You’re in Melbourne, and in the high-risk category for coronavirus. Are you scared of dying? Nope, I’m not! I know there’s nothing afterwards – just oblivion – but I don’t want to be in great pain for a long period of time. I would hate to, as my mother did, have dementia. It was horrendous. “I’ve had a good life,” she said when she was 89. “Can you kill me?” I want to avoid all that. They’re the things that frighten me. Not dying.

POLITICS

Loading

Science is about evidence and data. Politics is about values and compromise. Are the two compatible? Well, they are when there’s a pandemic, aren’t they? Everyone is taking notice of data and evidence now. But we’ve had data about climate change, the effects of alcohol, and how best to run Indigenous services with Indigenous control – and it’s been ignored. I hope that with COVID-19, people will say, “Hang on, if we can do it for this virus, why can’t we do it for all the other big, wicked problems affecting us?”

Even though more people are now listening to science, it must still frustrate you when conspiracy theories – such as, for example, how 5G spreads coronavirus, or that vaccinations cause autism – continue to propagate? We’ve always had these people. We’ve just got to keep on providing the evidence, talking to people, taking every opportunity to give parents and the population the best advice we can. It’s becoming increasingly difficult with extreme social media groups. But anti-vaxxers are a very small minority in Australia.

When it comes to handling COVID-19, is there anything our leaders, state and federal, should be doing differently or better? They’ve done amazingly well. You can blame the Ruby Princess and you can blame the quarantine hotels in Melbourne. They were mistakes. But boy, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews is probably up all night. He’s been extraordinary. Federal politicians have been extraordinary. And the response of First Nations people has been nothing short of extraordinary, too.

How so? These are the highest-risk people in our community. They have higher rates of chronic disease. With the H1N1 flu in 2009, there were high rates of morbidity and mortality among Indigenous people. What about COVID? No one has been in intensive care. No one has died. No cases in remote communities. Because Indigenous people took control. They lobbied the government to close remote communities, get personal protective equipment and get tested. They took their vulnerable, old Indigenous people off the streets and put them in good housing. They’re doing better than almost any population worldwide.

When are you going to run for office, Fiona? Oh! [Laughs] I’d probably last a day in politics. I’ve been approached by both sides.

Really? Who had the more alluring offer? I won’t go into that. But I’m an out-and-out socialist, so I’m very supportive of the Greens and more socialist policies. But you’ve got to give it to the Coalition: they’ve certainly got some of the Closing the Gap stuff better.

SEX

You grew up in a family of science and medicine. Does that mean you knew all that you needed to about sex? The opposite! Neither of my parents could talk to me about anything. They were dead-scared I was going to get pregnant. It was my peers who told me about sex. Later, when I was in my mid-teens, my then five-year-old sister said, “Noni, I don’t understand how the mother vomits the baby.” I said, “Okay, we’ve got to talk …”

You were one of six women in 100 students studying medicine at the University of Western Australia in the late 1960s. Was that exhilarating or frustrating? Looking back, it was terrific. [Laughs] You felt like such a pioneer! I didn’t care that there weren’t any women’s toilets in the surgical wards; I just used the nurses’ toilets. I didn’t have enough intellectual understanding about power and misogyny, and cannot remember being subjected to any kind of discrimination.

Loading

How do you reflect on women’s testimonies of finding their careers in medicine stalled or defined by sexism? Oh, I’m devastated by it. You know, more women start university in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] subjects than men. There’s this dramatic changeover as biology kicks in. You’re not going to get women in the higher echelons of STEM unless you treat mothers and fathers the same.

When it comes to how sexual politics has changed in your lifetime, what are you most happy about? I’m pleased women are starting to get a bit more power and support. Still, it’s worrying women are so frightened to come out and call things out regarding inequity, harassment and discrimination. At the same time, girls in some other countries will not be going to school again for years. Everybody has to work towards helping everybody else. And Australia needs to look outward a bit more.