If the Coalition thought its female support base couldn’t get any smaller, this week suggests otherwise.
The Coalition began the week determined to prosecute who in Labor knew what and when about Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation before it aired on 15 February 2021, in an attempt to show that the then opposition conspired to seek political advantage from the complaint. The issue was called into question by leaked text exchanges between Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, explained on Saturday and again in the Senate on Tuesday that she hadn’t misled the Senate because her answer “no one had any knowledge” was directed at Linda Reynolds’ suggestion she had known weeks before and had encouraged the complaint.
Beyond that minor corrective, the debate in House of Representatives and Senate question time across three days went nowhere and amounted to nothing.
There was tattle about whether Gallagher was invited to Sharaz’s wedding (she was, but declined). There were a few one-word answers from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, that “no”, Gallagher did not mislead the Senate. And there were long arguments about whether standing orders allowed questions to Labor ministers about what they may have known in their former roles.
So, why bother? What’s at work here seems to be a grim calculation that after the Coalition wore so much blame in 2021 and 2022 for how it handled Higgins’ complaint, it has already incurred all the political pain possible from this tragic episode in Australian political life.
Reynolds and Higgins’ subsequent employer, Michaelia Cash, believe they supported her rather than hushing up the complaint.
Much has been written about how the weaponisation of Higgins’ private texts (which were originally obtained by the AFP as part of an investigation and were never tendered to court) amounts to punishment of the complainant and is likely to silence others considering going public with an allegation.
It will, but it doesn’t follow that it was designed to do so. Whatever consideration was given to Higgins’ feelings by the Liberal leadership, obviously they didn’t rate high enough to outweigh the chance of payback against Labor.
It’s a form of asymmetric warfare between Peter Dutton’s opposition and the Albanese government which is still enjoying a honeymoon as far as polls are concerned.
Anything that can make politics look bad might change the atmosphere and help drag the government down to the opposition’s level.
It doesn’t matter how many times Albanese says Higgins’ allegation (which was vehemently denied by the man she accused) was against a Liberal staffer, by a Liberal staffer, for an alleged sexual assault in a Liberal minister’s office. Not when media allies will put Labor and Higgins in enough headlines, promoting a false balance par excellence.
Citizens are encouraged to think both sides are as bad as each other, and few people likely have the stomach to read enough coverage to see this isn’t the case.
Given women abandoned the Coalition at the 2022 election, perhaps the calculation is there is no further to fall. The loss of Aston at a byelection and the party’s parlous state in Western Australia and Victoria should be a warning against such thinking.
After the mudslinging over Higgins’ texts, the Liberals were put on the defensive by senator Lidia Thorpe’s accusation in the Senate against senator David Van.
Van denied inappropriately touching Thorpe, and Thorpe argues she was not immediately believed because she is a black woman.
Dutton then revealed he had asked Van to leave the Liberal party room and called on him to resign, citing “further allegations” against him. We know one of the complainants: former senator Amanda Stoker, who Thorpe noted is a white woman.
In response to Stoker’s complaint and Dutton’s suggestion there is more, Van said that he is “stunned” that his “good reputation can be so wantonly savaged without due process or accountability”.
While structural racism arguably plays a part in who is believed, it’s also true that complaints from members of the same political party or faction are more likely to spur swift action because it is clearer the allegation is not a political hit.
Although Dutton said he made no judgment of the truth of the allegations or guilt or innocence of any individual, at least some of the complaints were taken seriously enough for him to eject Van and call for his resignation.
If he hadn’t just spent three days trampling over Higgins’ wishes in a stampede to get at the government, it could have been quite a moment for Dutton.
Instead, it was just a sad end to a sad week, a here-we-go-again moment plunging parliament back to its darkest days.
The Coalition continued to pursue the Higgins issue in question time on Thursday, but it must surely be time to draw a line under this high-risk low-reward strategy which disregarded Higgins’ wishes and may have accidentally smoked out more alleged wrongdoing on the Coalition side.
The Coalition has done enough to salve the hurt feelings of its members who feel hard done by Labor’s scrutiny over the Higgins allegation. It’s good the leader took swift action in relation to other complaints.
But persuading voters of the grossness of politics in general is a losing strategy, especially when the Coalition’s claim to any kind of moral high ground seems so very weak.
