Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has used a morning tea with the prime minister to take aim at Rupert Murdoch – but says her message goes well beyond the billionaire media mogul.
The 2021 winner wore a T-shirt that read “Fuck Murdoch” when she was greeted by Anthony Albanese and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, at the event for recipients of the 2025 awards held at the Lodge in Canberra on Saturday.
“[The T-shirt is] clearly not just about Murdoch, it’s the obscene greed, inhumanity and disconnection that he symbolises, which are destroying our planet,” Tame told Guardian Australia.
“For far too long this world and its resources have been undemocratically controlled by a small number of morbidly wealthy oligarchs,” she said after the event.
“If we want to dismantle this corrupt system, if we want legitimate climate action, equity, truth, justice, democracy, peace, land back, etc, then resisting forces like Murdoch is a good starting point.”
She said she “never” had reservations about wearing the shirt to the event.
“Speaking truth to power starts at the grassroots level with simple, effective messages. It’s one of my favourite shirts.”
The PM and Haydon smiled and greeted Tame, but there was no visible reaction to the statement on her shirt.
In 2022, the advocate for survivors of sexual assault also stirred controversy when she attended the same event as the outgoing Australian of the Year.
When Tame and her fiance, Max Heerey, arrived, they were greeted by the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, and his wife, Jenny, who congratulated them on their recent engagement.
But Tame remained sombre as they posed for photographs, which famously captured her giving Morrison a stony “side-eye” expression.
She later addressed that moment on Twitter, now X, commenting that the survival of abuse culture “is dependent on submissive smiles, self-defeating surrenders and hypocrisy”.
“What I did wasn’t an act of martyrdom in the gender culture war,” she wrote.
“It’s true that many women are sick of being told to smile, often by men, for the benefit of men. But it’s not just women who are conditioned to smile and conform to the visibly rotting status-quo. It’s all of us.”
Tame had been highly critical of Morrison and his government’s response to allegations of sexual assault and toxic workplace culture in federal parliament.
The winners of the 2025 Australian of the Year awards will be announced at a ceremony in Canberra on Saturday.
More than 30 finalists are in the running to be named Australian of the Year, Senior Australian of the Year, Young Australian of the Year and Australia’s Local Hero.
