Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Dr Margaret Beavis

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how influential and authentic people lead through change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of ‘The Change Happens’ podcast where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.

In the last few decades there has been much debate around the balance between the allocation of funds towards defence spending versus diplomacy and foreign aid. Even the mere mention of nuclear weapons, let alone the thought of nuclear war sends a wakeup call to most of us. Or does it? How real and relevant is this threat today?

To understand how things have changed and where the world sits on this I’ve asked Dr Margaret Beavis to join me to share her insights and passion on this. I’m interested in Margaret’s experiences of driving collective action to drive collective human security.

Margaret: is actually a GP with over 25 years’ experience in community medicine but she also lectures at Melbourne University and researches and writes on nuclear waste, defence, diplomacy and foreign aid and our country’s approach to war.

Currently she is the Vice President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War and Co-Chair of the Australian Management Committee of the International Campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. The acronym for that is ‘ICAN’. Now that Committee has managed to make quite some impact, so much so in fact, that ICAN was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its role in the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty that was adopted by the UN in 2017 with the support of 122 countries, and Margaret got to go to Norway for the ICAN Nobel Peace Prize event back in the day when we could travel across international borders. Clearly there is lots to explore with Margaret, so let’s get into it.

Hi Margie how are you ?

Margaret: Hi, thank you for that introduction.

Jenelle: Glad to have you on the podcast today and Margie as I noted in that intro, you’re a long term GP. Help me make the bridge here. How and why did you find yourself chasing a path focused on the prevention of war and the abolition of nuclear weapons?

Margaret: I suppose being a GP in many ways led me into the area of warfare. A few years back worked for a number of years at a free clinic for refugees. I worked one day a week there and it was interesting getting to know these people and hearing their stories. So many of them had fled either to avoid prosecution or to avoid conflict. Looking at war there are wars that are… I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of war but some wars are more politically motivated than you would think.

The Medical Association of Prevention of War is designed to reduce conflict, reduce conflict with diplomacy. I suppose diplomacy and security is in everybody’s interest, with working on diplomacy. Working on how Australia goes to war. Just thinking about our defence budget. Thinking about other budgets. I suppose an underlying concern of ours – healthcare is there but there are so many ways at a border level rather than just as a GP but at a border population level that you can create change.

Jenelle: Clearly I’m keen to understand anything around creating change. Perhaps tell me about younger Margaret. Where did this passion for helping others come from? Who helped create that kind of influence for you in your life?

Margaret: I suppose really it was my parents. My Mum was a secondary school teacher and she taught in some pretty rough schools but I hope she made a difference to some of those kids.

My Dad was an obstetrician and gynaecologist but he for the latter part of his career worked pretty hard by himself to try and get people to think about what were the causes of cerebral palsy to reduce the number of children that are born with cerebral palsy. I suppose they were two pretty powerful role models.

Jenelle: Yeah.

Margaret: Another one would be another GP. A guy by the name of Bill Williams who did a lot of work with MAPW, the Medical Association for Prevention of War and then worked with ICAN. Now sadly he died a year before the Treaty went through the United Nations.

Jenelle: Oh what a shame with all that work.

Margaret: He was a remarkable person in that he could chair a meeting or get a group of people together. He would listen to a whole variety of points of view. Go round the table then be able to discuss it. Bring it all together in a resolution or a motion and have everybody feel they could live with what he suggested and that they felt heard. It was such a skill and I learnt an awful lot from Bill.

Jenelle: It’s a superpower I think the ability to do that.

Margaret: Yes absolutely! Yep.

Jenelle: So tell me about ICAN Margie? What is it and what’s your role in ICAN?

Margaret: Ok. ICAN is an international coalition. We’ve got over 600 organisations, churches, unions, health organisations, community groups - we’ve all come together. I think we’re up to 106 countries now. As a global organisation we work together with our governments and with people in the community to get them to understand what we’re up against. It really has to be a groundswell of opinion that this is going to make a difference here.
ICAN in Australia – we’re currently working with the Federal Government to try and get them to sign and ratify the Treaty. Even this morning I went and visited my local MP and we visit Parliamentarians of all stripes. This is not a political campaign. This is a human health campaign really.
We are working to get Australia to sign and ratify this Treaty and the more countries that sign and ratify, the more groundswell and the greater the impact of this Treaty will be.

Jenelle: Nuclear war did seem to me to take a step out of the spotlight. It seems to be maybe at the risk of sounding a bit flippant about it, it seems to be when you’re hearing jokes about a President having the key to the nuclear codes or when people like Kim Jong-un come into the news and it seems to spark interest again.

How prevalent is this as a threat? What’s the biggest risk in countries having access to these types of weapons?

Margaret: Look I think the reason it’s stepped out of the spotlight is because of climate change which I think everybody now days is aware of and this is a major problem.
 
Margaret: What a lot of people don’t realise is that there is climate change associated with nuclear war as well. Even if we just use the tiny percentage of the current armamentarium we would end up in the short term probably half a percent of the current weaponry that calculated deaths on modelling is about 95 to 100 million people.

But subsequent to that the horrendous fires that go with nuclear detonations loft a whole lot of soot up into the stratosphere. That in turn means it doesn’t rain out and there will be a nuclear winter effectively with massive drops in crop yields and, that in turn will lead to food shortages and, that in turn will lead to famine. There is quite detailed and careful modelling suggesting that will lead to the deaths of about two billion people. If you think about the Corona Virus at the moment the deaths are around 2 and a bit million people, it’s sort of like 1,000 times worse than where we are now. I find it personally hard to even conceive really. Yes I think once you get into the big numbers it boggles your mind really.

Jenelle: How can you…. maybe just distil for me the change that you are personally seeking to drive? How would you summarise the change that you are seeking to make happen?

Margaret: I think at a local level – it’s interesting there are all sorts of levels we’re approaching it. In Australia we are working towards Australia signing and ratifying this Treaty. Australia has signed and ratified all of the other United Nations weapons controlled multi-lateral treaties. So we will sign it, it’s just a question of when and which Government will sign it.

At an international level we’ve already got 86 countries that have signed it. 54 countries have passed this Treaty through their National legislation – what we call ‘ratification’. This will build and build and what this represents is it’s going to be slow but over time nuclear weapons will, as people learn more about it and, as more countries acknowledge this, nuclear weapons shift from being in the past as seen as a source of political prestige and they really are actually stigmatised as the worst of the weapons of mass destruction.

What the United Nations Treaty has done has put these weapons where they belong which is firmly on the same illegal framework as chemical weapons and biological weapons. I think as countries recognise that and legislate, then globally… This is a 20 year project. This is not going to happen overnight. This is going to be incremental and steady.

Jenelle: Change rarely happens overnight and so for you what does success look like?

Margaret: I think what success looks like will be an increasing number of countries signing on. Increasing pressure on the nine nuclear weapon states to disarm. I mean you look at people like William Perry, Henry Kissinger who have been right in the thick of it and who have now come out saying “These weapons are totally unacceptable”.

It’s a matter of taking the opportunities over time. Verifiable balance. Reductions in stockpiles and this Treaty is restarting the dialogue.

Jenelle: Ok let’s talk about that Treaty since you’ve just mentioned it there. We’re talking the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. What did it involve to come up with a Treaty and to get to where it’s at so far? As you said 86 signatories and there is 54 state parties that have signed up to that. What does it take to come up with a treaty? What did you learn from that experience?
 
Margaret: Many things. I think one of the things was not to reinvent the wheel. We looked closely at the really tremendous work that was done by the Landmines Treaty and they used partner organisations. ICAN has now over 500 partners in 106 countries. We have, in fact it’s over 600 I think. These are churches, health organisations, unions, community groups, youth groups that are all working together to get people to understand the actual human impacts of these weapons and the fact that they are a real threat.

We’ve come incredibly close to nuclear war. Personally if you ask me I think the risk is much greater from human error, technical error and hackers rather than the erratic leadership that’s there in some countries. It’s just the actual presence of these weapons is actually a risk.

What else did we learn? We learnt as well as not reinventing the wheel – using partnerships using Governments. We had 3 conferences in 2013/14 where over 150 countries sent official delegates and basically had conferences telling them what would happen if there was a nuclear weapons attack. What the consequences were. What the risks were. This meant that all these countries banded together to get a general assembly process underway and the advantage of general assembly process at the United Nations is the Security Council can’t veto it. If you have more than two thirds of the world’s countries that are there voting it means it can’t be vetoed. This is how you get a treaty through the United Nations is to get a groundswell of countries to support it. In many ways it’s a bit like the kids in the playground standing up to the bullies. Nine nuclear weapon states have had the other countries turn on them and say “These weapons are not ok”.

Jenelle: Margie you mentioned standing up to the bullies, metaphorically of course, but I think it’s a powerful metaphor there. I’m interested to understand the ways in which you had resonance. Was it through data and research? Was it through experts coming in and outlining scientific information? Was it through stories? Was is some sort of combination? What’s your views on the moments where you felt tipping points happen for companies/countries/individuals?

Margaret: It was really interesting talking to diplomats at the United Nations. Certainly data and research are very important to understand what would actually happen in a detonation. Certainly there are some fantastic experts Tilman Ruff who is an Australian Infectious Disease Specialist has done a lot of work with this. Having experts from around the world spell out what would happen.

But the thing that really changed the minds of the diplomats was hearing the first person’s accounts of what happened. For instance, Setsuko Thurlow, a Japanese woman who when she was a young girl was pulled from the rubble of a building that was flattened by the blast only to find out that all of her classmates were incinerated and she was the only survivor.

Jenelle: Oh God.

Margaret: Then here in Australia there are number of Aboriginal people who were terribly, badly effected by the nuclear weapons testing in Maralinga. They came and testified, as people did from the Pacific. Going back to Maralinga, if you want to see a story in action visit the Woomera Cemetery which is full of these gravestones to babies and young children around the time of the nuclear weapons testing. They would have been the children of the white settlers that wouldn’t have talked about the losses of the Aboriginal people at that time.

The stories were really crucial in terms of making people actually understand what we’re up against in terms of human impacts.

Jenelle: What do you say to people who say to you “This is hopelessly unrealistic”. What do you say to them?

Margaret: Well I think it’s really worth looking at the risk assessment. You can step back and do a business risk assessment of how many times we’ve come incredibly close to nuclear war. Chatham House has put out a really nice set of case studies in 2014 of 13 times we’ve come extremely close to nuclear war in past decades. Eric Schlosser the author put out a book called ‘Command and Control’ which documents over 1,000 accidents involving nuclear weapons.

I say to people really if you are doing a risk analysis, this will happen, whether it’s this decade or the next decade, or whenever, but we are living in some ways on borrowed time and with being hopelessly unrealistic you can’t continue to rely on luck. We need to get rid of these weapons so they’re not there to be such a risk to the global community.

To do that we need to have a groundswell of public opinion to support that.

Jenelle: Well there has been quite the groundswell of public opinion, so much so that ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. What was that like? What was it like to be there and accepting that?

Margaret: Oh look the real prize for us was actually the Treaty cause that’s really.. we were so unbelievably over the moon when that went through. Just so exciting. Going to Oslo the ceremony was fantastic but for those your listeners who live in Melbourne, it was a bit like Melbourne in Grand Final week in that the whole sort of town was celebrating and they had things like a Torch Light Parade where you actually took a flaming torch (mind you it was minus two degrees as you were walking) but flaming torches – this whole procession of people walking through Oslo. There was church services. There was seminars. There was lectures. There was a really terrific concert. It was like a week long celebration. It was fabulous.

Jenelle: Where is the Peace Prize hanging out these days?

Margaret: Each of us when we give talks or, when we go to groups or, you take the Nobel Prize medal with you and it’s like the best campaigning tool ever!

Jenelle: Oh yeah! Swing it around and waiting for someone to say “What’s that?”

Margaret: Yes!

Jenelle: I’d be wearing it to the grocery store!

Margaret: Outstanding! We had a ball when we were there. It was great fun.

Jenelle: Fantastic, now in amongst all of this, you’ve continued to practice as a GP, more than 25 years now despite all the stuff that you’re doing. We’ve talked about activism, lecturing and writing. What keeps you practising and how do your two careers compete? Or in fact maybe complement each other?

Margaret: Look I really love working as a GP. It’s got challenges, a huge variety but I’ve been in the same area for nearly 26 years and you build up a whole community and it’s just an really interesting area of work. The challenges are keeping up to date. You have to do a lot of reading and when you’re working a lot outside the space that can compete with time for reading. In some ways they overlap in basically you are interacting with other people. You are identifying what the challenges are. You’re identifying – I think it’s key in any campaign to identify the best leaders. What are the most effective ways to improve the situation?

Margaret: There is no point in wasting your time. You can waste an awful lot of time on things that don’t work so you may as well work on the things that are going to make the biggest difference.

Then helping that person in front of you, or that Government/individual to understand what they can do to change and working with them. In some ways there is a lot of parallels and in some ways it’s quite challenging, particularly for me keeping up with my reading is always a challenge.

Jenelle: Now something that’s really fascinated me over the course of doing these podcasts is learning how I guess of pulled different levers to make change happen. As I’ve mentioned some do it through story telling. Others will do it through advocacy. Others will coalesce businesses through oaths and pledges. Others through influencing the flow of money and capital markets.

Now one of our previous guests who I know is known to you, Radiation Oncologist Dr Bronwyn King who works with Tobacco Free Portfolios. She strongly believes that if we are really going to prevent lung cancer (which was her area of focus) we needed to look at ways of disarming tobacco companies. She was focussing her efforts on stopping superannuation funds from investing in companies that sell or support tobacco.

You’re a part of the Quit Nukes initiative. It seems to me to have a similar philosophy, right? Where you are also are encouraging investors to divest their money away from investing in weapons and nuclear weapons holdings.

How do you think superannuation funds in Australia are responding in that space in terms of considering the financial, the reputational and the ethical risks surrounding nuclear weapons?

Margaret: Quit Nukes is a relatively new campaign. It’s probably been around for 18 months.

Jenelle: Ok.

Margaret: So we’ve spent the last period of time meeting with senior fund managers and we’ve had some really good engagement. Again, it comes down to understanding that nuclear weapons that have always been immoral are now also illegal and with entry into force in January now they have the same status as chemical weapons and biological weapons.

It’s really clear that the Australian public is strongly supportive of Australia signing and ratifying the Treaty. We’ve done two surveys, two years apart and the numbers have been in the 70’s/high 70’s. So there is really clear support for getting rid of nuclear weapons. I think a lot of people will be completely horrified to find that part of their retirement savings is funding nuclear weapons.

Jenelle: Absolutely.

Margaret: So these funds, these superannuation funds we’ve had good meetings with them. A number have signed up to what we call our ‘Honour Roll’ which if people want to look at the Quit Nukes.org website you can see the companies that, your superannuation funds that have signed up. We’re in negotiations with some of the larger funds at the moment and I think it takes a while to turn ships around but we’re pleased with progress so far.

Jenelle: Well I understand that the number of divested funds has more than doubled since 2014. I’m not sure if that’s right.

Margaret: Yes that’s right.

Jenelle: Yep great. So that really is progress Margie.

Margaret: Yes.

Jenelle: Is there any particular moment that stands out in your mind when say a fund did decide to divest. What did that feel like to hear that or be part of that decision?

Margaret: In terms of Australia we haven’t had a big one. We’ve had the smaller funds turnaround but the big issue that excited me last year was when 19 Japanese banks said “We are going to get rid of these weapons”. Thirteen of these are what we call ‘Mega Banks’ so that’s a huge amount of money that’s taken out of nuclear weapons.

For instance, in Europe, two of the five largest pension funds no longer invest in nuclear weapons. Deutsche Bank is out of it. KBC is out of it. Really big names getting out of nuclear weapons and I think the divestment is something that is just going to grow over time.

Jenelle: Again, back to that feeling does that end up being something that fuels you more? We can do this. What does it feel like to have a decision like that? You get a phone call (I don’t know how it comes in). A phone call, an email, a face-to-face?

Margaret: Email.

Jenelle: And they say yep we’re going to divest.

Margaret: Yes it does empower you. You feel like Yes! We’re making progress. We had several funds join last year and each one was really exciting and each one was another step on the ladder. So yes it just builds on itself. It is exciting.

Jenelle: Then I guess conversely when you’ve spent the time doing the education and then you hear from a fund and they say “Nah we’re going to hold onto that.” What’s that like?

Margaret: Well I think they don’t realise this isn’t a campaign that is going to go away I suppose is what I’m really trying to say. We recognise that the transformation doesn’t happen overnight. That it’s often comes in fits and starts and it’s really about understanding that these weapons it’s come at such a huge cost to society both locally and globally.

Jenelle: It’s an interesting thing isn’t it about the pace of transformations when it feels so incredibly slow and arduous. One step forward, two steps back. Then you make this massive piece of progress where it’s slow, slow, fast.

Margaret: Yes, yes.

Jenelle: There is something about that is you can look back and go “Actually we’ve made a huge amount, how did we get to this point?” It’s an interesting – the pace of that is an interesting dynamic to me.

Margaret: Yes, yes, it’s getting the Treaty and then getting the Nobel Prize felt like that. Two enormous wins in the year and you just think ‘Whoa’. Then it’s back to the hard yakka of actually..

Jenelle: Lulls you into a …

Margaret: Yeah!

Jenelle: Yes absolutely.

Margaret: Those wins do really – when you get a win you really do celebrate it and use it for the next piece of campaigning.

Jenelle: Absolutely. Now speaking of campaigning you’ve also run for Parliament before as a Greens candidate. I know that you said this is all very apolitical. Tell me why you did throw your hat in that ring and how did you find that experience?

Margaret: I suppose I chose the Greens there 4 pillars are peace, environmental sustainability, social justice. I’ve left one out, but in terms of health, their health policies are pretty much evidenced based which I think is important. Why did I do it? I did it in an unwinnable seat because the issues of getting a senator elected and we succeeded in that goal. What I enjoyed most about it in some ways was actually doing door knocking. You would go out and knock on people’s doors and have conversations with people you would never otherwise talk to. It’s really interesting to get points of view that you normally wouldn’t encounter and then talk to them about what they thought about a topic, and what I would think about a topic, and what the Greens might do on that topic and find out from them what issues were top on mind for them and then discuss that with them. It was a really interesting time.

Jenelle: That’s really fascinating cause the minute you say door knocking I have this kind of visceral reaction. I go “ooh I wouldn’t want to do that”. I sort of associate that with rejection.

Margaret: Yep.

Jenelle: I happen to be busy at that moment when someone arrives at my door.

Margaret: Yes, yes, yes.

Jenelle: So if I associate that with rejection and you associate that with an opportunity to have a conversation with someone that you might not have otherwise met. It’s a fascinating different set of reactions to the exact same circumstance. So clearly you’ve got to have this tenacity and, this perseverance and, a willingness to invite opportunity much more than I do!

Margaret: I think also if someone is in the middle of dinner of course they don’t want you knocking on their door!

Jenelle: I’m always in the middle of dinner, that’s the thing when someone comes to my door!

Margaret: No, no, no, you don’t have conversations with people who don’t want to talk to you. That’s absolutely Rule no 1 ! It’s surprising the number of people who do want to talk to you.

Jenelle: Now clearly you’ve had to reskill and adjust to changes in your career in your various humanitarian interests, whilst maintaining (even though even if you don’t have a huge team that you necessarily preside over) your skills in leading and influencing would have had to have been developed and evolved over all of these different roles. Can you tell me about those that you’ve been able to transfer? The kind of skills you can transfer from one place to another and those that you’ve had to adapt or, change or, learn?

Margaret: I had to learn public speaking very early in the piece. I used to absolutely loathe public speaking and start to shake whenever I had to stand up in front of a group of people.

Jenelle: A common thing though. I can’t remember the stat but more people would choose death over public speaking so you’re not alone there!

Margaret: I think learning to advocate and learning to listen. Actually in general practice that is a very transferrable skill. Listening to people and being what we call ‘patient centred’, which is where you actually try and understand where that person, not only what they’re saying, but where that person is coming from in terms of what they’re facing with illness and what they’re facing at home with their families etc.

I think working with committees and groups is something as I said Bill Williams was a big influencer in that, but learning governance skills.
I think learning to not have to reinvent the wheel. To look at what works in various settings and to adopt those issues.

Also learning to innovate when that’s appropriate. So when you have a good idea and you can run with it, then you do, but if you can see something that has worked before, you do that too.

I mean there is someone (I can’t remember who it was) but somebody famously said “When you try to go change.” What you do is you try something and if that works you keep doing it, if it doesn’t you try something else”. Learning to adapt. Having a feedback loop on what is working and what isn’t working

Jenelle: In 5 years’ time? If you were to look into your crystal ball? What are your predictions for society and business?

Margaret: For society I’m concerned about rising inequality in Australia. I think that’s something we need to face and what’s interesting with rising inequality comes worse health outcomes and that is very well documented globally. I’m concerned about rising inequality.

I would hope in 5 years’ time we’ll have a lot more countries signed onto this Treaty and we’ll have the nuclear weapons states starting to talk to each other and starting to realise what they’re doing is not acceptable to the global community.

In terms of business. Well I’m not a business person.

Jenelle: What about the role of business in societal issues?

Margaret: Yes I think that’s enormous and very important. I think it’s really heartening to see the number of businesses that are committing to carbon neutrality or to being more responsible for their carbon footprints and I would hope that would continue. In fact, in terms of climate change in general I would hope that we are taking more steps as a population where we’re reducing our footprint but that remains to be seen.

The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: I’m going to finish off this interview with three fast questions. A bit on the lighter end of the conversation. Firstly, what are you reading, watching or listening to right now?

Margaret: At the moment I’m reading a book by a guy with the name of Harry Thompson called “This Thing of Darkness” which is a fictional account of Darwin and the Beagle and the traverses around the world of this explorer as he was discovering things. I’m also about to read ‘A Secret Australia’ which is a book on the findings from the WikiLeaks cables.

Jenelle: Oh right.

Margaret: So it’s going to be interesting, yeah.

Jenelle: Very interesting. Now tell me what is your superpower? Now clearly there can be things additive to the world or it can be a useless party trick!

Margaret: (laughter). Pavlova ! Pavlova! I make a mean pav.

Jenelle: Oh you make a mean pavlova?

Margaret: Yeah.

Jenelle: Oh very good!

Margaret: So any family party I have to take one along!

Jenelle: It’s the secret in the whipping. Isn’t it? Is it?

Margaret: Yes whipping it for a long time. At least 5 minutes! (laughter)

Jenelle: Ok and if you were going to put up a quote on a billboard. Whether it’s your own quote or a quote of someone else that has inspired you. What would that be?

Margaret: Probably “We have to get rid of nuclear weapons before they get rid of us”. It’s really as simple as that.

Jenelle: Yep.

Margaret: There are other quotes. “There is no right hands for the wrong weapons”. But really the bottom line is “It’s us or them”.

Jenelle: Yeah absolutely. A good one to finish on there. Margie thank you so much for your time today. If I think about the opening question I asked here in the preamble which was “How real and relevant is this threat today?” Then you certainly have helped us all understand here that this is very real. It’s very relevant.

You really have done a remarkable job of shining a light on the issues that matter and as you have said you like to spend your time on the things that will make the biggest difference on the planet and we can all learn from that.

What I’ve really loved learning about is the power of partnership organisations to drive collective change.

Thanks so much Margie.

End tape recording