Review: Hillary Clinton in Sydney 11th May 2018

Sydney is a city that tends to get loads of shows and other events and Friday night was no different. A very controversial American lady came and spoke to an audience of 8,000 people. This lady was of course, none other than the former 2016 American presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, former Secretary of State and former First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs Clinton was joined by the first and only female Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard.

There's no doubt that you would have read a lot of reviews by now and seen what the media was saying about the speaking event, but there are a few things that were missed out of those reviews, so I thought I would take you on a little journey and give you another perspective of what actually went down when she spoke at the International Convention Centre in Sydney.

Firstly, the MC of the event was ABC journalist, Leigh Sales, and it was televised for APAC, so even if people couldn't attend, they still could have caught it on TV, but there was nothing like being in the audience.

I was right near the back in the cheap seats. Now remember, the cheap seats were $195, with premium seats costing $295 and VIP seats which included a copy of Clinton's book, What Happened? being included in the cost. One thing I noticed early on was the number of women in the audience. There were men of course, but the majority of the audience was female, which was interesting to see. I'll come back to this later though.

The evening started with a few videos. The first video was one of these kids in a choir called the Moorambilla Voices. The majority of kids in the choir come from small regions and appear to be from less fortunate backgrounds. The video on its own was pretty powerful as it shared the journey of the kids, but what came next was truly brilliant. The Moorambilla Voices choir appeared on stage and sung a song for the audience, which was brilliant as the kids would never have dreamed of singing for thousands of people.

Up next was a video detailing Hillary Clinton's background from when she was a child and her mother taught her to be resilient right through to meeting Bill Clinton at university and eventually moving to Arkansas to be with him when he wanted to enter politics.

After the video, journalist, Leigh Sales took to the stage and introduced Hillary Clinton. She started by talking about how she'd been in a dark space after the election loss and that she'd only got through it thanks to her friends and family as well as Australian chardonnay. She briefly talked about how she was worried about the political situation in the United States following President Donald Trump's election to the Whitehouse.

Now, you would have read in the mainstream media about how she talked about Russia and China. Well to be honest. This only played a very small part of her talk.

When she was joined by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, they talked about how Hillary met Bill at university and her eventual movement into politics. The ongoing theme through was actually about gender. Clinton said that she'd been subjected to vitriol during the presidential campaign that went beyond standard political opposition and that there was a huge element of misogyny that no male candidate would have been subjected to.

She expressed her concern about the lack of women in politics and said that sexism will only end when more women enter politics but that to do so is difficult because unlike men, who are more respected as they become more powerful, women are actually hated and despised. Basically the world doesn't like powerful women like it does men.

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in a unique position when she asked the question of how Hillary Clinton dealt with the hate and she said that she needed to maintain a balance between caring and not caring. The big issue is that if you switch off completely you become robotic but at the same time you'd crawl under the covers if you let it get to you.

It was interesting to see Gillard in the position of interviewer and who knows if she may have a future in journalism? I wouldn't rule it out.

Now to carry on this theme of gender, which is what the speech was really about, if the audience was anything to go by then we certainly don't have a lack of women in politics because women aren't interested in politics. As I observed at the speaking event, the majority of the audience were women.

Hillary Clinton gave a brief comment on President Donald Trump saying that she thought he may be getting somewhere with North Korea through his brutality, but that it should be used sparingly and not as a sole method of engaging in politics.

Towards the end of the event, Gillard asked Hillary Clinton if she'd regretted running for the presidential post, to which she said no but that if she was to do it again she would do it differently and would watch more of The Apprentice.

In short, you didn't need to be a Democrat or left winger to appreciate Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard. Anyone who is interested in politics or women's affairs would have found it a very insightful evening. The real take away from it was that we still have a long way to go in terms of getting women into powerful positions because there is still a preference for women to hold supporting, rather than main roles.

We see this outside of politics as well though. Australian superstar Delta Goodrem is experiencing this as well, with many people saying she's acting like a Diva on The Voice and that she's too egotistical. Part of this would be tall poppy syndrome and not liking successful women, but John Farnham and other successful Australian male singers haven't experienced the same level of vitriol.

Speaking of vitriol, Clinton talked about cyber bullying and that it can act as a deterrence for women getting into politics. She shared with the audience that she was aware that there were comments that women shouldn't be in politics, that women aren't capable, which she could accept as part of being in politics but that calling for her to be raped and sent to prison crossed a line. She mentioned that groups supporting her had to be shut down because although the hatred may just be online, in some cases it has the potential to go offline and there were safety concerns.

There were so many themes during her talk with Julia Gillard, and in reality, the presidential campaign was a very small part with the main part being about gender and women's rights. She also acknowledged that gender had been ignored by the media during the campaign.

As I've mentioned, this was a very insightful evening, and one that would be enjoyed by anyone who simply wants to hear a fresh perspective and hear what other people think about different things. The only thing I didn't like was at the beginning when there was a tribute to Aboriginals but that was no reflection on Hillary Clinton. That would have been influenced by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the ABC Network who were involved with the event.