Amid the unedifying displays in Canberra last week, as the Liberal Party relentlessly pursued Minister for Women Katy Gallagher in the Senate, drawing on Brittany Higgins’ leaked text messages in order to claim Gallagher and her colleagues actively conspired with Higgins to “weaponise” her rape allegation — and then engaged in corrupt conduct to ensure Higgins received a handsome payment for her trouble — I had a clarifying moment.
There, lined up in the front row of the opposition benches of the Senate, the usual suspects — a phalanx of female Liberal senators — were called upon, once again, to do the Liberal Party’s dirty work. Some have called them “crumb maidens”, others “the handbag brigade”. One by one, they stepped up to politicise a woman’s alleged sexual assault.
First Michaelia Cash, then former minister for women Marise Payne, and then Sarah Henderson. But it was Payne’s complicity in the line of attack that was most galling.
This is the same former minister for women in the Morrison government who remained silent about the impact the pandemic was having on women. In July 2020, I analysed the minister’s social media posts since the start of the pandemic and found that just 16.5% had anything, anything at all, to do with women — and less than 5% had anything to do with the impact of COVID on their safety and economic security.
This is the same former minister for women who was famously chased through the halls of Parliament on the day of the Women’s March by the then-political reporter for Channel 10, Tegan George, who asked, “Can you understand why Australian women feel disappointed and let down by you?”
It was particularly disappointing that Payne, having been complicitly quiet all that time, chose last week, amid a line of questioning directed at Gallagher based on the illegally leaked text messages of an alleged victim of sexual assault, to at last pipe up.
After the myriad of ways the Liberal Party has actively undermined women’s safety and economic security over the past decade — a heap of kindling just waiting for someone like Higgins to come along and set aflame — the political calculus (if there was any) behind the attack was bizarre. It appeared likely to backfire and would only serve to further entrench the party’s “woman problem”.
The Liberal Party seems incapable of understanding the source of women’s anger, the role it has played in stoking it, or that anger’s potential power. Even now, a little over a year after women’s rage delivered the Liberals the lowest female representation in Parliament since 1993 and threatened to consign it to the electoral wilderness unless it could regain ground with women voters, the party seems fundamentally incapable of insight.
Many in the party are living in an alternate reality if they truly believe that Labor’s (supposedly successful) “weaponisation” of Higgins’ claim politically wounded it and is solely to blame for its 2022 election loss. Those wounds were entirely self-inflicted. Blame Scott (“ask Jenny” and women should be happy they are not being “met with bullets”) Morrison.
Remember *that* hard-headed budget that disproportionately benefited men at the height of a pandemic that was disproportionately impacting women’s ability to work, earn and save? Despite the fact that the budget allocated $500 billion in spending, only a shameful $240 million was put towards realising the aims of the budget’s “Women’s Economic Security Statement”. That’s a measly 0.048%.
Not to worry, the women of Australia were told. In among the high-level message that the budget “wasn’t gendered” (seems the Liberal Party had never heard of “gender-responsive budgeting”), a personal favourite was when Senator Anne Ruston said women would “enjoy” driving on all those roads built with infrastructure spending.
Then there was the appointment of Senator Jane Hume as Australia’s first minister for women’s economic security, a role that should have been rebranded the minister for women’s economic insecurity. At the time of her appointment, Hume was famous, or infamous, for a 2018 appearance on the ABC’s Q+A, where she rejected quotas and said women should “work harder” to get into Parliament.
In addition to blaming women’s poverty and growing homelessness on the women themselves because they were “financially illiterate”, Australia’s newly minted minister for women’s economic security backed the notion that women fleeing domestic violence should fund their own escape by accessing up to $10,000 of their super on “compassionate grounds”. Hume persisted with the idea for three years, until the Morrison government was forced into a humiliating U-turn in 2021 when the scheme was dumped because the necessary safeguards to protect against financial abuse could not be implemented.
At the end of the day, the Liberal Party can’t run from its record. A recent report from the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation found that Australian women are now poorer and less healthy than they were a decade ago. And after a decade of the first National Plan to End Violence Against Women, rates of domestic violence remained unchanged and rates of sexual violence increased. This all happened on its watch.
Some Liberals may think they are terribly clever and will extract a high-profile political scalp in the form of Gallagher, but all the women of Australia see is self-serving political point-scoring and a party — still — completely uninterested in delivering justice to women who allege sexual assault or grappling with its own record on women. Our memories are long. And we kept the receipts.
There is another related, but largely ignored, matter which further demonstrates that the Libs do not understand women and the issues that affect their lives.
In the ACT the Labor-Greens government has moved to take over the Calvary Hospital, the only hospital on the north side of Lake BG and put it into public management the same as the Canberra Hospital in Woden Valley. The local Libs have tried to get support from the fed Libs to oppose this transfer and the present Calvary Board sought an injunction to prevent the transfer. The injunction failed to get court support.
The main issues around the transfer centre on Catholic church views on reproduction and on voluntary assisted dying.
I am a woman fast approaching 82. Reproduction issues no longer concern me personally but I do hope that younger women do not face the same lack of access to such services as birth control, abortion, tubal ligations, etc as my generation endured. And I do wish to be able to have access to VAD should the ACT government pass legislation allowing this.
A politics tragic, I have watched federal parliament this week with the dread feeling that nothing has changed – women are still told what to do with their lives and their bodies and have our rights circumscribed by the wishes of a group of male clerics.
And this is 2023!
I remember when Jane Hume proposed women br able to access their super to flee violent partners. She thought this was a great idea amd could lead to them getting a lawyer and possibly get some the former partner’s super
. I was flabbergasted that she seemed unaware of how foolish such a scheme would be
If you think Hume was “unaware of how foolish such a scheme would be” you have not been paying attention. Jane Hume is obsessed with smashing the superannuation system (and even more with the link of some super funds with trade unions). She made her proposal because it would do damage, not in ignorance.
Beautifully put, MJM.
The deliberate campaign by right-wing media and the Liberal party is to say the least, appalling. They know that Higgins is mentally vulnerable, yet they decided it was a brilliant idea to destroy her and her partner’s reputations without a thought to consequences.
I didn’t think the Liberal party could sink any lower than when they were led(?) by Morrison but alas it would seem that they all carry shovels and are willing to dig themselves into an even deeper hole.
It’s been a shameful week in the Senate. These predatory politicians need to keep their paws and their penises to themselves or face severe consequences.
I wish the Speaker would just kick out the repeat offenders who keep yelling, the whole Senate is quite dysfunctional because she doesn’t have control.
This was one of the issue I wished to comment on in the first two “Comments switched off ” articles.
It was absolutely appalling the way Dutton’s mob together with Newscorpse went after Kay Gallagher. The whole Brittany issue was liberal affair from start to finish.
Sexual assault (allegedly) should never be used as a political weapon. This tactic emphasises the blatant disregard politicians have for victims/survivors and more generally, women.
And for some time after!
It must have been tricky deciding what to leave out, but thank-you Kristine for a concise summation of the incredibly disturbing last four years. On this week’s performance, I can see little hope for the next four years.
Male Liberals don’t actually believe women to be equal. That’s the heart of the issue.
Narks, I doubt the problem is confined to the Liberal Party alone. It may well be hidden more successfully amongst the other parties but I’d be gobsmacked if they were totally innocent of this problem.
Labor have gender quotas and the Greens have more women federal members than male members. Their policy platforms are also more beneficial to women than are the Liberals’. I doubt the same could be said of the other coalition party, so I guess that’s the one you’re referring to? How else does one determine “innocence” over guilt?