From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Wednesday, April 30th. It's never happened in Australia, but should we have a federal minister for men, Dan Repacholi. A federal labor MP who is currently campaigning for re-election says it's a no brainer. He knows how taboo it is that to promote the idea risks him being labelled anti-woman. But tragedies and struggles in his electorate and his own experience
have convinced him of the need to speak out. Today, Foreign Affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Not on the movement across the globe pushing for this idea and whether it could happen in Australia. So, Matthew, just to start, can you briefly begin by telling us about labor MP Dan Repacholi? Like, who is this guy? And I guess perhaps if he is an unlikely person to openly advocate that our federal government establish a minister for men.
Well, Dan Repacholi has been the minister for the Hunter since the last election, since 2020 22.
Look who's back. Back again. Dan's back. Tell a friend. The federal election is coming. Would you like mine?
It's a very interesting seat. It's traditionally been one of the safest labor seats in the country. This is a coal mining area. Very blue collar, heavy union presence there. But in recent elections, it's been drifting away from the party. But Dan Repacholi came in at the last election as really the ideal candidate for labor there. He was a tradesperson. He worked as a coal miner himself. He represented Australia
at five Olympics as a sports shooter. So he's got that athletic track record, which is appealing in a politician, and he's held onto the seat.
We say fee free TAFE. What do they say? No, we say pay rises for aged care and childcare workers. What do they say? No.
He's very well known for in the press gallery in Canberra is his annual calendar he puts out. That is him eating a different hamburger from a different fast food chain in his electorate for every month of the year, and they're in high demand in December in the press gallery. So he's he's a labor backbencher. And this area, this seat has been discussed as one that could be competitive at this election. So I was very keen to go up there and spend some time with him and see
what was going on in this seat. He's very passionate about hamburgers. We did eat one together. I said, if we're coming to the Hunter, we have to do it. And he was happy to have a burger. So it was a very relaxed day spent with him.
Okay, so on trend or perhaps on brand, I should say for him to be chomping down on a hamburger with you. But tell me about how this discussion about having a minister for men actually came about, because I know you asked him about it. So what made you actually ask him if he thought it might be a good idea? And was he happy to then go on the record with, with his feelings that yeah, he did think it's a good idea?
Yes. This was unexpected for me. When we were going to the Hunter, I was more thinking of it in terms of the environment, energy, coal mining. That's what we associate with this seat. But he was saying men, the men he encounters in his social life, but also really as an MP, the amount of people he meets are much more reluctant to talk about their health, emotional issues, also financial issues. He was talking about this, that we're
all talking about cost of living in the election. But many men who are genuinely doing it very tough will often be too proud to talk about those struggles. So it was in the context of that this was coming up. And I said, oh, well, do you think we should perhaps look at the idea of having a minister for men? We have a minister for women. We also have a role which is very strongly focused on women's health as well. And just off the top of my head said, would
that be something worth pursuing? And he instinctively said, yes, I think that would be great. And he started thinking about ways that this could work. But yeah, he did pause for a second to wonder whether to go on the record about it, which I think gets to there's been a bit of a taboo around this idea that to be advocating for men. Does that make you sexist? Does that make you a misogynist? Is it problematic in some way to say that men have particular issues that
need addressing? Because the Minister for women position that was created in the Hawke years, you know, that's the idea that women have particular issues that need a focus. Yeah, there's there's a bit of a stigma around it and whether that should be the case. I think when you look at some of the statistics, some of the issues that are specific to men, we should probably do away with that taboo and we can have a conversation about this.
And so, you know, he did say to you, you know, that there was a risk that he could be branded as anti-woman if he went ahead and sort of said, actually, yeah, I do think it's a good idea. But he did then go ahead to say, no, that's fine. I'm not going to censor myself. I'm going to I'm going to tell you all about this. So tell us, I guess, a bit about why he did want to go ahead on the record about this, you know, what does he feel about this more broadly?
Yeah. We've had stories in the past where talking about things like the men's rights movement, you know, that is very problematic in many ways. And he doesn't want to be associated with that, understandably. And what he said was when he thought about it. And I saw this firsthand when the with the people he was speaking to while door knocking, we went up to give a campaign poster to a Labour supporter in his electorate in Singleton in the Hunter Valley, and she was shocked. She said, you
look so great, you've lost all this weight. What's happening? And he said, oh, well, I'm actually on this new drug called Mounjaro, which is very similar to Ozempic. And he was very up front talking to her about why he went on it and how it's changed his life. And I spoke to him after about it and he said, look, I've decided to speak openly about this. I'm not going to pretend that I'm on this amazing diet or that
I'm taking up so much more exercise. He's lost almost 30 kilos on it already and wants to keep going. And so I think that's part of it, is that he's decided people need to speak openly about their health. Men need to speak openly about their health. He's trying to set an example doing it. And that's why he's open to this idea of having a minister for men, a minister for men's health, perhaps a special envoy for men and boys. You know, there could be different ways
that it could work. We have lots of these different types of positions now. And he thought it was a good thing for people to talk about.
And he also opened up, I guess, about, you know, something quite personal, I would have thought, which is, you know, his disappointment, I guess, when his diet absolutely spun out of control at a certain point in his life. So can you tell us what happened there? Because it does sound like it was a difficult experience for him.
Yeah. Exactly. That that goes to the emotional issues where he was talking about that. He's competed at five Olympics before he wanted to compete again at the Paris Olympics. Now, this is extremely rare for sitting politicians to compete at the Olympics. This would have been a big deal for him, but he really narrowly missed out. Extremely, extremely close. He could have gone, but he just didn't make it. And he said that sent him into a bit of a spiral. Uh,
that that he was upset by that. And he started eating a lot more than usual. He also spoke about the issues that men have with alcohol and drinking a huge amount of beer in one sitting. So he was very upfront about that.
We'll be right back. Matt, I want to turn now to, I guess, the broader picture of perhaps there being a ministry for men. We are hearing about it overseas. Right. I think it's been floated in the UK. So can you tell me about that? Because it seems to have dovetailed with this show. That's massive at the moment, adolescence and this sort of larger discussion that we keep hearing about the crisis in masculinity that we're sort of seeing play out. So can you just tell me about this?
Yeah, I think this conversation has been building for a few years. To start with, there has been a big conversation in the United States about this. There's a book by a scholar called Richard Reeves called Of Boys and Men. And I know that's generated a lot of discussion. He's looking at the numbers, you know, about boys education, about men's suicide rates going into the numbers and trying to say that we essentially have a crisis of masculinity and
we need to address it. In the UK now, we're seeing a lot of discussion around this right now because of the Netflix show adolescence, which is going into some of these dark subcultures around incels who would call them and, and some of the the dark side of modern masculinity.
80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. You must trick them because you'll never get them in a normal way.
Adolescence, Nick. He should be shown in Parliament. It should be shown in schools. It should be shared more widely.
We saw Anthony Albanese talk about this at a debate. He's found time to watch this on the campaign trail.
I don't know if you've seen adolescents. I encourage anyone to have a look at it. It's scary. It's scary. This is something we need to have conversations about. It's something that government needs to be determined front and center.
Well, and in the context of that, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been asked should they have a minister for men there? Now, I think going to the slightly taboo aspect of this, we're speaking about before he said no, he's not going to do that right now. He says there are big issues for boys and men, but it's more about creating good role models. He doesn't think we're at the stage yet where you need a special minister.
Are we sleepwalking into a kind of crisis for masculinity here? How do you feel? Not. Not necessarily as a prime minister, but as a dad.
I am worried about this. I've got a 16 year old boy and a 14 year old.
And something I'd stress, though, about what Dan Repacholi was telling me was that this wouldn't be an adversarial type of position. This wouldn't be about pitting men against women. He said that he could imagine the minister working closely with, say, the Minister for Women's Health. They could do joint events together. It's not about saying one is more important than the other or diminishing the particular problems that women face, but
about speaking to both constituencies. And he could imagine them being being two sides of the same coin, really.
But let's get into what's actually happening. Like who is speaking to these men, you know, is it the Andrew Tates of the world? Is it is it what messages do you think they're getting more broadly that people are so concerned about?
And this is what needs to be interrupted. It's something that school teachers will be very familiar with, that some of the social media content that boys and young men in particular are consuming can be really worrying people like Andrew Tate. I know school teachers have come in absolutely alarmed by how many young boys this is, where they're getting their ideas about girls and women from. And, you know, we're supposed to be moving towards a more modern, enlightened,
perhaps progressive age of gender relations. And it seems that isn't happening because of some of these, some of these ideas which are about control and domination and a very disturbing and for a long time have been happening outside of the view, really, of the mainstream media, of politicians. It's young people living in their own world without much and their parents not having much access to that world.
So I think that's a big discussion is about how you break up that pretty terrible feedback loop and introduce better role models, you know, people who would have been Olympians and sports people like Dan, and who can provide an alternative frame of reference.
And let's just talk a little bit about, I guess, what are the outcomes at the moment for boys and men? Let's look to Australia. You know, are they suffering? I guess in a way that's perhaps under-acknowledged, because I believe they are right, at least when it comes to school outcomes and even suicide rates. So can you just tell me a little bit about this, I guess?
Very much so. It's different. So we know and we do talk about the important issues that women face. We talk about the gender pay gap. We talk about the terrible issues with domestic violence. It's overwhelmingly women that face that issue. The Herald's been running stories recently about misogyny in healthcare, the way women aren't always believed. So they're specific. And I think it is acknowledged that there was there were particular gender dynamics at play there that need to
be addressed. You can't speak about domestic violence as if it's happening to everyone in the same way, even though some men also face issues in that terrain. So similarly with men, I think that the big one is suicide. Uh, about three quarters of suicides each year in Australia are men, and that probably doesn't get discussed that much in terms of why men are killing themselves at rates so much higher than women and and why the numbers aren't coming down. Uh,
that's a big one. Uh, educational attainment is really a turning around that, uh, more women are getting bachelor's degrees now, significantly more women than men. And that has a downstream effect throughout the economy. You know, if we're looking at men more in, uh, skilled manufacturing jobs, that can be, uh, a bit more, uh, turbulent, you know, less reliable, perhaps we're seeing that play out very much in Trump's America, leading into some of the anger that men in particular
feel about the changing economy. They're vulnerable to that.
And you mentioned suicide rates there and the horrific reality that so many more men in Australia are committing suicide in comparison to women. And I believe this is something that Dan Repacholi actually spoke to you about, in particular, two young men from his own electorate, both under the age of 20, who recently took their own lives. So was this something that he is sort of quite impassioned about?
Yeah, he was moved by that. And when we talk about why was he willing to put his name to this idea, it was definitely examples like that that have happened pretty recently in his electorate. And the shocking thing about that is definitely also the the young ages that are happening as these young people, young boys really or extremely young men committing suicide, that's, uh, seems to be
a pretty worrying new trend in this area. You know, people with so much more life left to live, um, that that's sparking this whole discussion that we're also talking about whether social media, whether to have restrictions on who can use social media, so that that definitely impacted him and helped make him decide he wanted to talk about this.
I mean, just the alarming stats alone, I guess on suicide does make you wonder whether, you know, there really is a strong argument here for there being more of a focus, I guess, on mental health from the federal government. But you and I were speaking before recording that, though it does seem like Dan Repacholi is, as much as we know, the first federal MP who has really been
advocating for this. We do know that another labor MP, Susan Templeman, that she forwarded a petition to the government in October last year that the government introduce a minister for men. I think this idea actually came from a member of the public, not from her. But what did the petition argue at the time, and what do we know about how the government responded?
Yes, this petition was making some of the points we have here about those issues around men's health, men's suicide, men's education. It's been pretty much a rejected by the government. I asked the Prime Minister I was on the campaign trail with him when we published this piece, and I asked him about it, and he was very impressed by Dan Repacholi. He's he's a big fan of him. He was very enthused by the issues he was talking about and getting men talking more about their health like he
was he was right, right onto it. But he definitely didn't commit to creating this, uh, position. I think he might be more in the Keir Starmer position, where it's a bit of a step too far right now. Uh, but who knows? Down the track, if momentum builds and more people come on board, including perhaps, uh, female politicians, if they came on board, it could be something we would see. Because, look, we have a lot of, uh,
special envoys and ministers representing many different fields, uh, cybersecurity. security. Um. Veterans affairs. There's there's many positions that are important, but I would say this is a pretty important one as well. And it's not about saying that just because men have issues to address, that women have it easier. I don't think that's the case at all. And in many ways, women would be beneficiaries from trying to address male suicide, for example. That would be a great thing for them.
So I think perhaps, hopefully, we're entering a time where we can speak about these issues a bit more freely without putting it in a binary of only one gender is going to do better or worse. Um, it's pretty clear that there are different issues that they face, but that are both important.
And do you think it's still taboo, though? I guess just to wrap up this idea that, you know, that that boys and men are, I guess, frequently getting these messages of toxic masculinity and men are to blame for all these problems. Do you think it's still taboo, though, to sort of look at the other side of the coin and go, this might be really damaging for for some men to hear.
Um, I think we're only starting to talk about it enough. Uh, and and that's the thing I think it's it's something that's going to be have to be a lot more focused on, uh, in politics, in the media. I don't think we have the option to be kind of logged out and be leaving it to young people to figure out themselves. So I think this is going to be, to be honest, one of the big issues of our time.
We're coming up at the end of an election campaign that's been pretty a small target, uh, you know, cost of living. You know, these things are important. But this is one of the big swirling, swirling issues of modern life, uh, is essentially, you know, is do we face a crisis of masculinity and we're going to see more about it and we're going to have to take it more seriously.
And I do have to ask you, what is it like to sort of see this coming to the fore as a man, you know, because I of course, You know, I've long been passionate about. Well, I'm passionate about all humans. But, you know, I've experienced the stuff that women experience, you know,
systemic biases and all that. What's it like as a man, I guess, to sort of see this come to the fore as something that might, you know, gain respect and be less taboo to actually discuss, given that it is it's controversial, I guess, just because the focus has been on women for so long and for good reason, to address all of the imbalances against us.
Yeah, I can feel some of that, of whether there's some taboo to talk about it. Um, yeah. It to, to raise it. I was I was worried whether Dan would want to go there and be willing to talk about it, but I think it was good that we had a trusting relationship. Uh, he said that he's had very good feedback to his idea, which was which was interesting. So, uh, yeah, I think it's about being more, uh, more open to it. And, uh, I'm glad we got around to doing it.
Yeah, well, I was thrilled to see the article. I think it's something that should be explored further and with greater compassion. I would hope for people on all sides. So thank you so much Matt for your time.
No worries at all.
Today's episode was produced by Josh Towers and Julia Carcasole. Our executive producer is Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date. Sign up to our Morningedition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.