Scott Morrison went that step too far with the NSW Liberal Party. Has he also gone that step too far with the NSW electorate?

The Guardian, 4 April 2022:

NSW Liberal MP Catherine Cusack says Scott Morrison ‘trashed’ the party’s values over two decades as state director. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Another senior Liberal has taken aim at Scott Morrison, accusing him of “self-serving ruthless bullying” and claiming he has “ruined” the Liberal party.

Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the legislative council over her anger about flood relief, adds her voice to a growing chorus of critics of Morrison from within his own party in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia.

Cusack explicitly endorses Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’s “character assessment of the prime minister” and reveals she will not vote for the Morrison government in the May election.

The prime minister’s office was contacted for comment regarding Cusack’s claims.

On Tuesday Fierravanti-Wells labelled the prime minister an “autocrat” and a “bully” in an excoriating Senate speech revealing allegations Morrison had made “racial comments” when running for preselection in 2007.

Morrison has vehemently denied the claims, contained in statutory declarations reported in The Saturday Paper and then publicly backed by his preselection opponent, Michael Towke.

Cusack accused Morrison of having “ruined” the Liberal party and “trashed” its values over two decades, as state director, “then as a scheming MP and now as prime minister finding loopholes in our constitution to delay preselections in order to get his way”.

Cusack criticised Morrison for “forcing moderates to vote for [former Liberal and now United Australia party leader MP] Craig Kelly” when his preselection was under threat before the 2019 election.

She has warned she would vote against the prime minister over factional “scheming” and politicised allocation of flood relief.

“But he has outdone himself engineering a federal intervention to jump over the organisation all together.

“He got what he wanted at the expense of destroying our rules-based selection system and disgusting virtually every member of the NSW division.”

Morrison’s immigration minister and proxy in the NSW party, Alex Hawke, has been accused of procedural delays prompting a takeover of federal preselections by a three-person panel, including Morrison and the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet.

The NSW court of appeal is set to rule on Tuesday whether the takeover and resultant preselections complied with Liberal party rules.

Cusack, a longtime critic of the Liberal party’s culture towards women, has spoken out about the exclusion of Ballina, Byron and Tweed from federal disaster payments, a decision reversed in mid-March.

Cusack said that “Scott Morrison’s brazen attempt to fund flood victims in a National party seat and exclude flood victims in a Labor seat that I happen to live in was just too much”.

“To see the self-serving ruthless bullying that has increased inside the Liberal party spill over into public policy and the poorest most vulnerable Australians who lost everything in the floods are the targets of this outrageous abuse of morality and power is simply intolerable.”

Cusack said assistance was “extended to all northern rivers victims” after their exclusion became too “embarrassing”, but the prime minister now appears to be “refusing to engage NSW government on additional measures that are so needed for victims of this incredible disaster”.

“It’s so bad I am moved to endorse Connie’s character assessment of the PM. ‘It’s my way or the highway’. For flood victims. Un-bloody-believable.”……. 

How the Morrison-Joyce partnership is faring in New South Wales.....

The Liberal/LNP and Nationals Coalition Government currently hold 76 seats (50.3%) in the House of Representatives and the Labor Party in Opposition holds 68 seats. With only a 8 seat overall majority, a loss of even three existing Coalition seats in NSW at the May federal election, without winning any NSW Labor seats in return, would possibly cost Morrison government.

Newspoll January-March Quarter 2022 suggests that the NSW Two-Party Preferred Vote of 54-46 in Labor's favour may produce a swing towards Labor of 5.8%, potentially gaining the Labor Party three additional seats in that state at the May federal election.

The Morgan Poll 22 March 2022 suggests that an even bigger 9.6% Two-Party Preferred swing to Labor could occur in News South Wales and a possible three to six seat gained at the federal election.

While the latest Ipsos Poll 3 April 2022 raises the possibility that a Two-Party Preferred swing of 6.8% would see Labor gain four seats in New South Wales.

The Essential Report 22 March 2022 showed that in New South Wales Scott Morrison's performance approval rating stood at 46%. Three was no breakdown of  Anthony Albanese's performance approval rating at state level in this particular poll, however his national approval rating stood at 43%. 

MAPS: the shocking reality of the reach of the mining industry in Australia

Click images to enlarge

This is Australia.

This is where Australia's operating coal mines are situated.

This is where Australia's coal, oil and gas tenements, production wells and pipelines are across the country.

Quite a bit of desert and marginal land remaining, but not much fertile land left across the continent that isn't subject to the corporate whims of the mining industry

Something to think about over the next six weeks until polling day.

Source:

http://data.erinsights.com/maps/fossilfuels-au.html

COVID-19 Pandemic 2020-2022: State of Play in New South Wales and Northern NSW

According to Professor Raina McIntyre (Global Biosecurity, Head of Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute UNSW New South Wales) on 2 April 2022, COVID-19 case numbers are bouncing around. Case numbers in New South Wales have increased since a low of 4,916 daily cases on 21 February 2022. “In the past week, they have ranged from 17,000 to more than 25,000 a day”.

“Part of the problem is the lack of testing and the lack of reporting. The message of “live with it” runs counter to the importance of reporting a positive test, if you can afford one. PCR testing remains restricted, so daily case numbers are a substantial underestimate and even the trends may not be accurate.” [my yellow highlighting]

As of 4pm 1 April 2022 there were 20,389 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of 268,761 active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,302 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 1 April, including 47 people in intensive care, 16 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 13 people with COVID-19 – seven women and six men. Of these, 7 people were aged in their 70s, 5 people were aged in their 80s and 1 person was aged in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 520 people in Northern NSW.

There were 14 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 2 in intensive care.

These 520 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 149 cases across postcodes 2483, 2484, 2485,

Lismore City – 82 cases across postcodes 2472, 2480;

Clarence Valley – 79 cases across postcodes 2460, 2462, 2453, 2464, 2466;

Ballina Shire – 75 cases across postcodes

Byron Shire – 73 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483,

Richmond Valley – 51 cases across postcodes 2469, 2470, 2471, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 11 cases across postcode 2474;

TOTAL 520

According to the federal Dept. of Health as of 31 March 2022 there were 229 COVID-19 outbreaks in residential aged care facilities involving 976 residents. 

A full list of these NSW facilities can be found at

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2022/04/covid-19-outbreaks-in-australian-residential-aged-care-facilities-1-april-2022_0.pdf

On 10 February 2022, the Australian Government announced changes to the definition of fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so as to include vaccine booster doses required for those 16 years and over. The new term in use is “up to date” vaccination.

Therefore as of 1 April 2022 only 60.2% of people aged 16 years to 90 years and older, 79.5% of children aged 12 to 15 years and 26.9% of children aged 5 to 11 years are considered to be “up to date” (fully vaccinated).

The fact that New South Wales is falling behind recommended vaccination rates is a concern given this statement. 

ATAGI Statement, 26 March 2022:

ATAGI recommends an additional booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine to increase vaccine protection before winter for selected population groups (see Table 1) who are at greatest risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and who have received their primary vaccination and first booster dose. These groups are:

• Adults aged 65 years and older
• Residents of aged care or disability care facilities
• People aged 16 years and older with severe immunocompromise (as defined in the ATAGI statement on the use of a 3rd primary dose of COVID-19 vaccine in individuals who are severely immunocompromised)
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 years and older.

The additional winter booster dose can be given from 4 months or longer after the person has received their first booster dose, or from 4 months after a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, if infection occurred since the person’s first COVID-19 booster dose.

ATAGI recommends that the rollout of the additional booster dose for these groups starts from April 2022, coinciding with the rollout of the 2022 influenza vaccination program.

As of 4pm 2 April 2022 there were 16,807 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of ? active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,355 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 2 April, including 50 people in intensive care, 19 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 11 people with COVID-19 – seven women and four men. Of these, 1 person was aged in their 30s, 1 person was in their 50s, 1 person was in their 70s, 6 people were in their 80s and 2 people were in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 471 people in Northern NSW.

There were 14 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 1 in intensive care.

These 471 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 144 cases across postcodes 2484, 2484, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489;

Clarence Valley – 75 cases across postcodes 2460, 2462, 2462, 2464, 2465;

Byron Shire – 71 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483;

Lismore City – 67 cases across postcodes

Ballina Shire – 66 cases across postcodes 2478, 2479;

Richmond Valley – 41 cases across postcodes 2469, 2470, 2471, 2472, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 5 cases across postcode 2474;

Tenterfield Shire – 2 cases across postcode 2476; Tenterfield is not in the NNSWLHD but shares a postcode so some cases are included here.

TOTAL 471

On deaths in Australia…..

At the tail end of the Delta wave in December 2021, where we could reasonably point to the start of the Omicron wave, we had 2006 deaths. The Omicron wave saw close to a 200 per cent increase in deaths compared with all previous waves combined, with 5928 deaths by March 29. This includes six deaths in children under 10, two in people aged 10-19 years, 16 in the group 20-29 and 52 deaths in people 30-39 years old. The largest single age group for deaths was in people 80-89 years, with 2025 deaths. Another 2100 or so deaths were recorded in people aged 40-79 years and the remainder – about 1400 deaths – in people aged 90 years and over. [Professor Raina McIntyre writing in The Saturday Paper, 2 April 2022]

As of 4pm 3 April 2022 there were 15,572 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New South Wales and a total of 266,110 active COVID-19 cases across the state the majority of which are being self-managed at home.

There were 1,418 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital as at 4pm 3 April, including 56 people in intensive care, 18 of whom require ventilation.

NSW Health reported the deaths of 6 people with COVID-19 – four women and two men. Of these, 1 person was aged in their 70s, 3 people were in their 80s and 2 people were in their 90s.

Included in the day’s total of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases were 437 people in Northern NSW.

There were 19 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital with 1 in intensive care.

These 437 cases were all 7 local government areas within Northern NSW:

Tweed Shire – 113 cases across postcodes 2483, 2484, 2486, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489;

Ballina Shire – 83 cases across postcodes 2477, 2478;

Byron Shire – 69 cases across postcodes 2479, 2481, 2482, 2483;

Clarence Valley – 62 cases across postcodes 2460, 2463, 2464;

Lismore City – 55 cases across postcode 2479;

Richmond Valley – 43 cases across postcodes 2469, 2479, 2471, 2472, 2473;

Kyogle Shire – 12 cases across postcode 2474.

TOTAL 437

A reminder......

NSW Health states: 

Everyone is urged to take simple precautions to protect each other from COVID-19, such as:

• use a mask in indoor settings where you cannot maintain a safe physical distance from others

• get your booster vaccine

• get a test and isolate immediately if you have any COVID symptoms

• clean your hands regularly.

SOURCES:

• 2022 media releases from NSW Health

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/2022-nsw-health.aspx

• COVID-19 in NSW - up to 4pm

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/stats-nsw.aspx#today

• Australian Dept. of Health, Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

https://www.health.gov.au/health-alerts/covid-19

BACKGROUND

Current SARS-C0V-2 Variants of Concern in Australia

B.1.617.2 (Delta) and sub-lineages AY.*

B.1.1.529 (Omicron) and sub-lineages BA.*

SARS-CoV-2 Variants Which Decided To Call Australia Home

SARS-CoV-2 Variant A.2.2, Identified 2020-03-17, Australian lineage.

Australia 92.0%, New_Zealand 2.0%, Canada 2.0%, United States of America 2.0%, United Kingdom 1.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant D.2, Identified 2020-03-19, Alias of B.1.1.25.2, Australia.

Australia 100.0%, United States of America 0.0%, Chile 0.0%, Mexico 0.0%, United Kingdom 0.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant D.3, Identified 2020-06-14, Alias of B.1.1.25.3, Australia.

Australia 100.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.136, Identified 2020-06-03, Australian lineage.

Australia 86.0%, Turkey 7.0%, Russia 5.0%, United Kingdom 2.0%.

SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.142, Identified 2020-03-03, Australian lineage.

Australia 39.0%, United Kingdom 12.0%, Iceland 12.0%, Switzerland 6.0%, United States of America 6.0%.

___________________________

Babe in the reeds: a story of massacres and resilience of the Nyangbul people in Northern NSW

 

Babe in the reeds: a story of massacres and resilience from Catherine Marciniak on Vimeo.

 

Cabbage Tree Island 2 April - post Northern NSW Floods Feb-March 2022 the island community's homes are in ruin and its families scattered and longing to return home

Cabbage Tree Island is on the Richmond River in Ballina Shire, Northern Rivers region. This area is within Nyangbul country of the Bundjalung Nation. In 1892 the NSW Aborigines Protection Board gazetted the island as an Aboriginal reserve.

According to Bundjalung oral tradition, during the 1890s a group of Aboriginal people in north-eastern New South Wales (NSW) walked from Wyrallah near Lismore and crossed to Cabbage Tree Island. They aimed to take possession of the land and clear the thick scrub to begin cane farming.

They quickly became self-sufficient. Kitchen gardens provided fresh vegetables; orchards and banana plantations provided fresh fruit and the rearing of cattle provided fresh meat and milk. The establishment of cane farms on the island gave the community a sense of independence.

The rivers, and the estuarine, wetland and sand dune environments on and around Cabbage Tree Island provided an abundance of wild food. There were always plenty of resources to share among the community:

‘… In those days, it was nothing, you know, to go out there [and] get pipis and bring them home. There was plenty to eat … when they’d go, the men used to go up the creeks and early in the morning in the boat, and come back with all these wild foods … they’d have koala, kangaroo, water lily bulbs and swans’ eggs and ducks’ eggs … but everything was shared, that was the beauty of everything.’ Aunty Yvonne Del-Signore, interview 26 January 2005, Boundary Creek. [Planet Corroboree, 28 September 2016] 

In 1911 Cabbage Tree Island's status was changed from reserve to station and the community lost its autonomy, freedom of movement and full right to farm the land. A non-Aboriginal man was installed a manager of the island and in practice farmed it on his own behalf.

It wasn't until the 1960s that autonomy began to be returned to Aboriginal families living on the island. 

The February-March 2022 floods have devastated this small community.

Cabbage Tree Island as floods recede & post flood 2022

Just in time for consideration before Australia goes to the polls to decide on which party will govern the nation, a study is published analysing Liberal Party violence against its female MPs & Senators

 

On 23 March 2022 the Australian Journal of Social Issues published the study “The cost of doing politics: A critical discursive analysis of Australian liberal politicians’ responses to accusations by female politicians of bullying and intimidation”, authored by Jasmin Sorrentino (Uni of Adelaide), Martha Augoustinos (Professor, School of Psychology, Uni of Adelaide) and Amanda Le Couteur (Associate Professor, School of Psychology, Uni of Adelaide).

This study focussed on a six week period in August to September 2018 and analysed data comprised of transcripts extracted from the electronic parliamentary database, ParlInfo, as well as television and radio interviews, media announcements, speeches and doorstop interviews. This period coincided with the weeks following Scott Morrison's Liberal partyroom election to the prime ministership

A total of 601 transcripts were found and reduced by selecting transcripts that included direct speech from Liberal Party members, featured the search terms as a topic within the content of the transcript (and not simply the title) and by removing duplicates. Thus the final number of transcripts was reduced to 46, included 19 television, 19 radio and 8 doorstop interviews.

Analysis of the data found two repertoires that were routinely mobilised by Liberal Party (LP) members to deny and mitigate accusations by female Liberal MPs of bullying and intimidation in their party: (1) a gender-neutral repertoire (13 instances) whereby reported incidents of bullying were argued to apply equally to men and women and (2) a ‘politics is tough’ repertoire (16 instances) that involved the normalisation of intimidation as part of political culture. Although there is some overlap between the two repertoires (i.e., the ‘politics is tough’ repertoire was commonly deployed alongside the gender-neutral repertoire), the repertoires were recognisable and distinct ways in which party members routinely made sense of gender discrimination.

The study Introduction states of the the background of research:

Recent conversations prompted by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have put issues of workplace sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault into the global spotlight. Women from various sectors, including film and television, technology, business and politics have spoken out on social media and other public spaces about their experiences of harassment or assault, and the problematic culture of their respective workplaces (Collier & Raney, 2018). In early 2021, new and historic sexual assault and rape allegations emerged in the Australian Parliament reigniting discussion about the political culture, including long-held debates about sexism and misogyny. Allegations included a young staffer's claims of rape by a senior colleague in 2019, and a 33-year-old claim of rape against Attorney-General, Christian Porter, from a woman who has since taken her own life (Nine News, 2021). In March 2021, PM Scott Morrison addressed the allegations, which he had previously dismissed as not requiring his immediate attention (Crowe, 2021). Commenting that the government would work towards addressing cultural issues around the treatment of women within parliament, he stated “blokes don't get it right all the time, we all know that, and … what matters is that we're desperately trying to and that's what I’m trying to do. And we will get this right. And we need to focus on that.” (Lowrey & Snape, 2021).

Despite the growing literature on violence against women in politics (VAWIP), little is known about how politicians understand and respond to acts of VAWIP. This study contributes to the emerging literature by analysing the public discourse of Australian Liberal Party (LP) members as they made sense of, and responded to, accusations by female Liberal MPs of bullying and intimidation in their party. The role of such discourse in legitimating and reproducing the status quo in terms of gender inequality will be examined…..

In 1.4 Background to the current study it further states:

In 2018, four female Liberal MPs in Australia made accusations of bullying and intimidation against their male colleagues and members of other parties. These accusations were made days after the swearing-in of Scott Morrison as Australia's 30th Prime Minister (PM) following a turbulent four-day leadership spill. Backbencher Julia Banks announced her resignation from the Liberal Party in August 2018, describing behaviour displayed during the leadership spill as “the scourge of cultural and gender bias, bullying and intimidation [that] continues against women in politics, the media, and across business” (Banks, 2018). In September 2018, former Liberal Deputy Leader and Foreign Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop5 spoke about the underrepresentation of women in parliament, stating that the behaviour towards women “would not be tolerated in any other workplace across Australia” (Branley, 2018). In February 2019, Bishop announced that she would not contest the next election. Liberal Senators Linda Reynolds and Lucy Gichuhi also called out bullying and intimidation of women within the party in August and September 2018, respectively, threatening to go public with details (Grattan, 2018; Karvelas, 2018a). They later chose not to ‘name names’ in parliament and instead agreed to follow an internal complaints process (Karp, 2018). Although media attention largely focussed on the Liberal Party's ‘woman problem’ (Maley, 2018), it was a period in which women across party lines began denouncing sexism and harassment in the Australian Parliament.

In 3.1 Redefining bullying: gender-neutral formulations the study observed:

LP members’ responses to questions posed by interviewers about accusations of bullying and intimidation in their party made by female MPs. LP members routinely produced responses that rejected categorising what had occurred as ‘bullying’, followed by a redefinition of the behaviour as something else. Specifically, reported incidents of bullying were minimised by providing alternative descriptions such as ‘pressure’ (n = 7) and ‘robust discussion’ (n = 6). Accounts typically involved the use of gender-neutral pronouns or gender-equivalent descriptions, that served to make the gendered nature of the bullying and intimidation irrelevant within the political context. The extracts presented below illustrate how gender-neutral accounts were used to discount the validity of claims of bullying by denying the relevance of gender. Such positioning fosters the conclusion that claims of bullying by female MPs are unfounded because men and women are equal in their experiences.

Extract 1 illustrates the way questions posed by interviewers about bullying and intimidation were routinely redefined as matters involving ‘pressure’ and as having been experienced by both men and women. The extract comes from an Australian news and current affairs talk show, The Project (2018). Panel members, Gorgi Coghlan and Hamish Macdonald ask PM, Scott Morrison, about accusations made by female Liberal MPs that bullying occurred during the leadership spill. The ‘politics is tough’ and gender-neutral repertoires simultaneously deny and minimise accusations of bullying towards female MPs.

EXTRACT 1. Scott Morrison 6 September 2018….

In this extract, PM Morrison's account in response to a question from the interviewer (Coghlan) is a denial that bullying of female MPs occurred. His description of the nature of politics as “ferocious” (l.5), and the “last decade” (l.6) as being exceptional in this regard (“the most ferocious period” l.5–6) serves not only to dismiss Coghlan's question about women being bullied during the specific time of the leadership spill (l.2–4) but also to normalise politics as a uniquely difficult environment. On line 9, Morrison downgrades his initial specification of the “ferocious” (l.5, 8) nature of politics by describing the period of voting during a leadership spill (“these ballots” l.18) as involving “a lot of pressure”. This term is recycled at lines 17 and 19, where Morrison responds to the interviewer's question (“Were women bullied in the Liberal Party to vote a certain way?” l.4). Morrison does not pick-up the gender category introduced by Coghlan (“women” l.4), but turns a gendered account into a gender-neutral one by redefining the proposed bullying as something that affects both “men and women” (l.9). This gender-neutralising account invalidates claims that female MPs were bullied by representing both men and women as equal in their experience of “pressure” in politics. Morrison further undermines claims of bullying by constructing a version of the context of the behaviours’ occurrence as distinct from the normal business of politics: “these difficult periods” (l.25).

Extract 2 illustrates another way LP members made sense of bullying claims: redefining bullying as a matter of people speaking strongly. Across the data corpus, variants of this pattern included descriptions of “robust discussions”, “vigorous debates”, “robust argument”, “intense lobbying” and people trying to “persuade each other”. The extract below comes from an interview segment on Sky News Australia, between Victorian Liberal Party State President, Michael Kroger, and host, Laura Jayes (Jayes, 2018). Prior to this segment, Jayes had asked Kroger whether he believes the LP is facing some problems, given that Julia Banks resigned from politics citing bullying as a key reason. Kroger responded by stating that he had spoken to a female MP who said she had not observed any evidence of bullying. The extract below continues this discussion.

EXTRACT 2. Michael Kroger 29 August 2018…..

Kroger's response involves a combination of denial that bullying occurred, the redefinition of intimidation as a matter of (gender-neutral) “people” “speaking strongly to one another”, and the normalisation of such behaviour in politics. His account is built using consensus and corroboration (“I’ve spoken to a number of people” l.2), and extreme case formulation (“none of them” l.2), with both devices functioning to present his argument as widely shared and valid. Notably, Kroger's denial of bullying is not limited to women as targets; he claims that both men and women (l.3) have denied experiencing bullying and intimidation, which also builds the credibility of his account. On line 4–5, Kroger redefines the behaviour in question as being “people speak[ing] strongly to one another”, with a variation at line 10 (“people raise their voice”) which is treated as normal, expected, and appropriate in a political context (“seriously this is politics “l.4, “That's what happens” l.7). These constructions function to do three things. First, and consistent with Extract 1, the gender-neutral account undermines and negates the veracity of bullying accusations by making the salience of social group memberships irrelevant. As Riley (2002) noted, the use of category-neutral terms over social categories (e.g., age, sex or ethnicity) works to mask the potential common experience that members might share. Such gender-neutral terminology also undermines an alternative version—that female members of the LP experience gender-based discrimination—and the seriousness of the behaviour in question. Second, Kroger's redefinition positions such behaviour (e.g., people speaking strongly) as hegemonic, rather than controversial and requiring explanation. Third, Kroger tries to deflect and distract from the issue at hand by referencing the opposition party's widely acknowledged bitter leadership changes (l.7–8), building a case for the normality of “strong feelings” at such times, and thus undermining the need for change.

The study also addressed the nature of violence against women in politics (VAWIP) and broadly accepted internal political party VAWIP as “behaviour that specifically targets women as women to leave politics by pressuring them to step down as candidates or resign a particular political office”.

Going on to state:

VAWIP can have profound effects on women. Those who have been the targets of gender-based violence have reported feelings of loneliness and work dissatisfaction, frustration due to the barriers impeding their political contributions, as well as a desire to leave politics (Krook, 2020). VAWIP also has broader societal impacts in terms of electoral integrity (i.e., procedural fairness and equality of opportunity) and democracy. In other words, VAWIP violates principles of equality because women—by virtue of their gender—are the targets of violence.

See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajs4.209

Morrison quoted and critiqued in Crikey, 31 March 2022 concerning an incident which occurred in the Senate on the evening of Friday 29 March:

There’s an ever-growing list of women claiming bullying is rife in the Liberal Party, and in a blistering post-budget take-down, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells joined the ranks. It didn’t take long for Scott Morrison to deflect the claims with his reliable and oft-used spin of a woman scorned.

“I know Connie is disappointed,” the prime minister said.

Those five words are all it takes to tell a story of a bitter, rejected woman, as if losing her Senate ticket alone would inspire Fierravanti-Wells to stand up in Parliament and tear Morrison and others to shreds. Her detailed account of toxic factional dealings reduced to an emotional outburst with just one short retort.

It’s no surprise that Morrison wasn’t going to cop the accusations on the chin and instead direct any “specific complaints” of bullying to internal party mechanisms.

His handling of the matter is reminiscent of the treatment of former MP Julia Banks. While Banks and Fierravanti-Wells don’t have much in common politically, the dismissal of their serious and scathing accusations of bullying carry plenty of similarities.

When Banks announced she was not contesting the 2019 election, Morrison quickly took up the line that Banks was struggling personally. “I’m supporting Julia and I’m reaching out to Julia and giving her every comfort and support for what has been a pretty torrid ordeal for her,” he said.

His “concern” framed Banks as a woman unable to cope with the fallout of Malcolm Turnbull’s losing the prime ministership. But in fact — as Banks made abundantly clear in her book Power Play — it was her three months under Morrison’s leadership that led her to call it a day. She described him as “menacing, controlling wallpaper” in her book.

Banks has reflected on how Morrison controlled the narrative to try to get ahead of the bullying accusations, with the story that Banks was “this weak petal that hadn’t coped with coup week”.

Fierravanti-Wells on the other hand was able to get her shots in before she could be framed as mentally unstable, so instead she’s received the straight-up scorned woman framing. Either way the dismissal is the same. Whether before or after the fact, Morrison resorts to the narrative of the emotional woman, too fragile to deal with politics, lashing out without reason……

North Coast Voices Administration Announcement, 1 April 2022

North Coast Voices will not be posting again until Monday 4 April 2022.

The exception being a prepared post that will be triggered by any announcement during that three-day period of the dissolution of the Australian Parliament.