Saturday Extra - Separate Stories Podcast

As a young diplomat Sue Boyd was summoned to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam where he asked about her posting in Portugal “what's going on, what does it mean for Australia and what do we do about it." This is the mantra Sue says that a good diplomat has to be able to answer. And so began her long career as a successful diplomat. Sue talks about the struggles for equal opportunity for females in DFAT, that Canberra was often the hardest place to be a female in this field compared to the rest of her overseas postings, and how you do your job when you disagree with the directive given by the government. The example Sue discusses is that of the Pacific Solution under John Howard, where she had to find Pacific countries willing to set up refugee processing centres.