Obituaries Australia

Mavis Robertson, n.d.

Only a few days before Mavis Robertson died, her GP dropped in to check her failing health and stayed for 90 minutes. They talked a lot about politics, spent some time on football, and a little on her health. Her cardiologist dropped in, too, and stayed 40 minutes.

Her last words to a colleague as she was wheeled away for final tests were: "We must have a discussion; I think I've found a way to sort out the refugee problem."

None of this would surprise those who knew Robertson. Last year she travelled again to China, which she first visited as a communist in her 20s. Later this year, she was to revisit London, for an international conference on corporate governance, where she would speak on superannuation and financial advisers, even though her office retiring age had passed four years previously, at 80.

Some people were surprised that after leaving the Communist Party in 1984 Robertson leapt into the fight for national superannuation, but she saw it as a new way of helping the less well-off: "Superannuation is no longer a prerogative of the rich; it's a right, no longer a privilege."

Robertson, who has died in Melbourne, was born there. Her father, John Moten, was a labourer on the railways and her mother, Claire (nee Tilley), worked in railways catering. They lived in a small cottage in Kew.

Mavis Moten won a scholarship to Tintern Church of England Grammar School for girls and won another scholarship, to study arts at Melbourne University, where her interest in politics developed. She joined the Eureka Youth League, the organisation for young communists who attended camps, talked politics and had fun. Mavis would later lead the league.

She met Alec Robertson, an army lieutenant at Kokoda before joining the RAAF. The RSL refused him membership afterwards, in line with their policy of rejecting reds and blacks. Winning a scholarship in 1947 to study journalism in England, he worked on The Times. Back in Melbourne, he joined The Argus.

The Robertsons were among thousands of Australian families who had endured two world wars and the greatest depression, believed that Western democracies weren't good enough and looked for something better. They believed that socialism, even rigid and dogmatic communism, could be the answer.

Many spilled into movements for various rights — for women, aboriginal people, unions and, later, gays and superannuation.

Mavis left university to follow Alec to Sydney, where they married in 1953 and built a house in Balmain. Alec had asthma and Balmain had industry and poor air quality. They moved with their son Peter to Greenwich in 1971, where Alec edited the Tribune and moved it from stodgy communist orthodoxy towards a more modern left-wing journal. They tried living in a small commune at Roseville but moved back after 18 months.

The Robertsons stuck with communism through the Soviet crushing of Hungary in 1956 and in 1968, when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia, although Laurie Aarons had hailed in Tribune Alexander Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" reforms, called the "Prague Spring".

Robertson was intelligent, charismatic, articulate, clear-minded, a strategic thinker and effective organiser with a wide range of contacts. She could conceive a campaign and make it work. Prominent in the anti-apartheid and anti-Vietnam war movements, she reached out to angry students, liberal thinkers, the arts community and concerned Christians to build strong coalitions.

She was ambitious, not only to bring about what she saw as social reforms, but to be in control. The Eureka Youth leader became a joint secretary of the Australian Communist Party in 1976 and an early leader of the campaign for superannuation across the workforce in the 1980s.

Her sense of purpose often came with an acerbic tongue which made enemies. Yet she would sometimes knit silently during meetings of vigorous debate before suddenly proposing a motion acceptable to the majority, then adjourning for decent food and red wine.

She was also a generous mentor to young activists.

Alec's death in 1974, from an acute asthma attack at 54, was a savage blow but Robertson threw herself into campaigns. Her whole life seemed a campaign, some more successful than others.

Having organised protests over General Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile, she welcomed Michelle Bachelet, then 24, and her mother to temporary exile in Australia in 1975. Bachelet junior became Chile's first woman president, and is now president for a second time. Having worked with Save Our Sons during the Vietnam war, Robertson produced, with Martha Ansara, Changing the Needle, a film about heroin addiction among Vietnamese at the end of the war.

Robertson had admired Dubcek's attempts to liberalise communism but wanted to keep doors open to the Soviet Union. She split with the more liberal Aarons and his supporters. By 1980, the number of Australian communists had dropped to about 3000, divided among about eight factions.

Robertson set up People for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s, before the Berlin Wall fell and East-West tensions eased. PND bought a double-decker "Peace Bus", a mobile education centre which travelled more than 24,000 kilometres around Australia and was visited by 40,000 people. The Hawke government gave the project an International Year of Peace award in 1986.

Robertson campaigned against French nuclear tests in the Pacific, led Palm Sunday peace marches, sat on the government's year of peace advisory committee and helped establish Canberra's Peace Park. She was first chair of the Jessie Street Trust, founded to honour the great campaigner for human rights, and helped establish Sudney's Jessie Street Library.

Robertson joined the superannuation movement in 1984, with a claim by building and construction unions, whose members had no such benefits. In 1991, she became CEO of several construction industry funds based in Melbourne, bringing them to merge. She initiated the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds.

Paul Keating addressed the first CMSF conference in 1991, before his government introduced the compulsory superannuation guarantee, which now delivers an employer contribution of 9.5 per cent of earnings to more than 90 per cent of Australian working people.

Robertson became a member of the Order of Australia in 1994 and, in 1998, Australia's Human Rights Commission named her among their 50 "Great Australians".

Mavis Robertson is survived by her son Peter, daughter-in-law Marjorie and grandchildren Alec and Molly. Memorial services will be held at Richmond football ground on March 15 and at the Sydney Trades Hall on March 21.