Australia’s longest-serving current premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, says female leaders continue to be scrutinised differently from their male counterparts as she criticised a “deplorable” cartoon of the new Victorian premier.
The cartoon, published in the Herald Sun this week, depicted the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, as a nude catwalk model. The image used some pixellation and was paired with the caption: “From the Commonwealth Games cancellation … the premier’s new clothes.”
In an interview with Guardian Australia on Thursday, Palaszczuk recalled a similar cartoon drawn of her when she was elected premier in 2015.
“I’ve reached out to Jacinta because I thought it was very unfair,” she said. “It was distasteful. And it’s not acceptable.
“The same thing happened to me when I first began. I had a similar cartoon that was done. I think it’s demeaning to women. It puts a view out there that women are less equal than men… I think it was deplorable.”
The cartoon she referred to was posted to Facebook by the former federal MP George Christensen and showed Palaszczuk swinging on a wrecking ball naked with the words: “with apologies to Miley Cyrus”.
In 2020 Palaszczuk became the first woman in the nation’s history to win three consecutive elections.
A year out from the next state election, she’s the only Australian pre-pandemic leader still standing and insists there’s still “so much to do” in the sunshine state.
But as she seeks a fourth term, new polling revealed on Thursday she was no longer the state’s preferred premier, with the Labor party also behind in a two-party preferred count.
Her treasurer, Cameron Dick, shrugged off the results on Thursday, saying the caucus was united behind the premier.
“Before the 2020 election, there were polls that said Deb Frecklington would be the premier,” he said. “She’s not the premier.”
In the most decentralised mainland state, Palaszczuk is battling a Greens surge in Brisbane and a Katter’s Australian party stronghold in the north.
“I often describe it to people as being two-and-a-half times the size of Texas … going up to the Torres Strait is further than going down to Melbourne,” she said.
“Food is three times higher [up there] than what you and I would pay down here in Brisbane. So there are competing demands between the regions and the south-east.”
It’s been a tough year for Palaszczuk politically. In February her government was widely condemned by experts when it overrode the state’s Human Rights Act to make breach of bail an offence for children.
In August the government again faced criticism for adding a swathe of last-minute amendments to an unrelated bill. This included another suspension of the state’s Human Rights Act to formalise the detention of children in watch houses and prisons.
That same month Palaszczuk was tracked down and papped by photographers while on leave in Italy as leadership rumours swirled.
Last week the government was dealt another blow after the Liberal National party opposition backflipped and announced it would no longer support a path to treaty.
After initially equivocating on treaty in response, Palaszczuk told Guardian Australia the upcoming truth-telling inquiry was “very important” and would go ahead as planned despite the referendum result on the voice to parliament.
“We accept the decision of that referendum,” she told Guardian Australia. “The Australian people have spoken.
“But in relation to our path to treaty …. there are a whole lot of stories and part of our history that we were never taught in our schools. And that is the atrocities that were taken upon our First Nations people.
“I think it’s very important that we continue down this path [and] … take Queenslanders with us together on this journey.”
This week the Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight insisted his Allan cartoon wasn’t “sexualised imagery” but referenced a folktale – The Emperor’s New Clothes.
The Walkley award-winning cartoonist pointed to his past work drawing former prime minister Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers as proof of him practising equal opportunity mockery.
