Marie-Paule LEROUX * Company manageress, writer

Marie-Paule LEROUX * Company manageress, writer

Marie-Paule LEROUX has been living in Tasmania, Australia’s only island state, for almost 18 years now. In 1993 she created her business, Exquisite Flavours, a business for which she was to get three prizes. Then she wrote her book entitled « The Frog in the Billabong » published by Pays et Terroirs. A both funny and moving book in which she gets us to find out about her story, but also about her island: « A little windswept island, in the troughs of the Roaring Forties, keeps calling me … ».


You are 47, you have been living in Australia, more exactly in Tasmania for nearly 18 years now, and you have decided upon dual French-Australian nationality.
Do you still feel torn between those two countries today?

Marie-Paule LEROUX (MPL) - YES!!!
It’s a question I’ve often been asked and to which it is always difficult for me to answer. I’ve remained basically French, I think that my backbone, my heart, that’s France. Because the place where you grew up, where you were brought up, remains within you for ever. On the other hand, I still cling to both of my nationalities and I wouldn’t like to be compelled to give up either one. I’m attached to both  of them for completely different reasons. I am a French woman, I’d say that it is my birth right, I don’t have to prove that and I’ve become Australian, and that is the outcome of a life course and an often difficult work. So I’m attached to both, not for the same reasons, but I really insist on that.
It’s funny, because when I wrote my book, I longed to meet an Australian woman who would have had the same life course as I but the other way round. A woman who would have lived in France for the same number of years as I did in Australia. I wanted to see if at the end of a certain number of years one reaches a status quo.
Do we become some kind of mixture? Do we become alike?
And one day, I was here (in Richmond) and I received a phone call from a young woman who wrote a book « Almost French». It won’t mean a thing to you because her book was not published in French. Her name is Sarah TURNBULL, she is married to a French lawyer. The book is very funny for it enables you to view your culture in a  different way . She came to Tasmania and wanted to meet me. And when we saw each other this was exactly the question we had been asking ourselves. Have we become alike? Have we got a mixed nationality? But we were of the same mind: she has basically remained Australian and I French.
There are things that she still hasn’t integrated or doesn’t like in France, as it is the case for me.
On the other hand, what we have both gained is a better understanding of each other’s culture.
But to cut a long story short on this, a few years ago a politician whom, I do not like at all for that matter, said in his campaign that the French who live abroad should give up their nationality. He got a very long letter from me, in which I was telling him for instance, that I was French and would remain so and that it was out of the question for me to return my passport.

You created your business « Exquisite Flavours » in 1993 and you were elected businesswoman of the year in 2001 (category of small firms).
Why have you chosen to set up your own business?

MPL - At the start, I had found this job as a marketing woman in this firm which sold cheeses and dairy products. And I soon realized that the Chefs in the restaurants complained about not having certain products in Tasmania, yet available on the continent, because nobody got them to be sent there. And the second thing is that they also complained very often about the service. Even so, one needs to know that in the early ’90s, as far as restaurants are concerned here, it was a complete desert. For instance, on Salamanca (a neighbourhood in the centre of Hobart, Tasmania’s capital) restaurants did not have the right to have tables outdoors for it was considered as unhygienic. Moreover, restaurants were open only but during certain hours. But on the other hand, things were beginning to move and I felt that things were going to change. There were more and more producers: dairy products, pickles … and generally speaking when there are producers, distributors are needed. So I built my own firm upon this.
It was a combination of circumstances. I  could never have done that in France, because it already existed and because competition was already very important.

Is it difficult to establish oneself in Tasmania, and what’s more when it’s about a woman, a foreigner on top of it all?

MPL - Tasmania surely is more conservative than the biggest cities on the continent, as Sydney or Melbourne. It is less true if you go in the bush (the countryside, the bush). At the same time when you are foreigners, since you don’t know the people and since you don’t understand everything, you are a little indifferent…
The greatest difficulty in my case was to get money from the bank. Which I besides did not manage to. The bank did not want to lend me any money. It would lend me some only if I invested into a house and I did not want to, I wanted to invest in a business. It was a real dialogue of the deaf. And as I come from the common run of people, there was nobody in France to help me. I couldn’t ask my parents for money, so I had virtually given up on the idea. In addition, Alain (her husband) had his own salary but that wasn’t enough. I had to have initial money supply and finally it was then, as I explain it in my book, that our neighbour, our landlord, an absolutely delightful old man from whom we let a cottage, lent us some money. We did that according to the proper procedures with his daughter who is a chartered accountant and that was how I started. And I paid him back at the end of the fourth year. But without him I couldn’t have made it, I wouldn’t have done it. He was very kind and most of all a risk-taking person because we had been acquainted with each other only for a year. He believed in it and also maybe that when you are 85 and you have money … well …

How do one become a business manager in Tasmania? What are the steps to take?

MPL - I have never set up any business in France but I can imagine!!!
Here it was very simple, in two minutes my business was set up. Especially in 1993 for there wasn’t any VAT yet which was created only in 2000.
It was really very simple, you only needed to register a trade name at what is equivalent to the Clerk’s Office in France and there you are, done. In addition today you need to ask for a number for the VAT but there also this can be done with just a phone call. If you want to set up a business, you must go to a lawyer, but in your own name is quite enough. So next, of course, if you are in the food business as it was the case for me, there are the food hygiene and safety controls but that is done later.

What are the taxes?

MPL - Well then, there aren’t all the taxes that you have in France. You have the equivalent of a business tax if you have more than 20 employees, which wasn’t my case anyway. Otherwise there is nothing. Your income is taxed of course, but in the same way as for an employee. The difference is that as an employee taxes are here taken according to a pay-as-you-earn system, on the wage. And as a business manager this is done at the end of the year. The first six « one thousand dollars » are not taxed and after that you are taxed at 47%. The only annoying thing here is that when you are an employer you have to pay the wages every week. Except that, there again, payslips only amount to one line, so this is quite simple. But well, you must issue them out every week, generally on Thursdays. So we can suggest a payment on a fortnight or a monthly basis, but in my case for instance the workers said to me « ok ! We agree but on condition that is is with a month in advance ». Of course, I said no! But this is sometimes done. Anyway workers here do not give the employer a month’s work in advance.

What pieces of advice would you give to French people who would wish to settle down here?

MPL - First, they are always welcome, insofar as they get a visa. Because here you can get a visa in different ways. Well, it’s not that easy to get a visa because there are quotas. Then you can be a refugee or a political dissenter but this is not the case for the French. You can also come if you invest or if you belong to a socio-professional group for which Australia is short of people.
As it was the case for Alain, my husband, when we first arrived. It was the beginning of the winegrowing industry and we got a maximum of points before we even filled in the application form. And in spite of all this, we got the authorization to enter the territory only nine months later.
There is also the age limit beyond which you can no longer come. And you have to do medical tests.
You had better not be an expense to the country!!!
 Therefore, if you fit all the requirements and if, in addition, you bring money, you are most welcome.
As far as Tasmania is concerned, I think that the State wishes to turn to a niche market. They understood that they had to play their trump card in the cooking field, food trade, wines, cheeses …
Besides I remain convinced that if the first French explorers had stayed, Tasmania would have been grown over  with vineyards ever since then for it is really at the right latitude. As a result, this has only been developping but for the last past 10 years. Particularly concerning the Pinot noir, which is Burgundy’s main vine in France, and the Riesling. Wines which have nothing to do with what is being done in France because of the climate, among other things.

You sold your business in 2003 and you joined your husband recently transferred for his job to Brisbane. You wrote your book « The frog in the Billabong ». Why this desire for writing, was this a new challenge or some sort of therapy?

MPL - I’d say it’s a little of both.
I was very sad to have sold my business and I think that if Alain had not left … Hem …
Let’s say I had come to a crossroads, the business had grown a lot, I needed to have a fresh supply of capital and I should have taken an associate. So I asked myself the question, would I sell or would I take an associate? And I finally decided to sell.
Next, I found myself just like that doing nothing. From someone who used to work seven days a week, because in food trade that’s how it is, to doing nothing at all. So I had this material (the diary she had been keeping since she arrived in Australia) and I made up my mind to write this book. But this is not written like a diary at all. I wrote that in themes, each chapter is about one theme, about Tasmanian culture, the creation of my business, our integration here … etc …

What do you do today and what are your plans?

MPL - I had taken up a marketing work again with two companies, one French and the other Tasmanian. I was in charge of Asia and more particularly of the Pacific side. And there, I kept only one job and I resumed my studies which have no connection, for I am studying Law and political sciences. Next? I would like to work on the prison system reform here. But that …

And finally, in Australia and in Tasmania, what would you say about women’s working conditions. Can we speak of political, economic and social equality, or is there still some way to go?

MPL - I don’t quite know how to answer that for I have never suffered personally from being a woman. So obviously, I may not be the ideal example. Or at least I must be unaware of it and have never realized that. That must be that besides!
Well, when one compares with France, women here are disadvantaged for there is no maternity leave, except in the public sector. Besides the topic is in the current events for last week a young woman from the Parliament was given a hard time because she had brought along her little daughter in the House. This caused a scandal. As a result, there is a Tasmanian female politician who has just disclosed that she has had two children one straight after the other and that, as I told you concerning the public sector, she was entitled to maternity leave. But the then Prime Minister compelled her to sign a letter to the effect that she was giving up her maternity leave, for he himself considered that two maternity leaves were too much, that it was neither a good thing for her work nor for the people. So, having said that, actually I guess that concerning women’s working conditions there is still a lot to do, even if women here are more numerous in politics. This being so, it is true that in Australia, and this is done more than in France, when there are children, if the woman has a better wage, it is the husband who stays at home more often than not. That’s  that!

                   
                                                                                       Words taken down by Sylvie and Bénédicte


We thank Marie-Paule LEROUX for having greeted us in her home in Richmond.
And we thank her most particularly for getting us to be invited at the cocktail party given by the French Consul, on July 14th in Hobart. For, although the lady Consul from the French Consulate is Australian and delivered her official speech for our national day nearly entirely in English (without subtitles … boo hoo!!!), it is true that after five months in Asia, we greatly enjoyed the champagne and the petit fours served for the occasion.
So thank you Marie-Paule for this charming and none the less thoughtful attention!!!

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