronte in the eastern suburbs.
Christine: Then of course a big move to Manly. So initially we did live very close to Queenscliff Beach and that was where they rented a place for a while until they were able to get some money and build and go to a Allambie Heights. But summer holidays were pretty standard, really. Mum would work, so we would catch the bus down with her to Manly.
Christine: Sometimes there'd be like 10 of us different kids, but we would go down together and go to what was then, it was kind of Manly Pool. It had a barrier across and it was in the harbour, and it had pontoons in the middle that you could go over and actually was really great place. Anyway, we would go hop off the bus, we would go to the pool, mom would go to work.
Christine: At lunchtime, we'd head over to her and we would have this salad sandwich. This was a big deal to have a salad sandwich for [00:11:00] lunch like that. It was made for us. When we got there, we'd pick up the salad sandwich, go back to the beach, stay and swim and do whatever it was. And then she would finish work and pick us up and we'd catch the bus home.
Christine: And that's what summer was like. These days, parents have gotta figure out what to do with kids. I think I was only probably when that happened, six or seven and my brother would've been eight or nine, something like that. That's what we did and it turned out fine. And we turned out fine I think.
Nina: So you had that early experience of independence and that freedom of getting to just play all day at the pool.
Christine: Yeah. Yeah. It was great. And we could swim. We were very good swimmers. I don't even remember how we learned, but we both could swim really well. And actually swimming became a fairly significant part. I became, and my brother both were in swimming club. We used to go training four mornings a week and afternoons with John Devitt, who had his big swim team at the time.
Christine: But I never was that kind of committed to it. It was not like I was ever gonna be a state champion or something like [00:12:00] that. It was a great time of independence and yet that freedom that we got I think was just terrific, really. And I feel sad actually these days that that's not the case for kids anymore.
Nina: There was another way that your independence showed up. Tell me about Brownies.
Christine: So my mother decided she wanted to create a Brownie Pack, as they called it. And usually it's a group of about 20 or 30 young girls between the ages of seven and 10 or 11. Mom did her training with a woman who was a Brown Owl and she was based in Manly.
Christine: And so when mum was learning to be a Brown Owl, occasionally I would go down with her to this Brownie Pack that they had in Manly. So mum started her own Brownie Pack and I went along and pretty much in very early days, I've decided that I wasn't going anymore to her Brownie Pack. 'cause I felt she picked on me.
Christine: She was always telling me off. I then said, well, I'm not coming to your Brownie Pack anymore. I'm going to the other one in Manly. She [00:13:00] said, fine, you do what you like. And so as a pretty much a 7-year-old, I would then go up the road, cross the main road, catch the 1 4 5 bus to Manly. Walk up from where it used to come in, in Manly wharf to the park, which is probably on about a kilometre or two.
Christine: And I'd walk up to the Brownies, go to Brownies, and then go back, wait for the bus, catch the bus and come home again. And I'm seven. And that's what I did. And that played as part of Mum's view of the world for us. Len and I would go shopping, she'd give us lists, and often it had been ordered already or something.
Christine: And we would then go pick it up and then wait for her to finish work and come back and pick it up in the bus. And sometimes, of course, the bus, you'd miss it. And that meant you had to catch another bus, which went to what we called the bottom of the hill and you'd have to walk up. And the walk. I never quite got straight how far it was, but I think it's about two and a half kilometres.
Christine: You just have to walk up the hill. We did that lots and mum used to always talk about that when we were much [00:14:00] younger, as in, you know, three or four, sometimes it was very rare for the bus to actually go all the way up. She tells stories, of course, that I would on occasions stop and say I'm not going any further.
Christine: And I refused to walk the rest of the way. 'cause we were only little. But it was about the freedom and about a trust I think, as well. And I think that for me, looking back was a pretty significant part of my life.
Nina: There's a real sense of trust in your competence, even as a very young person, which is gorgeous. It's not something, I think most parents listening to this today would be like, I wouldn't put my 7-year-old on a bus.
Christine: You've got me on the bus. I walked myself yourself, paid my bus fare. I think it really came outta her own life where she'd had to really make her own way. And if something happens, I mean, I don't remember anything significant.
Christine: I mean, I think there was a couple of occasions where some bloke would approach you or something like that, but I used to just run off. That was sort [00:15:00] of the way it was. And you thought, oh, well that's life and you deal. On occasion things didn't quite work out. And you go, oh, now what am I gonna do? There are no phones in those days.
Christine: No, you just had to kind of work it through. But I think it was a good sense that had come from mom, probably more than that. And she was the one you have to do things with. So it went along in part with preparing meals, making your bed, helping with the washing. It was all part of, this is the way we do things.
Christine: So when the sheets would change, we'd all go in and help her make the beds. That was all part of life. And she expected that.
Nina: Yeah, certainly my generation as well. I learned to adult from when I was definitely a child.
Christine: Yeah.
Nina: And it was about learning those life skills.
Christine: It was
Nina: by doing and helping.
Christine: Yeah, and you know, if you got hurt or whatever, then you just deal with it.
Christine: That was what happened.
Nina: So you had primary school, quite local to you that you attended, but high school was another adventure
Christine: For some strange reason. Well, not really strange. It was just a massively growing suburbs and there were [00:16:00] lots of kids. The education department had decided to build a brand new high school, a place called Beacon Hill, which is quite a distance away.
Christine: I think there was about 30 of us who had gone to Allambie Heights Primary School together, had all then ended up being sent to Beacon Hill High School. So Beacon Hill High School only had form three, two, and there was one, which was us. And there were 300 of us from all around the area were collected to go to Beacon Hill High, a brand new school, which meant the bus trip was 40 minutes.
Christine: So we used to get picked up at about 20 past seven or something. And then for this long trek to get to the high school. The other thing about the high school was really different for us was people came from a broad range of backgrounds. They came out of the public housing areas. They came out of the sort of factory areas where their parents had all worked in factories.
Christine: 'cause that was a bit different to a Allambie Heights because many of them, I mean they, they worked in shops, but they also had, some of them were more professional. They worked for different companies. It was interesting to go to a place like [00:17:00] that and particularly 'cause there was so many of us, we'd gone from, well primary school to come and meet quite different kids than the ones we'd ever had dealings with before.
Nina: And how did you fit in as a kid? What were you like as a high school student and where were your strengths?
Christine: So many of the friends were people that I'd obviously gone to primary school with. The range of those people who were friends, expanded, we got put into, I think it had A, B, C, D-E-F-G-H classes.
Christine: I was in 1B, so I'm not the brightest, but I was in the okay kind of level. We did have different groups and of course you started to do different subjects with different people, but I was also, of course part of the church. I'd been at the Sunday school and I'd been Sunday school superintendent and I'd also been part of a youth group.
Christine: So the friends I had were quite a large group of friends. Some of them went to school, but that sort of group expanded during my teen years to groups of people from other schools as well. So what about school? [00:18:00] School likes, okay. I'm not paying too much attention. Funnily enough, I think I was five foot six at the time.
Christine: So, I'm quite tall, so that meant I could play netball, basketball. We did all the sports stuff. I'm quite sporty for want of a better description. I could swim, swim really well. So all of that meant I'm okay. I'm not paying a huge amount of attention to the actual school subjects, but I get enough and get on and some really interesting teachers who I still think about, you know, English teacher I had particularly, I remember she was the one, her name was Mrs Westaway.
Christine: But I watched this woman in the first thing she put into my head. She had this most unruly class, particularly the boys. And I never saw anybody who could handle a room like her. And she stayed in my head. About the calmness that she used to bring to the room. She never yelled, and yet she'd walk into this chaotic thing and everything would settle.
Christine: Even the boys that were just all over the joint. And I still think of [00:19:00] her and I often think of her when I got the job in the police later about how you handle people. Just that calmness that you bring is a very important quality. And I went, wow. Mrs. Westaway taught me that.
Nina: Terrific. To have those examples of teachers that really leave a mark.
Nina: So, yeah. Beautiful.
Christine: She was one of them, right?
Nina: From when you were 14.
Christine: Yep.
Nina: Things started to change for you both at school and outside. What played out during those teenage years?
Christine: So partly because mum had a job at Coles, so she worked in the sandwich bar part of it, and she'd actually had a baby. I have a brother who's 11 years younger than I am, and I was telling him, he was a mistake and he probably was really, but that was part of it.
Christine: So she took time off. They didn't do maternity leave in those days, of course, but went back to Coles and had another sort of role in Coles. I then worked on Saturdays 'cause you only ever worked, you know, Saturday mornings 'cause there was no Thursday nights or things like that [00:20:00] in Coles Variety Store in Manly.
Christine: And then I worked school holidays, so every school holiday actually in the store and worked all the counters. I remember men's wear and toys and lollies and cigarettes. The worst place to work was cigarettes 'cause it was so busy. So I worked in Coles and that changed things. And I guess also the Sunday school thing, I did become the superintendent and the youth group I spoke about as well was part of it.
Christine: So I think life was, you know, lots happening in my teenage years. I also played netball and swam. All of that was all part of it. It was an interesting time and I probably wasn't really paying enough attention to school and then kind of had a bit of a failure I suppose. It was a significant failure for me.
Nina: What happened with the failure?
Christine: Well, the failure was that at school they introduce you to different languages. And so we do semesters in different languages, which I actually quite liked, but for some reason or other I was actually taken by Latin, [00:21:00] you know, this is a Northern Beaches girl, like what?
Christine: Anyway, I ended up doing Latin pretty much because the teacher we had was just terrific. He made it live and you know, you could see back in Roman times. So I started to study Latin and the really sad part is that he died. He was killed in a car accident and so I was doing okay at that point, and there was only five or six of us who were doing Latin.
Christine: I think five of them were boys, but they were the real study boys, you know? That kind of nerds. And then there was this me, but I was there for passion and interest. Anyway, he died and so they then had to struggle around to find us another teacher, and they found us this horrible woman. And she didn't like us.
Christine: I didn't get on with her at all. The smart boys of course, didn't pay any attention to her. Just did the work, but not me. And I failed. I got like six out of a hundred for what was the sort of final qualifying exam. Then of course this instigated my father having to come to school.
Nina: So your father was [00:22:00] summoned to school?
Christine: He was. He was summoned to school by the deputy principal. This is a big deal. Like he had to give up work and I don’t know why my mom didn't come. But anyway, so dad was summoned to school to be told that I was, you know, verging on being a failure and I'd have to be thinking about what my future was like and all the rest of it.
Christine: Then I had to sort of figure out what I was gonna do next. Was I gonna do the school certificate? What was I gonna do in terms of the future? Because a lot of the students who went to my school left at 15. I don't just mean some, I mean many, many, many left and it in fact, it only left us when we got to form four, which is where I was at that point, with 60 of us.
Christine: 300 or so left and they went to do trades or they went to Tafe or they just went to work in factories. One thing led to another and it was decided that I could do art and then I would also do ancient history because that was what I liked and I could sew, 'cause I could do textiles and designs. So my whole new subject thing was determined [00:23:00] after my failure.
Christine: But you know, sometimes failure leads you to a whole other place. And I guess for me, I didn't like the experience. I still remember it obviously all these years later, but it did actually let a whole other world open up in front of me.
Nina: Your course sounds wonderful. I believe there was a particular teacher who set you a challenge when you started this new course.
Nina: Tell me that story.
Christine: Miss Wilkins, I think her name was, first of all, I think she came from Trinidad. No idea how she gets to be at Beacon Hill High School, but she apparently had been teaching for some time. So we had the first class and there are 18 of us in the class. Some of them very talented, and some who went on to be well-known artists.
Christine: And then there's some like me who weren't. So she says to us all, okay, I'm gonna finish teaching in two years time when we would get to do the high school certificate and I am going to make sure that every single one of you gets a level one pass. [00:24:00] And we all looked at her like you got to be kidding, you know?
Christine: And she said, yes, that's what we're gonna do. And you're gonna work really hard and I'm gonna make sure you work hard, and we're going to study some very different things than you'll have ever been exposed to before. And that will equip you as a group to get every single one of you. And she said, then I'm retiring and that's the end of my career in teaching.
Christine: This was where she started. We all just looked at and went, what? So the first thing she said is, you're gonna study Islamic art. We went, what's Islamic art again? You know, Northern Beaches? Kids? Like, what? And she said, yep, because no one else is gonna study that in the state. She said, maybe one or two, but that'll be all, and you will blitz it because we are gonna learn so much about Islamic art.
Christine: And you know what? That's what she did. And she pushed us. We used to do two or three sessions at lunchtime where we'd have to identify paintings. We'd have to explain the era to her. And they were like flash paintings. We did do Islamic art, had to write [00:25:00] essays on it. And of course, the main piece of work you had to do, we practiced it and practiced it and practiced it.
Christine: Every single one of us got level one art, and for me, it just opened a whole world that I'd never really thought about before. You know, we never went to art galleries as kids or anything like that. Mom and dad didn't have that kind of background at all. But what I got exposed to was a world that opened up for me and over the rest of my life.
Christine: I've been to so many different galleries and recently came back from Istanbul, which I've always wanted to go to, the Blue Mosque, and to see the Islamic world of art that I learned about when I was 16 years old.
Nina: It's such a terrific privilege, especially when you haven't grown up in that super cultured environment.
Nina: Certainly when I was coming through, I hadn't been to an art gallery before I left home and moved to the city.
Christine: You don't get exposed to it, so I was so privileged. As time went on, over time I kind of understood art and, and then of course I did [00:26:00] learn to paint and I now do mosaics and sort of picked it up 20 years ago, 25 years ago now, people said, where'd you get mosaics from?
Christine: I said, well, all those years back, I've always loved it and now I have time. It was a really interesting time and ancient history kind of fitted with it so I did well at ancient history as well, so that was school. And school was, was a nice school to go to. I think I became the Vice-Captain, you know, at one point.
Christine: It was very comfortable environment. I was never shy.
Nina: So you finished high school at the start of the 1970s. Mm-hmm. What were the expectations for what you would do after you finished school and what happened instead?
Christine: So that sort of era, that kind of middle class, I guess for want a better description.
Christine: There weren't a lot of expectations for women. It was pretty low. Mostly people around me, some of them would be looking to be teachers and in fact that's what they did. Secretaries, you know, working in a shop, there wasn't much more ambition. My brother [00:27:00] had gone to university and at that stage you paid of course.
Christine: So he worked and also mom and dad contributed to him going to university. So there was no chance that I was, and I wasn't really, no ideas what I'd do there anyway. So it was not something that I'd thought about or was really the view of the world. I remember going to Coles and asking could I join their management program?
Christine: It just seemed like that's not a bad idea. Anyway, they told me women didn't do that program, had I not noticed that it was only men. And I hadn't noticed that it was only men. But then I went to work for a chemist because someone said the chemist at Manly Beach was looking for an assistant. And so I went to work for him.
Christine: That's where I went of course, until I had an aunt who was in the Police and she said to me, why don't you join the police? And I went, I don't know.
Christine: They're not very many of them. And she said, no, they're not. There's 130 women only. And that's all the positions were in the New South Wales police. And I went, well, don't think there's much chance of me getting in.
Christine: She said, well, there's not unless you have a [00:28:00] go. So I remember saying to mum and she thought it was a great idea and dad said, “no, it's not a good idea at all. I don't think you should join. I don't want you to join”. And I said, why's that? And he said, “because there's no future for women in policing. They've been in policing since 1915.
Christine: There are only 130 positions for women in the New South Wales police, and that's never gonna change”. And then he said, the other thing is he'd been quite prominent in the union and he said, people will take it out on you for the role that I've played in looking to reform policing. And I went, really? So mum and I got together, an overwhelming force and I applied.
Nina: And what did that involve?
Christine: Not much. It was, you know, the application form and you had to get references from school. So I managed to get those. I think there was an interview process, and I remember this interview. It was at the police academy, which then is at Redfern. You went into this big room and there were eight, nine people on the panel.
Christine: It just seemed to me there [00:29:00] was a lot of people on the panel and certainly three or four of the senior women were on this panel. I remember going in there and, and they, you know, talked about different things, but the things I remember that they talked about were a couple of things. One was, did I have a boyfriend?
Christine: And I went, no. And did I plan on having children in the future? I said, well, I didn’t have have a boyfriend so I can't really do that. So anyway, no, no, I don't plan having children at all. This was the sort of discussion and it was like, I'm 19 years old and this is the seventies and I had read Female Eunich. I'd read Barbara Fidan, I'm an activist, I’m a feminist thinking, what is this?
Christine: But you know what? You learn to play the game and I play the game. No boyfriend, none of that. No, I don't intend to have kids. I wanna have a career and that's why I'm here today and you know, I'm fit enough and all the rest of it. I have no idea why I got chosen. There were 400 women on the list at the time.
Christine: I suppose partly it might have been my father's influence because he was [00:30:00] capable and able and people thought a lot of him in the police at that stage. And then I just fitted the model, I suppose, of what they were looking for. But I remember the, the piece about the interview, I went out afterwards and my boyfriend was waiting for me outside.
Christine: And mind you, he was never happy about me joining the police. And that didn't last all that much longer after that.
Nina: So there were 400 people applying for how many positions were open?
Christine: Well, they only came open when someone got pregnant or they retired. So there's only 130 positions. It's a seniority system, there's 8,000 men, mind you.
Christine: So it's a very limited pool. And that year, so 1972, they wrote to me and said, well, you know, you're acceptable. So they said, oh look, you know, there'll become a vacancy at some point in the future. So that year they hired six women in the whole year. There were four in one class and they were about April, may or something.
Christine: And then there was two of us in my class and they rang me up and said, we’re offering you a position in the class in October 72, and there'll be [00:31:00] another woman in the class. And I remember saying, well, at least I'll be able to find her, won't I? Given there's only the two of us. That's where we started.
Christine: And the training is six weeks.
Nina: Just six weeks.
Christine: Six weeks. And we finished in December, like we started in October, finished in December. My registered number in New South Wales is 1 7 3. And of course, women had been in policing since 1915. Wasn't many of us.
Nina: So your registered number is a woman's police officer registered number?
Christine: Yes, of course. We had two separate systems. Over time, of course, that had to change, but of course that was because the blokes started to see more women were hired over time. Once we got rid of a lot of the barriers, and of course that meant, oh, hang on a minute, you know, they might progress faster than the men.
Christine: So they put us into the one system.
Nina: So you got the job.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Nina: What did you gotten yourself into?
Christine: Well, I did wonder what I got myself into to start with. So I did find the other woman and we obviously became friends and we could figure we could, you know, support each other out [00:32:00] through the process. We both passed, but we, we were treated pretty well during the class.
Christine: We were sort of novelties these two girls with a group of about 70, I think were in the group that I was part of. So we did the training and we did firearms training, but we didn't have a firearm. I thought, why are we learning to have firearms training? They said, oh, well if you happen to be working with a male and they might need you to take control of the gun.
Christine: I said, what is this? That was part of it. We didn't have a baton, you know, those sorts of things were not part of it. They just trained us how to use them, but they never actually gave them to us at that time. So the two things women did in those days were you went to one group called the traffic branch, and that's where you lectured kids on safety and traffic and you did traffic duty in the morning.
Christine: You actually literally directed traffic at some place in Sydney. And then the other group of women went to the women police office and you usually started over here in traffic. And then sometimes you'd undertake the women police training program and you'd end up [00:33:00] working in the women police office, which at that stage was in the criminal investigation branch in Sydney.
Christine: That was it. That's what happened. So we finished, the boys all went to stations. The girls, the two of us, went off to the school lecturing branch and started because it was Christmas. We then started directing traffic in the middle of the CBD busy intersections. They turned the lights off 'cause the traffic was horrendous.
Christine: You direct traffic for the day and, and that's where we started.
Nina: And what else was happening around you in those early years?
Christine: One of the things the police association does, it's very smart, is everybody joins. They come to the class. As soon as you are hired for the police and everybody signs up to become a member of the police association, they still do it.
Nina: Which is the union or the association?
Christine: No, no. Same thing.
Nina: Same thing.
Christine: They don't like to call themselves unions, but they are. And they call themselves the Police Association of New South Wales or the Victoria Police Association, or Queensland, whatever it might be. But they're a union and they sign you up and of course they get a proportion of your [00:34:00] salary.
Christine: So anyway, everybody signs up. Eventually school comes back. We travel to schools and lecture your kids. My father also said, look, you're not gonna stay for long, so you best go to Tafe. So I remember heading up to the Bigala TAFE in the Northern Beaches area and starting a personnel administration certificate, and I just loved it.
Christine: I signed up, there were like 400 people turned up on the first night. I thought, this is crazy. You know what, four years later, three of us finished. Wow. People dropped out really quickly over time, but the three of us met each other on the first day and said, if we're gonna finish this, we need to support each other.
Christine: And we did, very different women, but we did actually support each other through the end of the four years, two nights a week. I think we did four subjects or something a semester. But it was amazing and I loved it.
Nina: So this was HR personnel training?
Christine: Yeah.
Nina: And what sorts of things were of [00:35:00] particular interest to you?
Christine: One of them was industrial relations. And I took contracts and whole range of other things. It was actually just a really good program. But the industrial relations piece, because by that stage of course, I'm starting to think about how do we change the world for women. The opportunity I got to do that really came on expectedly.
Christine: I hadn't thought, how did I actually get to do that kind of thing. And what happened is a friend of mine who was the head of the women police branch of the police association with one branch for the women, she got pregnant. She called me up and she said, I'm pregnant. Oh great. You know, wonderful. She said, I'm going.
Christine: And I said, no, no, don't go. Why don't we try for maternity leave? I said, its the seventies we could probably manage it? And she said, no, I'm not interested. But she said, I want you to do something for me. And I said, what's that? She said, I want you to apply to become the head of the women police branch. I went, they're never gonna elect me.
Christine: And she said, well they are because no one else is standing that I could tell. And I went, okay. I said, why else? [00:36:00] She said, because you've got nothing to lose. She said, they can't demote you. You already are the lowest of the low. Thanks for that. And she said, and no one else is gonna apply. So I did. I got elected.
Christine: I'm pretty young at this stage, you know about 21, 22. Because once you get yourself into that role, you then have to go, okay, what am I gonna do? And what do we need to do? And I remember then talking to the women about what it was, maternity leave was part of it. We needed to expand the numbers. We needed to have opportunity to work in operational policing.
Christine: 'cause that was the sort of fundamental piece that then for many would develop their career. We need to get women out of school lecturing with a lot of the other options available. So there was lots to do. That's when I first had my first discussions with the Police Association of New South Wales.
Nina: Do you remember that first time walking in there as the new head of the woman's branch and putting your first set of requests on the [00:37:00] table?
Christine: The union were, they're pretty slick operators. You know, they'd been around a while and it was like, alright, no. And part of, if you wanted significant change, you did have to do a lot of work and talk to some of their staff. Most of them were okay. They started to see that the world needed to change for women.
Christine: So the early one was maternity leave. That was pretty much agreed to straight away. The union even agreed to that. I mean, they did have kids and daughters of their own. So that was not a complicated one. And partly because there is external pressure on the police. Lots more focus on policing in the seventies by journalists, by government, and by a range of people.
Christine: So I think that was part of it. But the real significant change had to be that women had to work in operational policing, and that was the bit that the union was never happy about. They didn't want women to be given the same training as men and to in a sense then go into operational policing. And that was really the difficulty.[00:38:00]
Christine: I mean, there were other silly things we asked for. I remember at one stage we asked wear studs in our ears. Anyway, the police association news had on its cover, “women police want studs!”
Nina: Oh no.
Christine: Yeah, see you. You get the view. You know, this is the girls, and I remember going to annual conference, so we pushed for the operational policing and they weren't supportive at all.
Christine: Union. What we wanted them to do was take it forward, advocate for us, but they just refused. The management said, no, we're not supporting that at all. So we ended up putting a proposal to the Commissioner directly that we should be able to do that, and because the senior women didn't want it to happen either, but there was quite a groundswell of the women within the organisation who felt that was the right thing to do.
Christine: The other piece that I'd been aware of was some very good research from the United States. It was called Women on Patrol, and they'd done a terrific analysis of women in policing and women on patrol, and [00:39:00] in fact, how it had worked in a couple of different cities and states. So we used that and put it forward and much to,
Christine: I have to say, my amazement. The commissioner signed it. And partly what we did was, a technique I often tell people is you don't get everything you want, but you get something. And the idea was a three-month trial and it was short enough that, and I'm not exactly sure anybody kind of knew what the trial was about, but the idea was the Commissioner had said, we'll send three women for a trial in operational policing.
Nina: Just three.
Christine: Just three.
Nina: Wow.
Christine: And three. And then of course the senior women got to choose the location. They chose Kings Cross Darlinghurst.
Nina: Oh, a tough one.
Christine: It was the busiest location. I'd had in mind, some suburb where I could shop. Didn't turn out like that at all. So they chose Kings Cross. They said to me, you are going.
Christine: I was in tears. I have to say, when they told me, I thought, oh my God, what have I done? Now the idea of Kings Cross Darlinghurst has was like, it was post-Vietnam [00:40:00] in 76 and there were often thousands of soldiers and sailors there, as well as 400 police who worked. And I was thinking, oh my God, you know, what have I got us into?
Christine: Because the senior women who when they called me over had just said, you're a stupid young woman. You dunno what you're doing. I'm 23 at the time. And they said, well, you are going and it's gonna be a disaster. You will be back here in tears. And I said, it'll be all right. And they said, no won't. These women could have run and done anything, but they didn't think so.
Christine: They didn't see that this was the way forward. So I remember going outside the office into the park at police headquarters and was in tears. This grumpy old female detective sergeant who should have been promoted years before, but of course a separate hierarchy, never had been. Anyway, she said to me, what's the matter with you?
Christine: I explained to her what had happened. She said, Hey, listen, if the blokes can do it, you know you are no dumber than them. They can do it, so can you. Oh, okay. So kind of a good piece of [00:41:00] advice really. And I looked at 'em, I thought, ain't smarter than me. We headed off, one of the senior women came with us.
Christine: There's a lovely picture on the front of the Telegraph. It has the three of us. They chose two other women to go. Of course there's the three of us walking along out the front of Darlinghurst police station, swinging our handbags with our nice cute little hats and our skirts and jackets on. Entirely inappropriate to work in operational policing.
Christine: But anyway, that's where we started.
Nina: So there you are in Darlinghurst with your handbag and your skirt on.
Christine: Yep. Being in Darlinghurst worked, you know, we weren't going back. And of course what happened out of it was the union had to come on board as well, and they opened it up and they both opened operational policing up to women and they had to then open up quotas and change things.
Christine: So there's a lot of it that hinged on this idea that women could work in operational policing. Of course what we did to start with, was worked in switchboard. But trust me, you learn a lot in the switchboard.
Nina: This is the phone switchboard.
Christine: You betcha. With 18 lines that came in and everybody who communicated with the station had to [00:42:00] come through this process.
Christine: And so you learned a lot and, 'cause we worked all the shifts and so you used to meet lots of people. It actually worked. They eventually let us out. I worked in a car and was the senior person on the car.
Nina: While you were on this trial and then in the year following the trial, what were the small changes that just having women police in operations started to make?
Christine: Yeah, it was quite significant. Never quite have thought about it that it would've done this, but the three of us were really quite strong women. In fact, all of the police women of those era were pretty strong and capable. And so we went there and they immediately put us on different shifts. But we used to make sure we kept up every six weeks when there was a change over time, we always caught up, went out for dinner, had drinks to make sure the three of us were going okay.
Christine: And what we were up to. So that was an important piece. But gradually having us in the station, I think started to change the [00:43:00] way things were done. I remember for me it was a small thing to start with, but so we used to go out with drinks with everybody on the shift and everybody was pretty supportive. And I think we were a novelty more than anything else.
Christine: But in my case, you know, we go out for drinks with them afterwards and one point its, you know, 4:00 AM in the morning, I've been drinking beer and I went, this is it. I'm not doing this anymore. It isn't good for me. It isn't something I wanna do. So I remember going back to work and telling them I wasn't coming drinking anymore.
Christine: And they went, well, who cares? You know? And I went, great, I'm not doing it. And it was just interesting watching that kind of change around that. And then I told them, I had enough of them swearing could they not do any better than that anyway, they then swore at me and, but actually again, there was a sort of a change.
Christine: I guess one of the things that the three of us had said to them is, you know, a lot of prostitutes came in, were arrested, most of them were bailed and left, but others weren't. I remember the three of us had all kind of made the point. The line that you're not touching and crossing here is ever harming, assaulting those women.
Christine: It was [00:44:00] just a view that we clearly all had that that was not acceptable. That was pretty much the case. So we always dealt with the women when they came into the station, searched them or whatever it might be, you just used to watch the level. So you'd watch older police work and they were always calmer.
Christine: And you watch these young blokes and they, they're just dickheads, way too young. And over time, I had lots of influence on trying to raise the age of policing so that people came in later and were more experienced than these, the young blokes. So you could just see the way people treated each other and the response they got out of the committee.
Christine: Things got much more settled and civilized. By this stage you're up to 76, 78, so the world's changing. You know, the opening up of anti-discrimination legislation, there's a whole lot of change going on.
Nina: So it fits within that broader piece of change.
Christine: Yeah, it does.
Nina: And after some time, you applied to be a detective.
Christine: Mm.
Nina: Now this was another brave move.
Christine: It was.
Nina: And a bit of a challenge for the hierarchy. [00:45:00] What happened when you did this?
Christine: There used to be a women police course, and each detective course had maybe one or two women could actually do the detective course each year. And that was the model you were supposed to follow.
Christine: And I said, no, I don't wanna do that. I wanna actually do the same training as the men. I wanted to go to a thing called 21 Division, which was a flying squad, but also had a usually corrupt reputation. There was a lot of stuff about that. But anyway, I put the application forward, what I'd done at Darlinghurst, and was helped by some of the detectives there.
Christine: They called me over and they sort of said, that's it. You've now pushed way too far and we're gonna send you to Orange, which is, you know, regional New South Wales. And they'd had women police there as taking sexual assault statements, working in that for some time. He said, we're gonna send you to Orange.
Christine: Now here I am, a Northern Beaches girl. I'm not going to Orange. And, so as it turned out, one of the women said to me at the time afterwards, well there's this bloke [00:46:00] who's done a review of police education. He's looking for someone to work for him because the police woman who'd worked for him has got pregnant and she's leaving.
Christine: And you are a bit of an academic. I said, I'm going to Tafe. I never quite saw TAFE as academia, but people did. And if you didn't study much, it wasn't seen as important to have an education, then it probably was. Anyway, I went to see this bloke. Turns out he's a man called John Avery. He had done a review of police education and was really looking to work with the then deputy commissioner on reforming police education, which had been very minimal and certainly not up to standard, and certainly not equipping the police, for the world that they were facing.
Christine: So he pretty much said to me, you know, mate, there's more ways to skin a cat than one. Why don't you come work for me? So I did. And he was a much better choice than, going to Orange and he was terrific. And it really was the most amazing start for me of a whole other part of my life.
Nina: Now, when you were [00:47:00] working with John Avery, you were looking at progressive policy changes. You were looking at training changes, but you also decided to do some more study.
Christine: Yeah.
Nina: Tell me about that.
Christine: So John was a person who was actually studying at Macquarie University to get a master's degree. He'd got an undergraduate degree and did politics and philosophy. I was thinking about what I'd do. I finished TAFE and loved it, and then I did a graduate diploma in Labour relations and law at Sydney University.
Christine: And that was a part-time thing at night. And then went on to follow him in a sense into Macquarie University to do politics and philosophy. That was four nights a week, and then of course at work, which actually the two things really went together well. My essays would be about reforming sexual assault law, and I was actually involved in representing the New South Wales police and helping develop training programs for the police on that.
Christine: It was also a very reform Labor government [00:48:00] in the state, and also Women's Coordination unit. They were a very powerful group of women who were looking to reform a lot. When I first started with John, one of the things we got involved in with child abuse, and of course the idea that Stranger Danger was, was a part of it.
Christine: The mythology around Stranger Danger was finally falling apart, and we helped form a child protection unit in the late seventies. People came out to the United States to work with us on that. It was really an interesting era. And then family violence, sexual assault, bail legislation. The government was really pushing the police hard, but we could of course push too to say, well, if you want the police to do this.
Christine: They gotta know about it and they've gotta be educated. So there was an, on the job training program, there was much more extended recruit training. And so it went. And John had this lovely way of attracting quite a range of different people to work for him, different people with different skills. And he created what was firstly the training development examination branch with the exams, which were, [00:49:00] promotional exams were crook, they were often corrupted.
Christine: And so there was a new part of forming that. So I worked for him for six years while I also got the degree. But it was just amazing. And the changes in difference in the New South Wales police and sort of dragging them and then supporting lots of others to be part of seeing things a bit differently.
Christine: Quite a wonderful time.
Nina: And then in 1983, you apply for a scholarship to Harvard.
Christine: Well, it was actually a scholarship where I could have used it anywhere, but it was a thing called the Hartness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. This is a very prestigious scholarship that gives about four scholarships a year to people within Australia to study anywhere they like.
Christine: In the United States, quite a diverse range of people have got them ballet dancers, journalists, academics, scientists, quite a range. And that had happened since about the thirties. Actually, Mr. Hartness was a silent partner of John D Rockefeller [00:50:00] and had created this thing called the Commonwealth Fund, and then created the Hartness Fellowships.
Christine: A friend of mine saw it because it was often advertised with the public sector notices, and he said to me, why don't you apply? And I went, oh, you've gotta be kidding me. I said, that's not me. He said, well, you've got a degree and you did really well, and you've got a lot of experience. Why don't you, you know, think about it.
Christine: So I did. I had to get references from my university lecturers, and it had to be done all pretty quickly. So you applied through the Public Service Board of New South Wales to start with. Part of it was whether they would support you, if you got it. I applied, went through an interview process and they said to me in New South Wales, nobody's got one of these.
Christine: They said, the police have never got one, and so there's really no chance of you, but we are gonna put you forward, and it'll be up to the interview panel, which is a national panel. The next thing, I actually got an interview. I came to learn afterwards. They interview about 12 people from the three or 400 that apply, so I get [00:51:00] invited to Melbourne for an interview.
Christine: Not sure, I'd been to Melbourne by that stage even, but I went for the interview and Jeffrey Blaney professor was the Chair of the Board and there were others. I think the head of Qantas was on it. It was like a, a really impressive board and held in the Reserve Bank building in Melbourne. Anyway, I remember going in and I got nothing to lose and explained to them that if they gave me the scholarship, then I would look to work with the best police researchers in the United States.
Christine: There was a particular location that I would go to, which was the Kennedy School at Harvard, because John Avery already had connections with that. So it went anyway. It was a most efficient panel. Two and a half days later I got a letter. Congratulations. You won a Hartness. And I went to Harvard in June, 1984 and went to the Kennedy School.
Christine: And the other thing that happened, of course, at the same time is the, then police commissioner left and John Avery and became the police commissioner. So he became the police commissioner at the point I went to America for two [00:52:00] years. It was an amazing, fabulous opportunity for me.
Nina: So you came back in 1986?
Nina: Mm-hmm. What did you do then?
Christine: So John Avery and some of his senior leaders had been really working on reform, and particularly around corruption, really trying to sort out a whole lot of people. A lot of people left during that time. So he was really looking then to develop and think about what the future plan would be.
Christine: And so I came back to his office in 86 as a senior policy advisor to him. And so then it was really working on what became known as community-based policing to really reform the way policing operated and a whole lot of other things that went with it. Who got to even think about being a police officer, the kind of training they had.
Christine: It was really quite a big reform agenda. And also just having the police perhaps operate for, want a better way, describe it the way a lot of country police did working with their own local communities. And so doing that within urban areas as well. You had a big team of people who [00:53:00] went out and worked with regions and districts.
Christine: He reconstructed the whole organisation as a whole with the creation of what's called local area commands. Two deputy commissioners, the woman was appointed, had the deputy, she was terrific there. And a colleague, Jeffrey Garrett became the other deputy commissioner, special operations. So the things were really changing.
Nina: And this is all at about the time when the New South Wales police is getting a lot of feedback about corruption.
Christine: Yeah.
Nina: And then we head into the 1994 Wood Royal Commission. Talk to me about what your role was and how things played out while that was happening.
Christine: Well, I guess a bit of a lead up to that was I was working for John and he left, and then they appointed another commissioner guy called Tony Lauer, who had been the president of the police association and had become the police commissioner.
Christine: So very interesting. He could have done anything, really very smart. During that time, I became a [00:54:00] superintendent and managed people. And then eventually in 1994, I applied and became the first female assistant commissioner in the New South Wales Police. And so what happened is I worked for Tony Lauer.
Christine: There'd been a lot of heat in the New South Wales police. There were a lot of exposes on corruption. I think John Avery, and I guess I'm part of it, had worked a lot to reform things, but it was just still there. I mean, I remember Justice Woods said to me at one point, if you didn't know, you should have. I was appointed as an assistant commissioner after some traumas with the minister and the police commissioner.
Christine: He didn't want me to have the job, but the police board did. I got the job, and then three days later they announced the Wood Rule Commissioner to the New South Wales Police. So what started then from 94 to 97 was while I was an assistant commissioner. Then Ward went about his work.
Nina: Your role as Assistant Commissioner, what were your responsibilities?
Christine: Well, the initial responsibility [00:55:00] was human resources, which was promotions, the whole development and human resource management, welfare, all those sorts of things. And 'cause that put me quite close contact with the union as well. Of course, I also reported directly to Tony Lauer, who was the police commissioner.
Christine: Then the Royal Commission was announced and I got the responsibility to be part of responding to the Wood Royal Commission, you know, working with them. Tony Lauer originally didn't think the Royal Commission needed to exist. He was not happy about it at all, and in fact attempted to intimidate government into not conducting it. The government didn't wanna conduct it either, but there was majority in parliament and they managed to get the commission up.
Christine: But part of it was working with the Wood Royal Commission about understanding that corruption was a piece of it. But what underpinned that was probably more important. We worked with them on that and they hired some management experts because they realized that you've got a big organisation, 12,000 [00:56:00] people.
Christine: I think at that stage you need to figure out how you're gonna manage 'em, how you lead, how you develop people, what promotion systems look like, what transfer systems, all of those sorts of things. So I worked with them and we responded to a lot of their requests about different sorts of things. And eventually when the Wood Royal Commission reported spent, 80% of it was to do with how you lead and manage people, their recommendations, and then work on the recommendations and how to implement.
Nina: And so when you say corruption was one piece, but there was a whole lot more that underpinned it. You are talking about the systems itself.
Christine: Absolutely.
Nina: And the ways that that creates the opportunity for corruption.
Christine: Yeah, it certainly does. And that was a part of it. And the systems about how you get rid of people.
Christine: Like if you think they're. But the union, of course, was very strong in supporting everybody who ever had any kind of allegation against them and paying for lawyers to support them. And that's what they saw with their role. We also introduced new [00:57:00] powers about how to quickly get someone out of the organisation.
Christine: What my team had, when the Royal Commission finished, there were lots of people who were under a cloud and we had then worked through what we were gonna do, and the Royal Commission had given us this new power, which is really a loss of confidence. Well, you've come to the view by various evidence that the person should just be finished.
Christine: But it was also time of great change and reform. And eventually Tony Lauer, who was the commissioner, stepped down and of course the new board had to then choose the next commissioner.
Nina: And so this would've been an exciting time for someone like you who started off in the police force thinking the world had to change for women.
Christine: Yeah. It was now changing for everybody. Yes. Which was a really lovely part. Certainly for my time in that sort of a role. It was an amazing time. It was about recognising we had gained lesbian police. It was recognising that we needed more [00:58:00] aboriginal police officers, aboriginal liaison officers, that we needed to get rid of stupid barriers that stopped people getting into the police.
Christine: One of the things we did with the gay and lesbian community was look to advertise to have them think about joining us. I remember two ads we had and we actually took out four page ads in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Telegraph. One of them was “Join us and we'll give you sensible shoes”, which was really obviously targeted at the women and the other was “Join us and we'll give you the leathers” and the gay and lesbian community, was like, what is this?
Christine: Anyway, but they saw that we were keen, and of course that's when the first police marched in the Gay Pride march as well in Sydney. It was a long way back from back in Darlinghurst in 78 when all the terrible things happened back then. So it was really possible we can look for aboriginal liaison officers as a whole lot of change was able to be brought through in that time.
Nina: That sounds terrific. You finished that last piece talking about how the commissioner left.
Christine: [00:59:00] Yes.
Nina: What did that mean for you next and what then happened?
Christine: Well, okay, so what's the government gonna do next and who gets to be the next commissioner? I applied, I didn't think there was any chance at all, but I got an interview of, all of a sudden it was announced that the new police commissioner was Peter Ryan who had come from the UK.
Christine: I don't think I've ever seen anything like it since. It was this massive press conferences and big deal being sworn in at Parliament House. I was working for him and I remember thinking, okay, I'll see what he's like. We talked to him about what we were trying to do about the Royal Commission recommendations.
Christine: He had no history of the Royal Commission. Of course. So the whole three years and the churn and the change, he had none of that. So I was trying to talk him through all of that. At the same time, I applied for the commissioner's job in South Australia, was interviewed by the panel and then went up and met the minister.
Christine: It was implied to me that I got the job. I went back to New South Wales, saw Peter [01:00:00] Ryan on the Monday and said, I think I'll get the South Australian job, so I'm gonna go. And he said, I don't want you to go. And I went, okay. So what are you offering for me to stay? He said, what do you want? I said, I want education as well.
Christine: So that human resource and education were put together. 'cause there was vacancy there and that assistant commissioner, I said, you can put it together. I'll take that on. I said, I want a 40, $50,000 pay rise to do that and a five year contract. That's what I want. He said, okay. So I went back downstairs to the unit that did contracts, et cetera.
Christine: They drafted it up, I walked it back upstairs and he signed. And so I then told the South Australians I wasn't coming to, which they then told me, oh well we've had a change of the minister over the weekend and sorry, you're now not coming. And so I then worked for him for 12 months
Nina: and then what happened?
Christine: He called me in one day and said, I want you to resign. And I said, I'm not [01:01:00] resigning. And he said, well, I want you to resign. I said, why? He said you are undermining me. I said, no, I'm not. I'm just trying to do what the Royal Commission said and what's the right thing to do and what the plans say we should be doing for the New South Wales police.
Christine: No. He said, I think you're undermining me. I said, well, that's not the case, but I'm not resigning. And I said, and you can't sack me. I said, I'm in charge of HR. So I said, I know you can't sack me either because I have in fact been meeting all my obligations, and you know that. Well, right. What are we gonna do next?
Christine: And, and I said, I dunno, really? I said, I guess you're gonna have to send me somewhere else. That was the sort of discussion we had. And then he said, oh, well there's a short term vacancy in the western suburbs of Sydney. I'm gonna take out the assistant commissioner who's there, and so I'll send you to the western suburbs of Sydney.
Christine: All that said, and you know, I might sound like I'm very capable and together and confident, but I then made my way to the closest bathroom and was in tears. 'cause I loved the team I had built and the reform that was [01:02:00] going on. So I remember, I think I waited until everybody had left the building and then went down to my car and drive home to my husband John.
Christine: He was very concerned and said, what's the matter with you? And I explained that what had happened and, and he kind of looked at me, he said, but that's the best thing that could have ever happened. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well they're never gonna send you to operational policing otherwise to run a big region like that.
Christine: And I went, oh, that's true. And he said, but then this is the best thing ever. Anyway, I kind of started to see that perhaps it was the best thing. So I'd have to leave my team, which was very sad. But I was then going out to a much bigger team and in the most complicated region in New South Wales, that's where he sent me.
Nina: And so this was your opportunity to prove your metal
Christine: That's right.
Nina: In operations.
Christine: That's right.
Nina: Fantastic.
Christine: Which I never would've got the chance to do other than being punished to be sent out there. So that's where I went to start with, and then he sent me north and then eventually he [01:03:00] said, so I'm sending you to Wollongong and the Southeastern region and that's where you can stay.
Christine: He said that, I'm happy for you to permanently have the region. You actually can manage regions and you do it well. He and I got on much better by this stage, but I was of course away. I wasn't within his realm.
Nina: This brings us back to where we started in 2001, when you became Victoria's first woman to be sworn in as the Chief Commissioner.
Nina: So you did this role for eight years. What were the achievements that you feel most proud of from your time serving in this role?
Christine: I first of all consider myself enormously lucky to have been appointed to that role. And it gave me an opportunity, I think, to work with and to listen to the members of Victoria Police, to listen to the community, to then figure out what was gonna be the plan for the future.
Christine: What were the things we really needed to work on to make a difference. And so for me, I think there are differences about who joined policing. The fact that many people stopped leaving policing. I think that was important. [01:04:00] Working with communities on community problems, things like stolen motor vehicles and juvenile crime all went down so you can see real change within the organisation.
Christine: I think there was also a much better recognition of the need for good leadership or the way people needed to be treated, much better, much more human kindly for one of a better way, with a lot of psychological, mental support as well. Health support. A lot of chaplains, 60 chaplains who would go out and be supportive of whether it might've been the crooks or the police.
Christine: There's a lot of change went on and the technology education. I think all of those things were pretty important to me during that whole time, and it was quite a dramatic change.
Nina: Were there any moments that really meant something special to you during those eight years?
Christine: The really worst times is when a police officer dies, and I certainly had that happen.
Christine: That's a really terrible time for the whole organisation. So we [01:05:00] had that happen a number of times. We also had 911 and thinking about, wow, now what do we do? That whole counter-terrorism change that occurred, it had a capacity to actually really destabilise the organisation, but we managed to corner all of that and keep that separately so we could actually keep focused.
Christine: There's the small things and the big things, you know, the fact that I don't think there is a country town in Victoria, haven't been to, or a scone I haven't had or something. It was also just meeting some wonderful people in so many different communities. They were all special. I felt like that was really a privilege to do that and to see what an organisation's capable of when you expect more of it than it expects from itself and you can watch people rise up when they're given that kind of support.
Christine: I mean, not everybody thought what I was doing was right. Certainly the union didn't. They did sometimes, but then they didn't. The newspapers did think I did and then didn't, and so it goes. So you just have to go, well, you're doing the best you can [01:06:00] do. It seems like it's got a good lift to the organisation.
Christine: The way we were going, the call me Christine bit was like, we just like each other. So I think all of those opportunities were really wonderful.
Nina: So in 2009, after leading the Victoria Police for eight years, you took on a new position as the chair for the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority.
Nina: Now, this was at a really difficult time for a lot of Victorians, so what was important to you and your leadership in this role?
Christine: So those fires, we lost 173 people and it was a horrendous time for this day. We had a thousand fires that day, 107 communities affected across the whole of Victoria. I was asked by the Prime Minister and the Premier would I lead the recovery, and I'd just given notice in policing, was supposed to finish in February.
Christine: So I was asked would I take it on it and I thought, well, how could I not? And I did. And I thought what I could bring [01:07:00] to that? People recognised who I was. They knew I had standing and power and would push to support the communities. And that was the sort of fundamental part of it. There's the initial support that's needed, and then there's the much longer term as to how you help those committees rebuild it in a way they want to, which is a really important part of understanding recovery.
Christine: I mean, we did things that the government never did before, but they do now, like the cleanup of properties, and the Red Cross fund had $420 million donated to it. People all over the world watched what happened and were supportive. That many people died, and so many more were harmed and lost premises. It was important that people were supported, encouraged.
Christine: The bereaved communities, particularly, were recognised with what they wanted to do and how that would be done. It was an amazing experience and watching the public service within Victoria and the community just step in, step up and support each other was just amazing and a wonderful thing. Wonderful achievement.[01:08:00]
Nina: It takes a lot of courage to be an innovator and an agitator for change, especially throughout a whole career because there are so many knock backs for every step forward. So who have been your best supporters through the hard days of your career?
Christine: So my mum and dad were always there. Mum used to say, if all else fails, you can come home.
Christine: And dad used to say, well you’ve really stuffed that up, haven't you? And I said, thanks. They have my family, my husband, John, who just been an incredible support through the whole process in lots of different sorts of ways. Some professors, girlfriends, the whole group of people who I could turn to and would make me wake up to myself or give you some hard news that I might not want to hear.
Christine: I've been very lucky like that. Friends and family who've just stood by me through all of that. It's been very important.
Nina: Now you are still serving the Victorian community. So you were a member and a deputy chair for the Monash University Council.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Nina: Yeah. Until [01:09:00] 2020.
Christine: Yep.
Nina: And you're still the Chair of Good Shepherd Microfinance?
Christine: No, I was the chair of that and I was also on the board of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. So I've done those kind of things. What I'm doing now is Leadership Victoria and it's a lovely thing and I do varieties of things. I haven't quite stopped. I'm trying to cut back.
Christine: 'cause you know, you get to a stage you think, what else do I wanna do with myself?
Nina: So is there anything professionally or in your wider life that you haven't done, that you still do wanna do?
Christine: I'm kind of at that point, you know, you need to stop occasionally and go, okay, I've had all those sort of roles. I work with Australian National University at the moment on a review I did for them.
Christine: I'd also co-chaired a sexual assault review for the ACT. So those sorts of things I'd like to see, you know, where they go and hopefully they get implemented, but I'm not sure what's around the corner. I mean, maybe it's more mosaics. It's spending time in my garden. It's maybe a trip overseas. I think that I've done [01:10:00] a lot and, and maybe take some time for me for a while.
Nina: I think that's a beautiful plan. Well, thank you Christine, for being my guest and for sharing your story today. One of my dear friends from high school always wanted to become a police woman. She was knocked back because she had specs, and when I told her we were meeting to talk through your story, she was so delighted.
Nina: She described herself as a big fan. Like me, she had read about your appointment to Victoria Police back in 2001, and like so many other young professional women looking up and hoping to see leaders coming through that were women and a new kind of leadership. So you stood out and both of us had talked about how we'd been quietly cheering you on from afar and enjoying your contribution to dismantling that image of the unbreakable old guard.
Nina: Yeah. So thank you [01:11:00] for shining a light for many of us throughout your whole career. You've left a big legacy in police reform and more generally for women in leadership, and I'm so excited you're with Leadership Victoria now because they've definitely had an impact in my leadership over time.
I'm pretty sure the Herald Sun never ran this story about your life and your contributions.
You have been listening to When I Was Young, an exploration of the formative years of authentic, outstanding, and inspiring humans.
Nina: I'm your host Nina Fromhold, and my guest today was Christine Nixon. This is a Memory Lane Life Stories production proudly made in Narrm Melbourne, Victoria on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri People. We have new episodes and guests regularly, so please follow the show to hear more of the series.
Nina: Thanks for [01:12:00] listening.