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5 Of The Best Quotes From Anna Bligh’s Memoir

5 Of The Best Quotes From Anna Bligh's Memoir
5 Of The Best Quotes From Anna Bligh's Memoir

Anna Bligh. Photo: Getty Images

Anna Bligh says she was "bloodied", "battered" and "bruised by sexism" as she challenged the status quo as Queensland's first female premier, in her new memoir out this week. But she urges other women not to give up.

In the book, called Through The Wall (HarperCollins, $39.99) she describes her childhood, growing up in a working class neighbourhood with her single mother in the Gold Coast, the "terrifying" and "harrowing" 2011 Queensland floods, winning and losing the premier-ship in Queensland and fighting cancer.

The memoir takes it's name from the film Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, and in it Bligh recounts how she was at home watching a film on the couch with her sons when she had a moment of clarity. In one scene, Brad Pitt (starring as baseball manager Billy Beane) is told “I know you are taking it in the teeth, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always.”

Bligh says watching the scene in 2012 (the same year her party lost the Queensland elections), made her realise that the criticism she had faced as a politician and a woman was partly due to the fact she was a pioneer.

"Immediately I recognised my own experience," she writes. "Yes I thought that's right. I went through the wall and I got bloody."

"I got bloody as I challenged the status quo. I got bruised by the sexism of the doubters and resisters. I got pummelled by the double standards applied to women in public life. I got roughed up by the relentless media criticism, harsh cartoons and constant public scrutiny... The wall I ploughed headlong into was the wall that holds women back from leadership in every sphere; political leadership no exception. On the other side of it is power. The power to make a difference, the power to get things done, the power to shape our world, the power to make things fairer and better for everyone."

5 Of The Best Quotes From Anna Bligh's Memoir
5 Of The Best Quotes From Anna Bligh's Memoir

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Here are five choice piece of wisdom from the book:

On support: “No one makes it through the wall without help… You need a team of supporters pushing you through… But in the end, you go through the wall on your own.”

On persistence: “Far from being discouraged by the doubters and the naysayers, I have been spurred on by a fierce desire to prove the bastards wrong.”

On being the first: "Being the first... means pushing into the unseen and the unknowable. When you get through it, you will have no map to navigate the new territory. You be cutting a path where one did not exist. The navigational effort is often exhausting, frustrating and infuriating. But at every step it is an effort worth making.

On obstacles: “What is this wall… It is a barrier built of many layers, a wall that rests on the strong foundations of centuries of history where women never, or rarely, assumed positions of public power. It is built from the solid bricks of prejudice… The barriers are both external and internal.”

On what’s next: “There are more battles to be had and there will be more bruises and scar tissue earned by more women as they too carve out new paths… The challenge for us all is to confront and change the social, institutional and psychological barriers that get in their way.”

Through The Wall by Anna Bligh (HarperCollins, $39.99) is out now.

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