Well, that was quick. After one mishandled press conference and a handful of tidying-up articles, it seems we’re already into the “backlash” stage of the Me Too reckoning within Australian Parliament.
It’s playing out much as you’d expect. There are attempts to tear down women making a stand, and a lot of misdirection. It’s a mix of a “what are you gonna do?” with “you just can’t please some people”.
There’s a seeming inevitability to it. In her 1991 book of the same name, US writer Susan Faludi popularised the term as a recurring phenomenon: “[backlash] returns every time women begin to make some headway towards equality, a seemingly inevitable early frost to the brief flowerings of feminism”.
So far, this particular backlash is struggling to get traction in the mainstream Canberra narrative. Every move gets derailed by another backbench Facebook post (Hello, Andrew Laming) or a mistimed text in the NSW Parliament (Hello, Michael Johnsen).
The personal attacks have been so ham-fisted they’ve generated a backlash to the backlash. But a poorly implemented plan is a plan all the same.
The government and right-leaning media will be taking comfort from a hard fact revealed in last week’s Essential Report: while Morrison’s approval has dropped 16 points among women since mid-February, his approval among men is unchanged.
For the four years that Me Too has been in the media, undermining the credibility of women (through defamation among other things) has been central to the backlash strategy. The alleged victims in the current parliamentary imbroglio have been the target since the story broke open in February, with accusations of lying through to slut-shaming.
The Canberra media narrative has — by and large — leaned towards believing the women should be given their voice, but the Essential Report suggests that below the surface in the wilds of conservative Facebook groups and Sky After Dark viewers (and probably much of the Liberal and National Party backbench) that narrative remains heavily contested.
Last week The Australian Financial Review‘s Aaron Patrick turned the attack on the women news leaders of the Canberra press gallery, criticising them for “angry coverage that often strayed into unapologetic activism”.
Journalists — mainly women — struck back, particularly defending Samantha Maiden, the reporter from News Corp’s news.com.au who broke the original story about the alleged 2019 rape. (She’s “difficult” according to the AFR hit. Oh no!)
However, the Patrick story explained just what Morrison was up to the week before when he angrily raised claims of harassment within News Corp. At the time, it seemed a fumbled “everyone does it” defence unwisely directed at his primary media supporter. But according to the AFR it was a planned shaft (and warning) at Maiden.
On the weekend, News Corp turned on activists and advocates. The associate editor of The Courier-Mail, Kylie Lang, asked of Grace Tame: “Since when does being Australian of the Year give you licence to personally attack our prime minister?”
In The Weekend Australian, the masthead’s columnists asserted that “the claims of pervasive misogyny” by “large sections of the left and its allies in the media” were because “the green-left is hyperventilating about another skirmish in their identity/culture wars”.
Meanwhile, the government and its media allies are casting around to find a footing for part two of the backlash: diversion. The weekend before Easter, The Australian’s Greg Sheridan was blaming the sexualisation of modern culture. Last week, the prime minister was blaming social media.
In The Australian, editor-at-large Paul Kelly replaced “the emotional demand by women to re-set the norms of respect and justice” with a focus on “plans to reconfigure our economic and social polity in the more unpredictable and dangerous post-pandemic world“. Others were whataboutting Indigenous disadvantage.
Easter and the break in parliamentary sittings until May has given the government a breather, vaccine mismanagement notwithstanding. The question is: will that give the backlash the opportunity to recalibrate?
Kylie Lang, asked of Grace Tame: “Since when does being Australian of the Year give you licence to personally attack our prime minister?”
Kylie, absolutely everyone can and should attack our Prime Minister over his handling of this matter, Australian of the Year or not.
He’s a public figure. That means he’s a fair target for personal attacks.
You’d think so but apparently not. Dutton is now sending threatening letters to people voicing their opinions on his performance on Twitter. Apparently the ‘abuse’ is too much to take. This from a member of a free speech-loving government that is very comfortable with their treatment of refugees. From a man who is ok with keeping a family incl. 2 kids detained on an island for years after having them removed from their home in a surprise action at down (being from Polish-German descent this has a very special flavour for me). From a man who was ok with spreading stories about African gangs terrorising Australians. This is all fine by him. He and the ‘government’ they’re unapologetic as they never tire of telling us. But people criticising him on Twitter is too much for the tough man. He”s taken offence and feels defamed.
You couldn’t make this s*** up.
Terrifying to think of all the tools Dutton now has to track us down. Dutton is the Dangerous one. Scott is the stupid one. This is not going to end well for us.
Kylie Lang is a very silly man , given that it is the right of every citizen to criticise politicians who fall short of appropriate performance. The PM is never above criticism
“The PM is never above criticism,” especially not the current one.
Did Ms Tame attack the PM? She criticised his judgement. Any citizen can do that in the democracy we like to think we have. Perhaps it will be otherwise when the Defence Minister takes over as PM.
Kylie Lang sounds very odd. Morrison is not my PM. He is a nightmare inflicted upon the is country & it is the duty of all citizens to call this fraud of a PM out. Our lives depend on it.
Kylie has no understanding of what living in a democracy means if she thinks this is an acceptable thing to say. Perhaps she would be more at home in North Korea where it is expected that the public worship the leader….
The AFR should hang it’s head in shame. The first version of the on-line article about Samantha Maiden made irrelevant but wounding reference to her late father. The harmful sentence was removed within a very short period of time but many early birds had already seen it. What gutter tactics!
The article was insulting (which was the point) to experienced and highly respected female journalists. I found it utterly appalling.
The ‘swinging dicks’ are back out in force with their ‘who gave these emotional women permission to hold the ‘Boys ‘R’ Us’ club responsible for their actions’? Million of women did, that’s who!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-most-harrowing-10-days-of-my-career-holgate-breaks-silence-over-australia-post-watch-saga-20210323-p57d5e.html
Lucio Di Bartolomeo was appointed Chair of Australia Post in November 2019 ( current … He was also Federal and State Director of the Liberal Party of Australia, …now you know why Morrison went so hard on Ms Holgate – he was looking after his maTE!!!!
The “Vaccine mismanagement” is being stirred up very nicely by the LNP as a diversion from their more damaging sexism issues.
Not easy to distinguish which is potentially more damaging for them, the vaccine debacle or the sexism problems. They also have other strange creatures in the darkness of their closets which are beginning to pop out into daylight, Andrew Laming being one of them.
I think both issues have the potential to break this so-called government’s neck. I very much hope that this potential will be fulfilled!
“The government and right-leaning media will be taking comfort from a hard fact revealed in last week’s Essential Report: while Morrison’s approval has dropped 16 points among women since mid-February, his approval among men is unchanged.”
Yes, but more encouraging data are presented in the latest News poll as quoted by the Poll Bludger: “The gender breakdowns notably fail to play to the script: Labor is credited with 51-49 leads among both men and women, which represents a four-point movement to Labor among men and no change among women. There is also nothing remarkable to note in Scott Morrison’s personal ratings, with deteriorations of 7% in his net rating among men and 8% among women.” See pollbludger.net