Chapter 18

Wednesday 1 June 2022

Deanna met the three of them at the airport in Melbourne - she was on the same flight up to Canberra. They got on the flight and all fell asleep. Julian woke her up after the plane had landed and Deanna got them a taxi to the women’s organisation’s headquarters. Larissa shivered, glad she’d worn her warmest jacket - there was frost all around, something she hadn’t seen since she moved to Melbourne.

When they arrived, they were welcomed like royalty, with what Larissa supposed was the entire staff coming to the reception to greet them. They were led to a meeting room with a good view over parliament building, which Larissa had never seen for real before, and offered them a coffee. Once that was sorted, Deanna introduced them to the team and vice versa. For now, she said, almost all the Canberra team was here just to meet her and to be introduced to the campaign, since it was coming together in a hurry. There were women from the political arm, the marketing/communications group, the division that ran the shelters around the nation, and the research division, and events team, and also a couple of executive assistants for Deanna herself, and a lawyer. They’d all watched her talk several times, she told Larissa, including live, and she invited them to give Larissa their impressions. They were hardly going to be critical, given the circumstances, but she was a bit embarrassed by the love they gave her; they were real fans. Only the research team was less than a hundred percent complimentary, they reckoned she could have gone with some stats - ones like she used the night before, but even worse.

Then Deanna reviewed the proposed campaign again with her staff. Did they have any scope changes or big picture issues with it? They’d clearly already had their say, and they brought what were two obvious standing arguments forward.

One was around social anxiety - should they try and run a derivative program about the risks of using alcohol to manage that in a dating context, and other alternative ways to manage it - what did Larissa think? Larissa said that she definitely thought that was important enough for them to do something about, but that she didn’t know enough to say whether she thought it should be part of the campaign, a derivative thing, or something separate. But was there a different group that should pursue that? They pursed their lips and said they’d look into alternative groups. She saw that Deanna approved of her answer.

The second issue was around teenagers - how should they handle risk that they’d been seen to be encouraging teenagers to have sex? Unlike the last one, Larissa had a strong view about that: teenagers shouldn’t be drinking alcohol at all, and they should grow into sex responsibly while having fun, and if the price of encouraging them not to drink was more sex, then, well, that was a risk worth taking. Not that they should describe it as a risk. The lawyer spoke up at the point and pointed out that there were some legal constraints they had to work within, both criminal codes and advertising code of practices that might constrain what they could say about younger teenagers. Larissa frowned but there was no point trying to do something that the legal team would have to kill.

Deanna had a few questions of her own about the campaign, but Larissa and Julian didn’t have opinions about that - she let Deanna’s team argue about those. They were issues that had been aired already in the questions she’d had, and Deanna was arguing for what Larissa would’ve thought if she had strong opinions. But on one issue, Larissa put her foot down.

One of Deanna’s team talked about where they were with the ribbon idea - they were planning on getting them manufactured, and writing contracts with selected suppliers who could sell the ribbons, but only once trademark protection was in place. The question that she brought to the meeting was how much the ribbons should sell for wholesale, what the organisation’s cut should be. But all that would take weeks, and Deanna was trying to figure out how to make it faster.

“Wait,” Larissa said, “How many ribbons are you thinking of making?” Maybe half a million all up, the woman said. Larissa turned to Deanna, and said, “I think that you shouldn’t sell the ribbons. Anyone can make ribbons, including at home. Just publish the rules that make it an approved ribbon. Like, a few cm wide, with the words ‘Performance Pledge’ and ‘no alcohol’ on it, and in whatever colours suit, like a footy team colours, and let anyone make them. And show how it should be worn. If footy clubs or whatever want to make them in their own colours, they should be able to.”

“So you think we should pass up the income?” Deanna said, looking at her in surprise. “Half a million dollars?”

Larissa shrugged. “You can still sell ribbons, but more ribbons sells more ribbons, right? Just let anyone make their own, since they can. Can you licence the design so they’re not for profit unless you sell them? I know money matters, but I just think that if I’m going to say that we’re doing this campaign not to profit me, then you should do what makes the campaign the best, not the most profitable, right?”

Deanna thought about that, and looked around the table. She took a deep breath and said to her staff, “Larissa has a reasonable point. I can see that you’re not happy about that, and Larissa, you need to understand that for my staff, their ability to keep their jobs depends on our funding on an ongoing basis. Jobs that they believe in passionately. But my wonderful staff, Larissa is sticking herself out a long way for this. We can always get new jobs, if we have to, but you only have one personal reputation to protect or trash. On this one, I have to respect Larissa. We’ll see if we can do what she says.”

After a few more minutes of this kind of discussion, the receptionist poked her head in to say that the media and advertising teams had turned up. Deanna looked at her watch, and thanked her team and a bunch of the team left, and a bunch of new people entered the room. Now the subject turned to the details of the advertisements and memes that they were going to make.

This bit was hard for Larissa - she didn’t really have an opinion since she didn’t really have experience. But she was going to in the middle of this, in the memes and ads. She knew that she’d have regrets whatever they did, but at least she had a sense of where she wanted to draw some boundaries. They definitely wanted to make ads with her that were loaded with sex, with innuendo, and they wanted Julian included. She made it clear to them, skin was fine - and they’d seen a great deal of them both in Layna’s videos while preparing their ideas - but she’d only be in them if they were about love, not sex. Some of their ideas were pretty cool, though: funny, and engaging, and they wanted to make an add with her and the footy team - that’d be cool if they could bring that together.

Then the marketing team started talking about the non-alcoholic drinks part. Maria had sent a final draft of the drinks list she’d gathered across Larissa’s friends group last night. Cc: Bob, Larissa noticed, no doubt he’d incentivised her to get it done, great. And Maria and her friends had collaborated to give the non-alcoholic drinks sexy sounding names. If there was ‘sex on the beach’ as a cocktail, why shouldn’t there be a mocktail called ‘sex on the dance floor’? They’d given the drinks formal names, and then very edgy somewhat pornographic names too as an informal alternative. The marketing people were having kittens about this list - they could have so much fun with it.

She was just starting to understand this part of the process when Deanna looked at her watch, and said that she had to take Larissa up to parliament house, and they should continue working on it. Deanna drove the four of them up to parliament house and parked in the car park underneath. Larissa had never been anywhere near this area before, and she watched in wide eyed wonder as they drove up the driveway past all the protesters and the indigenous tents.

As she did, she turned to Deanna, and said, “Have you talked to the indigenous women about this campaign?” No, she hadn’t. “Can you do that? Find the right someone to talk to? The indigenous women have way bigger challenges with this than we do, right?”

Deanna frowned. “You might be right. I’ll see what I can do.”

After they passed through security, they followed Deanna through a series of corridors and into an office where they found Zali. “Larissa and Julian, lovely to see you again! I’m super-excited for today.” She gave them both a hug and a kiss.

“Thanks Zali, it’s lovely to see you again. Zali, this is Suzy, who Layna’s loaning to me to help out with the process.”

“Suzy, it’s lovely to meet you this time!” She grinned at Larissa, “Suzy helped set up my video with Layna, but we didn’t meet then. I’m sure you’ll be a great help for Larissa.”

Then Zali walked with them to the office of the Minister for Women in the government. The minister’s secretary welcomed them and led them to a meeting room. “Minister Gallagher will be here in a couple of minutes,” she told them.

A few minutes later, the minister arrived and they all stood as she entered the room. “Welcome, Zali and Deanna, and it’s wonderful to meet you, Larissa. I’ve really been looking forward to this. Who have you get with you?”

“Hello, minister, this is Julian, my husband, and Suzy, a friend who’s my executive assistant for this process.”

“Lovely to meet you both.” She introduced her two assistants, both political advisors, and then said, “So Zali briefed me about your campaign, Deanna, and I’m very keen to support anything that improves the lot of Australian Women, of course, and I’m all too familiar with the dreadful impact of alcohol through my work as a social worker - it was everywhere I turned. But I also know how hard a problem it is to take on. So why don’t you tell me what you’re planning?”

“Thanks Minister, and it’s an honour that you’ve made time to see us.” Deanna launched into the campaign description, the justification, and the way it came about. “We’re fully aware of how difficult a challenge this is, but my board listened to Larissa and decided that we’re going to do this. Obviously this is not a campaign the government can run directly itself, but there’s a few things that we’re looking for support from the government for.” The minister indicated for Deanna to go on.

“First, we’re asking for you to support the campaign goals in your public and private messaging, particularly if and when you’re asked about it.” The minister nodded, she was very happy to do that.

“Second, we’d like to work with the government to modify the liquor licensing and taxation laws to provide significant incentives to licensed retail locations to also sell non-alcoholic drinks. A real focus of the campaign is to choose to drink those instead. There are already some incentives, but our research shows clearly that they’re not strong enough.”

“Third, we believe that our message will be strengthened if we work with the many existing government anti-alcohol campaigns. Your department, along with several others, already runs such programs and invests significantly in them, but it would be good if we can align timing and messaging to the degree that we should.”

“Finally, we are planning to invest a significant amount of our financial resources into this campaign, and we expect it to be a multi-year investment, so it would be helpful if you can encourage corporate contributions when you see the opportunity. Minister, thanks for listening.”

Larissa knew enough of the game now to know that Deanna had already met with the aides, and hashed out the content and even wording of what she said and asked for, so that it was pretty much all agreed in advance.

“Thanks, Deanna, it’s my pleasure to work with you again. You’ve devoted much of your life to this cause, and you’ve made a real difference.” Oh, that was a lovely thing for Larissa to hear, really nice to hear someone being recognised like that. One day, perhaps, that’d be her, but in the meantime, she could keep living to her principles. Now the minister turned to Larissa. “Larissa, it’s a pleasure to meet you. You have an unbelievable profile for someone so young. I’ve already watched the presentation you made at the women’s dinner, which was great, and I talked to my kids and they got me to watch you on YouTube on Sunday night, some really amazing videos, so I’d like you tell me about USA last week, and what makes Larissa tick.”

Larissa told her about the trip to USA - the high points. Then she said, “Minister, I’m not sure what to tell you about what makes me tick. What I say to myself is ‘my faith, my friends, my family, my man,’ and I know that my welfare comes from passionately believing in those things, so each day I try to invest in those things. But I don’t think all of what you watched covers Harry.” She told the minister about the guide dog rescue, and how that linked to the games she played as a little girl. “Other than that ... you know about my mum and Bob and Mary?” The minister nodded but said for her to explain that anyway, so she did.

“My, Larissa, you’re well connected, and well known. Deanna, you’ve found the perfect person for your campaign.”

“Oh no, minister, Larissa and her campaign idea found us. We could never have imagined she’d exist.”

“Right. Julian, tell me about yourself.”

Julian told them about growing up perfectly normal, being hassled as a kid, and taking up Taekwondo, and then eventually becoming a master at it. Doing biology through uni because of his concern at the impact of biodiversity, and then two accidents happening pretty much the same week: Larissa starting Taekwondo and deciding to date him, and Layna and Chez asking him to help with Layna’s videos. Since then ... having incredible fun, changing the world, trying to hang on for the ride, and loving sharing their principles with his passionate and demanding wife. What’s not to like?

“So it doesn’t bother you that your wife has a higher profile that you do?”

Julian looked at her in confusion. “Umm, what? I don’t know what you mean? Of course the world should recognise Larissa for the incredible woman she is, and they do. What’s not to like about that? Everything I have is hers and everything she has is mine, so her recognition only makes my life better.”

“And does it bother you two that one inevitable result of this campaign is a lot of focus on your own relationship, and your performance in bed?”

Julian grinned. “Nah. We don’t claim to be experts, but we can claim to practice a lot. Part of Larissa is that she’s very open about that side of life, always has been while I’ve known her, and I’m on board with that.”

Suzy laughed when he stopped. “Minister, they might not claim to be experts, but all their friends say that if there was a sex olympics, their main interest would be how many medals Julian and Larissa would win, and all of us have watched them go at it when other people would be drinking.”

The minister laughed and said, “Thanks, Suzy. Tell me about yourself.”

Suzy did - daughter of Larissa’s big boss at the vet service, finished school, volunteered with Layna’s project, completely fell in love with everything about it, but most of all Larissa, and then Nathan, and now working as Chez and Layna’s admin assistant, and beyond thrilled to be supporting Larissa in anything she wanted to do. “There’s a group of us, minister, in awe of Larissa, who’ll do anything for her, and who try to copy her in our lives. We’ve all taken the pledge too.”

Then the minister went back through the campaign, and the things Deanna asked for, and gave her own assistants action items to move those things forward. Then she brought a couple of her own ideas to the table. “Deanna, the whole thread about Larissa’s care for injured wild animals from a child, and Harry’s guide dog, that’s a useful aspect of the campaign. Have you talked to Mark about that?”

“We did actually do that, briefly, and we’d have liked to collaborate with him but it’s tricky policy question for him, and he didn’t think he’d be able to do that much. But perhaps you could ease the way on that?”

The minister frowned. “I’ll see what I can do. Another thing is that this government is going to prioritise sustainable energy generation, and I think that using the word ‘sustainable’ in regard to this campaign would be helpful; it’d certainly make it easier for me to generate support across the cabinet.”

Deanna looked at Larissa, who nodded. Sure, why not. They could certainly use that word in the right places, and she liked the idea. “Sure, Minister, that’s a good idea.” Julian was nodding vigorously as well.

“Great. OK. I can and will support your campaign, Deanna. Zali, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. We will certainly support it enthusiastically informally, but of course any formal support will need policy review. I’m going to assign Fiona here to work with you. Fiona, please explain why you offered to represent me here.”

Fiona did - yet another woman whose life was ruined by domestic violence, and yes, as almost always the case, alcohol was fuel on the fire in a significant fashion. Now that she could speak for herself, there was an intensity about her, and Larissa understood - the minister would do everything she could to support them.

“OK. Great,” the minister said. “Fiona, I’m going to leave you here with Deanna and Suzy to discuss project coordination, while Zali, Larissa and Julian are coming with me for a second.” Oh, sure, but what did she want?

A photo op. Right, Larissa should’ve known. Her other assistant took carefully arranged photos in the minister’s private office, in front of the two Australian flags - the traditional Commonwealth one, and the indigenous one. The photos were going to be released to the press, published on twitter, and one of them was going to go on the minister’s wall in her office. Larissa understood; Deanna had told her that ministers competed for portfolios that got them photos with famous people, for electability purposes. The previous minister for health had also covered sport. Health, a massive critical portfolio had shared his public time equally with sport, a small portfolio of little genuine importance to the nation, because of photo ops. And this minister had no portfolio like that, so she was taking what she could get. Suzy would help Deanna, Zali and the minister’s office on the press release wording.

When that was all done, and it was just them, the minister took Larissa’s hand, and Julian in her other and said, “Larissa and Julian, I want to think you for your commitment to the welfare of Australian women. You’re really putting yourselves on the line for it, and this government will remember, and value your contribution.”

Wow, that really felt good. Very special, in fact. Nice to have Zali in the background witnessing this too, and Zali took a photo of that on Julian’s phone, for their personal use only.

Then they went back into the meeting with the others, who agreed that the were done. The minister then asked Deanna and Larissa to come with her to her next meeting, while Julian went off with Zali, and Suzy was left in the minister’s office. Larissa followed the minister. What was this? It hadn’t featured in her program for the day - she thought they had some downtime now, though Julian had always been going off with Zali: the independents were meeting into and over lunch, and Julian was invited. That was very definitely an upshot of the White House meeting.

The minister picked up another aide, and then she led them into a new meeting room, full of a bunch of guys in suits. Larissa just about fell over: one of the guys in suits was Bob. What the hell was this? But she managed not to say anything, since Bob didn’t - he just acknowledged her with his eyes, so she returned it. The minister sat down, and another man called the meeting to order, and asked for introductions. He introduced himself as the Assistant Treasurer, and named his aide. Then the minister for women introduced herself and named her aide. Deanna introduced herself, and named Larissa as her aide. It suited Larissa just fine to stay silent in this group. Around the rest of the table, the CEO of the Australian Hotels Association, and three of his members, and the secretary of the Hospitality Workers Union.

Larissa watched with interest; the CEO of the hotels association introduced the first two of his members smoothly - the chair of the board of a well known brewery / alcohol company, and a CEO of a very large food and drinks corporation. The chair of the board was an inherited position - old money, while the second, the CEO, he was one of the men who’d emailed her, and he was giving Larissa a very intense look. But the CEO of the hotels association seemed a little less confident introducing Bob - not sure how to describe his role, settling for describing him as an investor with wide ranging interests in alcohol wholesale and retail. Interesting, Larissa would bet that some string pulling had happened in the background for Bob to be sitting in this room. But who pulled them, and why?

The Assistant Treasurer thanked the industry for meeting with them, and said that they wished to consult with industry around some changes they were going to be introducing to the taxation that applied to drinks containing alcohol. He handed over to his assistant to describe the changes. Larissa tried to listen carefully, but this content was super technical. What she did pick up on was that an additional or increased tax on alcoholic drinks was going to be applied across the board, partly at the wholesale level, and also at the retail level. The tax increases weren’t that significant, though they led to an astonishingly large amount of money. The wholesale taxes were the bigger hikes, and applied principally to higher alcoholic content drinks, but they didn’t apply to low alcohol variants of the drinks; in fact, taxes were reduced on lower alcohol drinks. The retail taxes applied to all alcohol sold. Larissa frowned - the exact way the retail taxes was described would be really hard to administer, and she could see the industry representatives were pretty hostile about that. Then the assistant to the assistant said that if the retail outlets demonstrated that they met the requirements for making non-alcoholic drinks available, and encouraging their consumption, the retail taxes and the system to track them would be waived, though those requirements were yet to be worked out.

Right. This was Deanna’s policy, no question about it. The whole intent was to push the industry to encourage and advertise lower alcohol drinks, which would have bigger profit margins under this scheme, and to force all licensed premises to provide good and interesting non-alcoholic drinks as an alternative.

Then it was Minister Gallagher’s turn, and she emphasised that these policy changes were driven by considerations around the welfare of Australian women, and implied that the industry better get on board, or else, but that if they did, the government would certainly support them. And one way that was happening was that they were running a significant campaign aimed at changing the way Australians consumed alcohol, and she asked Deanna to describe it. So Deanna did just that, laying out the high level features of the campaign, the performance pledge and emphasizing the corporate support she already had, which was more extensive than Larissa realised.

Then the Assistant Treasurer thanked the industry representatives for listening, and invited their comment. They’d clearly been blind-sided, and their body language was quite hostile, other than Bob. Each of them made passionate statements about the difficulties they’d suffered through covid, and how hard it was to make a living and just why was the government choosing to pile it on now, and the government could expect a massive fight in the media at this stupid attempt to increase the cost of living for normal Australians. The union delegate expressed his sorrow that he was going to have to support the corporations over the labor government, but really, what was the government thinking here?

Larissa would’ve been shocked at their attitude a few weeks ago, but after listening to Zali, and sitting in the White House, she knew: this was all posturing and establishing negotiation positions; they hadn’t begun to get close to what they actually thought yet. But as the discussion went another few rounds, it was clear they were digging in, and things started to get testy. At this point, the brewery board chair turned to Deanna, and said, “This seems like a very poorly thought out campaign to me. If you’re going run a convincing campaign like this, you’ll need a very big name to front it, and who can that be? Either they’ll be teflon clean, and they won’t be at all convincing to Australians, or else they’ll have a messy history, the smear campaign will be horrible, and the campaign will be doomed from the start. And whoever it is will have to be very convincing to young people. Who on earth could that be, who would put their name to it?”

He sat back, satisfied with himself, and Larissa glared at him. ‘A very messy’ history? So he knew and admitted just what the fuck he was making his money off? But on the other hand, the other CEO, he was hanging his head in shame, shaking his head in disbelief. He actually had his hands over his face, and he looked at Larissa in apology. Bob was just glaring at the guy - if looks could kill ... What a fuckwit, taking him down was going to be a pleasure; he was certainly going to the butt of her jokes and criticism in her media appearances.

Deanna actually smiled at him. “Well, ordinarily I would’ve agreed with you, of course, but this campaign is built around the only individual I can imagine who could front it, and the idea came to us from her. Gentlemen, please meet Larissa Wright.”

“Hi guys. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Well, most of you.” Bob flinched for that. “Yes, this war on alcohol is my idea, though I really didn’t actually expect it to be a campaign, and I don’t really want to be the face of it. But apparently I have to do it for the reasons you just said, and so I will. I’m the one who’s going to stand up on national media and say those things. Am I convincing? I’ll try to be, and I do have a bit of a profile with young people. Am I teflon clean? Very, very far from it. The smear campaign on me could be quite something. But it doesn’t matter, I believe that this is something we have to do, and I’ll wear whatever it is people dig up on me, and they will.”

“You gentlemen aren’t familiar with Larissa?” the Minister for Women asked them. Three of them indicated that they weren’t. She shook her head. “You guys should really do your homework. Larissa is a very unique individual, and extremely famous amongst young Australians right now. My kids are massive fans. I assure you, targeting Larissa would be a very big mistake.”

The CEO of the brewery was clearly a bit slow on the intake. Inherited stupidity, possibly, because he said, “Sounds like there’s plenty to find then. I guess we’ll have a look.”

“Sure,” Larissa said. “You can look. You’ll be able to find people who saw or participated in my big drunken rampage. You’ll be able to dig up guys and girls who claim to have fucked me, and I won’t have a clue whether they did or not. I’ll give you a freebie, you’ll be able to find photos of me getting tossed out of a nightclub nearly naked in front a big crowd, drunk as a skunk, rubbed in my own vomit. Yep. I really know my alcohol, you can believe that. And you might even locate a video of me having sex with my husband that someone took illegally. If you find that, please give me a copy. But understand this: you’re making money by selling violence and destruction, making war on Australian women, and we won’t forget, and I won’t be turned aside.” She glared at the board chair, who looked shocked.

Bob said something for the first time. “Gentlemen, you’re really barking up the wrong tree here. And you really don’t understand Larissa. I do, because she’s my step-daughter, and I’m extremely proud of her.” He smiled at Larissa, who nearly laughed at the shock on the other faces in the room. “You need to understand that my daughter is formidable, incorruptible, and extremely famous, and I have every reason to expect that the campaign Deanna has described will be extremely popular and effective because of Larissa and her husband Julian. Further, I assure you, I will remember anyone who goes after my daughter, and I will not forget or forgive.” Fuck that was said in a very threatening tone, wow.

“But really, you’re totally missing the big picture here. Firstly, you cannot afford to oppose these measures and this campaign. If you do, you’ll be standing up in support of domestic violence. Who of you are going to retain any staff when Larissa and all of social media go after them? And she can, and should, and will. You won’t get laid for months, and your quality staff will all quit in disgust. Believe me, the only way forward is for you to get on board with this.”

“And why not? We’re being given a gift here. The campaign and the government aren’t going after supply, or our profit, or for a total ban, they’re going after drinking patterns. So we can lift the margins on the low alcohol drinks and market them hard as sexy alternatives, loving choices, and we have a license to do that. You get that, right? We can hike margins and reduce costs. Like, what are you opposing here?” Bob stopped and sat back.