LIDIA THORPE’S BOMBSHELL
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe says she’ll reveal more today after her accusation Liberal Senator David Van harassed and sexually assaulted her. She withdrew the claim yesterday because she was told to comply with “parliamentary standing orders” but that didn’t stop The Australian ($) from calling it an “extraordinary backdown”. Van vehemently denied the allegation and got the lawyers in immediately. It came when he was chastising Labor for its handling of Brittany Higgins’ sexual assault allegation. Of this line of Liberal thinking, the SMH ($) reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was like, so, “Labor is to blame for what is a serious sexual assault allegation by a Liberal staffer, about another Liberal staffer, and a Liberal minister’s office, metres away from the Liberal prime minister’s office” — that’s your argument? It comes as The Australian ($) reveals Higgins claimed up to 40 years’ worth of economic loss amid the destruction of her political career in receiving her $2.5 million in compensation.
If Van’s name is ringing a bell, it’s because the Liberal was accused of barking and growling at Jacqui Lambie when she was speaking to the Senate in 2021 — Van apologised for interrupting her but denied making animal noises, Guardian Australia reports, though both the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and Labor’s Penny Wong said someone did. Ironically it was the same day sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins released her report calling for an overhaul of Parliament’s toxic workplace culture. In her allegation against Van, Thorpe told the Senate a prime minister “had to remove him from his office”, but Scott Morrison’s spokesperson told Guardian Australia he had “no recollection” of “any involvement” in that.
SPECTATOR SPORT
Media titan Rupert Murdoch may be looking to buy Britain’s The Spectator, the world’s oldest weekly magazine still in print (dating back 195 years). Receivers have seized the holding company Press Holdings that owns it and The Telegraph, The Age ($) says, removing the Barclay family’s directors in the process amid debt disputes. It’s rumoured Murdoch bid on The Spectator just two years ago for A$93 million, though he may be going into a bidding war with hedge fund co-founder and Brexit supporter Paul Marshall, who is apparently eyeballing The Spectator too. So why the interest? It’s a conservative bible — indeed former Tory leader Boris Johnson edited it from 1999 to 2005, a pretty high-stakes print-to-web transitional time for media. It hasn’t had the same impact in Oz, however — it had an average circulation per issue of 10,665 in 2022, data showed.
But things aren’t all bad — one in five Australians pays for the news they read online, Crikey reports, and trust in media companies is up a bit even if consumption is down. The annual Digital News Report found 22% of us, up four percentage points from the year before, now subscribe to news, making Australia third in a list of 46 countries (Norway is home to the highest number of news subscribers). It’s not so cheery over at ABC, where a staff bloodletting is rumoured — managing director David Anderson is expected to announce up to 100 jobs will be made redundant before the restructure of the national broadcaster begins on July 1, Guardian Australia says. And in a final morsel of media news, journalist Lisa Wilkinson has lodged an official complaint with Seven Network over the Bruce Lehrmann interview, alleging the broadcast breached commercial television standards, Guardian Australia reports.
Correction: a previous version of the Worm cited data from the 2022 Digital News Report rather than the 2023 edition.
PWC LEARNS THE EASY WAY
PwC invested in a college while it was consulting to the federal government’s regulator of tertiary colleges, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), the ABC reports. The scandal-embroiled consultancy took a $5.5 million stake in the Top Education Group back in 2016-17 just hours after it began work on the contract — the regulator couldn’t find a record of PwC disclosing any conflicts of interest. A TEQSA spokesman said PwC didn’t work on regulatory decisions, however. The broadcaster adds that eight senior partners of PwC personally invested another $2.5 million in the company a year later, but: “The ABC is not suggesting unlawful conduct by PwC.” (One might wonder if that line would serve as a get-out-of-jail-free card in a defamation trial?) It comes as the NSW government will ban PwC from working on its tax projects, Guardian Australia adds.
Speaking of alleged conflicts of interest — police officers accused of domestic violence are investigated by colleagues and often get to keep their weapons, according to a new report the SMH ($) FOI’d. About 100 NSW police of almost every rank have been charged with hundreds of domestic violence-related offences since 2015, including “aggravated sexual assault, rape, stalking, breaching apprehended domestic violence orders, destroying property and recording intimate images without consent”, the paper says, including nine this year (to May). The report also found police investigated only 222 of the 470 complaints made about officers’ conduct in relation to domestic violence cases, the ABC adds.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE
The 666 bus to Hell is no more. Well, Hel, to be precise — it’s a small town on the Baltic Coast in Poland, a very popular jaunt for wide-eyed tourists carrying bumbags and beach towels looking to soak in the very best that the rather cold seaside offers. But the Christians were not happy, not happy at all, as The Guardian tells it. A conservative Catholic website, Fronda.pl, has been campaigning for the devilish bus route number to change since 2018, arguing primly that it was hardly an “innocent joke” but rather clearly stemming from “malicious inspiration”. Of course, the site assured its avid readers, the 666 to Hel is not a public transport route to the luxury beach home of Satan himself — too much sun, sand and surf, one assumes, and not enough fire, screaming, and politicians.
Nevertheless, the 666 bus clearly gave credence to the “horror of soul death” because it undermined the concept of an afterlife, or so the site said. Fine, management at the bus company conceded, a twinkle in its eye, and announced via social media: “We’re turning the last 6 upside down!” Yes, Worm reader, the new route is a rather saucy 669 (surely no accident either) though the company added it may restore the 666 some time. (It’s not the first time the Polish have had a sense of humour about transport, after all. There’s a tram loop in Wrocław numbered the zero.) Pundits love the 666 bus to Hel — one Facebook commenter speculated that many tourists chose the bus over the speedier train just to say they took it. Indeed, The Guardian adds, Hel is so popular now that tourists have complained it’s overcrowded. It seems hell truly is other people.
Hoping you can spot the light side of life today.
If you’re feeling chatty, feel free to drop into my inbox — tell me what you love or loathe about the Worm, or anything — eelsworthy@crikey.com.au
SAY WHAT?
I got a lot of invitations to a lot of things, some I was able to go to and others I weren’t. I didn’t attend that one. The invitation was declined.
Katy Gallagher
The finance minister said she did not attend Brittany Higgins’ fiance David Sharaz’s first wedding in 2018. Gallagher said the relationship was professional, and that she was “not responsible for how people describe their relationship with me” when asked why Sharaz described her as an “old friend”.
CRIKEY RECAP
“Buried within the most recent attacks, based on the leaking of texts to politicians and staff, is the insistence that there was something fundamentally illegitimate about Higgins and Sharaz attempting to generate political interest in her efforts to obtain justice and expose the toxic culture of Parliament House. Real rape victims, the suggestion appears to be, simply let the criminal justice system do its job, rather than trying to engage politicians, especially opposition politicians.
“As every woman in Australia knows, just letting the criminal justice system do its job with alleged rapists virtually guarantees the rapist will walk free. Even with a greater willingness of women to report sexual assault, and a greater willingness of police forces and prosecutors to take the crime seriously, the conviction rate remains a source of national shame, with estimates varying between 3% and 12% of cases. It seems the last place that sexual assault victims will get justice from is the justice system.”
“An Australian conspiracy movement influencer has been found guilty of illegally collecting donations and failing to account for money and property for an anti-vaccine flood relief group that was created because he claimed other charities weren’t transparent enough. Yesterday David Oneeglio pleaded guilty to two charges under Queensland’s Collections Act 1966 for his role in Aussie Helping Hands and Aussie Helping Hearts, the two operating names for an organisation that was revealed by a Crikey investigation to have illegally raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Northern Rivers flood victims in early 2022.
“Oneeglio, who emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the loudest voices from the anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown freedom movement, was charged with collecting donations illegally without approval and for failing to produce requested information and records to account properly for money and equipment received. A third charge relating to unlawful misuse of the donated money was dropped. Oneeglio was fined $750 but no conviction was recorded.”
“An acknowledgment that ‘housing is a basic human right’ has been removed from a draft of the Labor Party’s new policy platform, prompting the Greens to claim the government is ‘running away from the platform they were elected on’. The crossbench party, which is locked in a high-stakes battle with Labor over the shape of a $10 billion housing initiative that Labor is trying to pass through the Senate, has gone through the publicly available draft 2023 Labor Party platform with a fine-tooth comb.
“Housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather pointed to a number of sections on housing that had featured in the platform Labor took to the 2022 election, but which have been either omitted or watered down in the new draft. The passages included the pledge that Labor ‘recognises that the responsibility of funding the construction and repair of social housing … is the shared responsibility of the Commonwealth and state and territory governments’.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Qld breaks down gender barriers as birth certificate changes made easier (Brisbane Times)
Belarus starts taking delivery of Russian nuclear weapons (Reuters)
MEPs endorse blanket ban on live facial recognition in public spaces (euronews)
US confirms top diplomat Blinken’s long-anticipated China visit (Al Jazeera)
North Korea: residents tell BBC of neighbours starving to death (BBC)
At least 78 drown as refugee boat sinks off Greece (The Guardian)
Cost of fighting BC [Canada] wildfires this year tops $100m — well before peak fire season (CBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Mystique, minimalism and cataclysm: Cormac McCarthy’s fiction was a dark counter-narrative to American optimism — Paul Giles (The Conversation): “McCarthy was never an easy writer, and his oblique, multi-dimensional novels have become less fashionable in a Facebook era that prefers the attractions of personal stories and the allure of authenticity. McCarthy’s art, by contrast, was shaped by the minimalism and stylistic impersonality of classic modernist writers such as Ernest Hemingway, along with the more abstract forms of post-humanism that he discussed with his scientific friends at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe institute, where he spent many of his later working years. He gave few interviews and was averse to the kind of self-publicity that has now become the norm in the world of literary marketing.
“He did however retain, albeit on a more modest level, some of the mystique surrounding the charismatic or reclusive male author that was a familiar trope in 20th-century American literature, from Hemingway through to JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. McCarthy was also sometimes critiqued for his more limited representations of female characters, and in this way, along with many others, he could be seen as a traditional American Western writer. It would, though, be wrong to categorise McCarthy’s achievement too narrowly. Though generally regarded as pessimistic, McCarthy’s texts also explore in intellectually innovative ways interconnections and tensions between white Protestant and Hispanic Catholic cultures in America. They also trace crossovers between humans and animals, social systems and the environment and, perhaps most significantly, rationality and its failures or ontological limitations.”
It may be hot, but most British homes don’t need air-con. Switch it off — Hannah Fearn (The Guardian): “At what cost? This week National Grid readied another coal-fired power station to cope with the extra demand placed on the energy networks by offices and homes switching on air-conditioning units. Greenpeace UK shared its outrage at this request: ‘We’re using MORE coal to cool down the effects of the coal we’re using. It makes no sense.’ And I agree. Many climate-controlled buildings with artificial ventilation systems, such as hospitals or laboratories or large office and retail complexes, rely on air-conditioning to keep them at a stable temperature all year round. This is essential to ensure staff are protected from high temperatures in the workplace, and for those who are vulnerable in a heatwave, such as people with certain medical conditions or disabilities.
“But given these are always running, keeping temperatures at a consistent pace through hot weather and — more often in the UK — cold too, it’s unlikely they are responsible for this sudden spike in demand. The more likely culprit is increasing numbers of small units inside homes that are suddenly cranked up in warm weather. In other words, the completely unnecessary ones. Just as wood burners are being phased out by law as we start to fully understand the damage they do to climate and also lung health, we now need to consider a ban on some air-conditioning units — particularly when used at the mildest of warm temperatures. And until then it’s up to us not to buy them. When it’s 26C outside, the average British home simply doesn’t need air-conditioning. It might feel nicer, but making you a little more comfortable isn’t the government’s job.”
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WHAT’S ON TODAY
Yuggera and Turrbal Country (also known as Brisbane)
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Author Emily O’Grady will talk about her debut book, Feast, at Avid Reader bookshop.
Eora Nation Country (also known as Sydney)
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Author Jordana Silverstein will speak about her new book, Cruel Care, at Glee Books.
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Poet Ali Whitelock will speak about her new collection, A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things, at Better Read Than Dead bookshop.
Schemo and the old ‘no recollection – it’s up to someone else to jog my memory’ defence? …. Ground Hog Day again?
“The Liar’s Alibi”
Turns out he had things to remember and they influenced Dutton’s actions today.
“Look at me Thorpe” is fast becoming the boy who cried wolf. What new accusation will be made next time she feels her profile is slipping?
But hey, what a sure-fire way to distract from others in the senate feeling some heat… You could almost write the script.
Because Sen. Thorpe would be more than happy to assist the government, and now Opposition, flunkies any embarrassment resulting from their entirely bipartisan incompetence, corruption and collusion.
One good trougher to another, expecting the same comradery & protection in turn?
I love how all these people derided Thorpe only to have Dutton come out and say je received information about Van’s behavior and expelled him from the Liberal party room
He received other allegations and has expelled him from the room while the PHSS independently investigates. Without making any judgement about guilt/innocence.
As per the Jenkins Report, by the book, 100%. But hey, soft paps, don’t let that stop your trial-by-media lynch mobbery, will you. Knowing everything, as you soft paps do…having learned nothing, as you soft paps apparently never will.
Elsewhere, Kean asks: “Why the eerie quiet on Lidia Thrope’s sexual assaul allegation?’
Crikey provides one local answer, at least: Comments are switched off on this article.
Come on, guys. This whole fiasco is spiralling ever further out of control, becoming more and more destructive every day to every nobler ambition of #MeToo, and – of course, as always – sexual abuse and crime victims everywhere. Sorry, but Crikey’s writers simply will not help sort out the unholy civic mess by deluding yourselves that you can simply ‘write your way’ beyond your own particular past complicities in helping create that mess in the first place.
Mea culpas, first. Re-set your editorial gyros. Take critical stock of the goods and bads of your own #MeToo yarns over the years. And then…get on with the proper, serious independent coverage we are paying you guys for.
Alternatively…keep leaving it to Moloch the re-shape the public narrative largely solo, to suit. Those of us who have been consistently critical of you on this…aren’t your enemy. Chrs.
Do you have lotsa pics of the fairies at the bottom of your garden where they share credibility with hack writers daring to write heresy of the eternal verities du jour instead of the usual tedious troothiness?
don’t have a garden mate, i live in a sh*tty rented flat like everyone else outside the privileged soft pap prog knowledge classes.
out of interest…what actually is the ‘point’ of your comment, o nameless-but-many-lettered-&-numbered one? make me feel silly? cut me down to size? dude – i can do that all by myself. out-interwebzing me then? wiv your devilishly cutting riposte? oh nos, random numbers! oh nos, oh nos, oh nos!!! some anonymous twerp has said a yucky fing about me online yet again…!!!!
*rents clothes, gnashes teef, fwows oneself off the nearest cliff…and etc*
If you’ve got something worthwhile to say, man, I’m all open ears, mind and boundless, brimming heart. 🙂
Didn’t know anyone still “rents clothes” in these days of cheaper than chips fast fashion.
Unless you meant ‘rends clothes’?
Ouch. Yes, fair cop, Jumbled-Numbers-n-Letters. I could try to wriggle out of it by pointing out that I buy all my kit from Target – strictly sales – and do indeed resort to a rented tux on the rare occasions one’s needed …but that’d just be a desperation play for the Cricks’ sympathy vote.
One is grateful for the editorial tweak. Chrs.
After reading the transcript of Senator Thorpe’s speech, I have sent her an email expressing my sorrow for her experiences, my gratitude for her courageous and dignified words that will be meaningful to a great many Australians and my respect for the professionalism with which she has conducted herself in the beyond disgusting environment the Opposition has been creating over the last few days.
How is deciding that Senator Thorpe’s public airing of her ‘experiences’ is ‘courageous’ and ‘dignifed’ well ahead of any independent investigation of her allegations by Parliament House due process, and with the knowledge that Senator Thorpe has no intention of pursuing them herself outside the even more unaccountably-quarantined bubble of Parliamentary privilege…supposed to represent ‘put[ting] the feelings and needs of all the victims and their loved ones around the country before the needs of people who can’t control their need to damage others with irresponsible…commentary’, Woke Woman?
If you accept every accusation of sexual abuse, harassment and crime immediately, equally and without question, without even a hint of cautionary scepticism or ‘thinking before speaking‘, then all you do is risk cheapening, allowing to be cynically hijacked, and thus faux-discrediting all such accusations. Indeed, in practical effect, no less than misogynist dismissal, disdain and character assassination does. So let’s see what the PWSS can ascertain, Woke, before leaping to conclusions either way. Senator Thorpe may well have acted with dignity and courage. But it could equally turn out that rapists, abusers, harassers and misgynists everywhere have cause to be grateful to her, for undermining the gravity, heft and impact of future allegations even further than this mournful few years of lynch mob trial-by-media already has. Grateful to the well-meaning soft pap progs who mostly made up those lynch mobs, too, many of them doubtless decent and well-meaning people like you, Woke. And maybe eventually even grateful – given how it’s unravelling, at this decadent, partisan, self-indulgent late stage – to the entire #MeToo movement, eventually. It’s quickly becoming a repulsive farce now, and in doing so, it’s holding the core issues it claims to have been championing, and all victims, its repulsive hostage as it implodes.
No wonder Grace Tame wants to distance herself from these unfolding iterations of it, at least.
Great to see Crikey take the responsible course and turn off the comments on articles related to allegations of sexual harrassment, sexual assault and rape in PH. At the moment, people need all the space they can get to stop and think before speaking.
It’s about time we put the feelings and needs of all the victims and their loved ones around the country before the needs of people who can’t control their need to damage others with irresponsible, vile and misogynistic commentary. THANK-YOU Crikey!
Definitely what is needed, more silencing and condemnation of any mention of differences, apart from alternative facts.
Nobody is being silenced. The Internet is full of places where people can comment, and do so free of charge.
You wrote in PRAISE of silencing above.
Is ‘consistency‘ a foreign concept in your limited vocabulary?
I wrote in praise of giving people time and space to think. And I did so for very good reasons that have been on display this week including Amanda Stoker’s revelations.
All over the country, Australians are recognising in their own lives, as girls and women, these things being discussed. We know very well the deep need for careful, critical reflection at this point if there is to be much needed change.
People who want things to continue as they are will not be happy. People oblivious to what is going on in the real world may also not be happy. Esther’s article on BRS has much to offer in this context too.
Once again, I commend Crikey for giving us time and space to reflect with honesty should we be willing to accept the offer.
Plenty of us have been reflecting on these issues ‘with honesty’ for a long long long long long time, madam. Some of us have even worked in these areas enough, just enough, to know that public allegations of sexual crime, aired in the media as a priority over using the formal channels for redress that are available equally to all of us, is always – always always always – a regressive outcome for that vast majority ‘the rest of all of us’. Systemic justice is not ‘about’ the Brittany Higginses and Lidia Thorpeses and Rachelle Millers and Kate Thorntons securing their versions of redress (money, revenge, destroyed careers, profile, whatever). They are relatively-powerful, already-privileged people with multiple avenues for securing at least some form of it. It’s about what ‘everyone else’, without power and privilege, who has been abused, harassed or sexually assaulted, gets lumped with in their narcissistic wake, their selfish aftermath. For that rest of us, #MeToo has always been fraught, and it’s now become a full blown catastrophe.
The accusations now in the public domain against David Van are a perfect case in point. Lidia Thorpe and Amanda Stoker (and apparently others) not taking their accusations to (it would appear) police (if not parliamentary processes) long ago, and instead now simply turning them into another media/political weapon, is just another systemic FU to us. It’s all of a piece with the cynical media/politicisation of the Lehrmann accusation, including by Higgins and Sharaz, over the last years. This is despite us spending millions on DV and sexual crime education for decades prior to the Jenkins report. A ‘new’ movement? Spare me. People have been trying for a long time to get people, especially women, to speak up. But privileged people, including privileged women, including privileged victims of it, are still choosing to tolerate behaviour that is not acceptable. They do so for expedient reasons, ignoring due process, until it becomes expedient to air their grievances publicly, while still ignoring due process. Please; do not try to tell me the Van accusations are being aired now as a matter of ‘public interest.
These arrogant privileged people rub their selfish expediency in our faces by claiming they are going public (not going through the only channels available to us)…‘for our sake’. What nauseating b/s. They are all playing privileged expedient games to suit themselves. It’s a citizen’s civic duty to go to the police if they’ve suffered an alleged crime not just for their own sake but for everyone’s. If you’ve been abused, to make a formal complaint. If you’ve been harassed, to speak up. Push back. Starting with to the perpetrator. Embrace your agency. Take charge of your own life, and don’t put yourself in risky situations. Like getting p*ssed and going back to your workplace after midnight on a weekend with a superior. Like getting p*ssed and needing/allowing a member of your debating team to give you a bath. Like getting p*ssed and having a workplace affair as a married women with your married boss.
I’ve warned from day one that #MeToo was an ersatz-only ‘progressive, feminist’ movement, one that was much more about white, privileged, middle class professionals seeking cynical personal and/or expedient cohort advantage. I was right, Woke Woman. I do not need to be lectured by an anonymous internet curtain twitcher, on a hypocritical and selective millionaire’s website, about ‘thinking about things’ ‘with honesty’. I have called, from day one of this now-repulsive farce of a #MeToo cult, for people to shut up about specific subjudicial cases, stop weaponising sexual crime, abuse and harassment, go to police if your accusations are criminal, and let due process breathe.
For that heinous and unforgivable moral crime, I’ve been called a rape apologist, a DV enabler, a misogynist, a probable abuser myself, a poor father, violent towards women, a creep, a bully and any number of other passing lousy things. Almost always by people like you, wearing your e-hoods online and laying down the rules of ‘free speech’ public debate with your arrogant moral dictates, while I have routinely tried to engage with all the muck in good faith, while regularly posting my residential address, along with my phone number.
I am a very grown-up adult with a lot of life experience and I’ll wager more DV policy work than most here under my belt. (Which admittedly hardly takes much.) I have been consistently prophetic on #MeToo matters, Woke Woman, especially surrounding Parliament House. From the moment of the march for justice on it I pointed out the risk of a net regressive impact on specific victims of alleged sexual abuse, harassment and crime, and their prospects and resolve for securing justice. I was right then, and I’m proven more right every day. So kindly direct your amusingly patronising, anonymous admonitions elsewhere. Others at Crikey may find them useful and interesting. But that’s of little relevance, since the majority of others here including most bylines and the editorial platform itself have been about as wrong about #MeToo from the start as I’ve been right.
The suggestion that ‘the system’ is somehow impossibly loaded against women, and this discourages women from seeking redress via it, is deeply offensive to the thousands and thousands of men and women who have worked for decades to make ‘the system’ better and better, and continue doing so every day, and who drive themselves to near-despair trying their best to help alleged victims make it better still by USING IT. That easy, narcissistic and bad faith throwaway line, which is driven overwhelmingly by those with a vested interest in expanding their own little place in the ‘violence industry’ and those privileged people who’ve suffered bad behaviour but who have only lately decided that attacking ‘the system’ is part of their next most expedient course of agency, is made a grotesque lie of every day by those, mostly women, who will never be made a transient star by an equally cynical press (and don’t want to be), who will never secure million dollar payouts (and don’t want them), but choose to embrace ‘the system’ instead. A perfect example is the anonymous woman – not white, not privileged, not with chummy private school mates at the ABC and crusading pro bono lawyers – who endured three rape trials in ‘the system’ and a genuinely horrifying, frighteningm intimidating ordeal for her trouble (which continues), with virtually no #MeToo coverage or ‘curated’ public support. No book deals, no payouts, no public championing, no selfies with Grace & Co. Just ‘the system’, and the highly-evolved support frameworks we ‘the rest of us’ have quietly improved over the years, for us ‘the rest of us’ to avail ourselves of. Her case, her bravery, her civic seriousness and resolve, along with that of the hundreds and thousands of others that never become the stuff of partisan point-scoring, is rewarded by being actively exploited, cheapened, hampered and demeaned, every time a privileged person starts bleating and moralising and grand-standing about ‘the system’ in the media while naturally simultaneously refusing to even let ‘the system’ try to do its work for them. Because…it’s not personally expedient. People are entitled, like Brittany Higgins and Rachelle Miller and Kate Thornton’s privileged circle of friends…to choose not to work with ‘the system’ if they want. They have no right to undermine ‘the system’ for the rest of us by trying to justify their personal choices by saying it’s because ‘the system’ is sh*t. It utterly betrays and abandons the ‘rest of us’.
We here at Crikey are all privileged people. If you want us to ‘reflect with honesty’ on #MeToo, Woke, then how about those here guilty of it over #MeToo start by pondering the impact of their relentless undergraduate sneering at ‘the system’ upon those who will…never, ever, ever have anything else to turn to for redress and justice.
My reference above is to the Jarryd Hayne rape trials (3) and conviction. Apols.
Until an ‘allegation’ has been contested in a court of law, there is no ‘victim’. Best not to conflate the two.