Niki Savva is a journalist who has worked in the media for around thirty years. Her mid-career employment outside of journalism was as a press secretary to then Australian Treasurer and Liberal MP for Higgins Peter Costello for six years, before becoming a policy adviser to Australian Prime
Minister and Liberal MP for Bennelong John Howard for four years. She is now employed by News Corp.
The
Australian,
24 March 2021:
There
were a few things Scott Morrison got right with his mea culpa press
conference on Tuesday. The first was that he had it. It was at least
a sign that the Prime Minister finally realised just how much trouble
he was in.
He
has floundered for five weeks. Revelations by Peter van Onselen of
yet another scandal close to home spurred him to front the media to
talk about floods, then apres that deluge he tried to construct a
shelter from the other deluge threatening to drown him.
He
tried everything. He was repentant, he sought forgiveness, he
admitted he made mistakes, he promised to make amends without saying
exactly how, he allowed his emotions to overflow as he expressed his
love for his family and his faith.
Morrison
was tearful in front of the media, then choked up again as he walked
into his party meeting, before he even spoke, although that might
have had more to do with the way his press conference ended, with yet
another disaster, than how it began.
He
had to take a moment to compose himself before urging his female MPs
to be trailblazers like Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to
the House of Representatives.
Liberal
women have suffered by allowing themselves to be chained to the
talking points, to become the new Stepford Wives of politics, often
forced to defend the indefensible. Now at least they are free to talk
about quotas.
That
is useful, although quality of the candidates as well as the capacity
of the leader to consult, listen and act matters more. Also, hearing
women of influence bemoan the toxic culture they helped perpetuate by
bullying other women is sickening. But that’s a column for another
day.
One
of the many problems faced by Morrison during this rolling crisis is
that the case against him and the failure of government to protect
women has been prosecuted largely by women. The government’s senior
women, compromised or timid or too ambitious to even think about
breaking out, have held back.
The
defence, such as it is, has been mounted largely by men, mainly the
Prime Minister, although one of the best suggestions came from
Russell Broadbent for a national gathering of women, which Morrison
says is already in train, which came as a surprise to people.
Strong,
articulate women, such as Grace Tame, followed by Brittany Higgins,
began the essential difficult work of demolishing structures that
have protected predators. Their cause was relentlessly, devastatingly
pursued by Labor frontbenchers Tanya Plibersek, Kristina Keneally,
Penny Wong and Catherine King, the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young,
crossbenchers Zali Steggall and Helen Haines, and a slew of
opposition backbenchers. It’s a bomb squad planting devices,
detonating or defusing them.
And
Morrison and his government have been spectacularly, conspicuously,
inept in their responses. Unfortunately, the reset the Prime Minister
had embarked on literally ended in tears.
In
portent and content it was biblical, full of thunderbolts and
lightning, following a sadly familiar pattern. So much about it was
wrong. It was too late coming. Too much of it was about him. Too much
of it didn’t stack up. There were too many deflections, too many
straw men and women, and it climaxed with vengeful threats of
retribution after he was challenged by a journalist.
Morrison
was not criticised (Twitter aside), as he sought to imply, for
discussing the rape allegations made by Higgins with his wife, Jenny,
or for talking about his daughters. He was criticised because he had
failed to grasp the gravity of the situation himself. His wife had to
explain it to him, and even after that he lapsed again, like in his
scripted speech effectively telling March 4 Justice protesters they
were lucky they were “not met with bullets”. He sort of
apologised for that by saying he hadn’t meant to offend.
Careful
attention needs to be paid to every event and every word because of
the slippery, tricky words or technicalities used by others and by
him to extricate or protect him or change the conversation. They go
like this: don’t ask, don’t tell; don’t show and don’t tell;
if you don’t know, you can’t be blamed; even if you do know, it
doesn’t mean you have to accept responsibility; keep denying, even
if you have misled parliament, because eventually the story will move
on.
It
has been a wretched and shameful period for the government. So many
important matters surfaced that the Prime Minister claimed not to
know or hadn’t made it his business to find out, compounded by the
other thing he purported to know that never happened…..
Read
the full article here.
