Political members have weighed in on Michaelia Cash comments about Bill Shorten
MICHAELIA Cash has withdrawn her comments about Bill Shorten’s female staff, as footage emerged of her avoiding the media with guards and a whiteboard. SEE THE VIDEO
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PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has defended Michaelia Cash over her outburst yesterday, saying she was “bullied and provoked”.
Mr Turnbull has also rejected calls for Minister Cash to apologise to the young female staffers in Bill Shorten’s office, who she claimed their were rumours about, telling Parliament today if Labor was really concerned about the women it would drop the issue.
He said she had made the remarks in a “very heated exchange in Senate estimates where she was being bullied and provoked” by a Labor senator who was “making insinuations” about her staff.
“She made a response which she has unreservedly withdrawn and if members opposite ... want to mitigate any offence to the persons referred to, they would treat this matter as having been dealt with by the Senator,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said it was the convention to withdrawn remarks.
He was responding to Opposition leader Bill Shorten, who asked in Question Time today for the Prime Minister to direct Senator Cash to apologise.
Minister Cash dodged media this afternoon as she returned to a Senate Estimates hearing by having Parliament House security guards block her from cameras with a white board.
She later withdrew her comments she made but did not say sorry for them.
SHORTEN EXPRESSES OUTRAGE
BILL Shorten has broken his silence to express outrage after Michaelia Cash’s threat to publicly name young women in his office who she claimed were the subject of rumours.
The Opposition leader said he was shocked she had not apologised yet.
“I’m angry on behalf of the smart, dedicated, hard-working professionals in my office who have been smeared by Michaelia Cash,” he said today.
“I’m honestly shocked she hasn’t said sorry.
“I’ve been waiting for her to ring up my office and organise it.”
Mr Shorten said Minister Cash’s comments were the “sort of nonsense that turns people off politics”.
“We should be focusing on the things that matter to Australians, not hurling insults and making up stories about people who can’t defend themselves,” he said.
“The prime minister said a few weeks ago that the parliament needed to be a more respectful workplace for women.
“I agree with him. Maybe he should try doing something about it.”
Cash’s colleagues have defended her outburst about female staffers by claiming a Labor senator provoked her with innuendo about a potential relationship with a staffer.
Liberal frontbencher Craig Laundy said today that Labor was trying to “sling mud” by implying there was a similar situation to the scandal that saw Barnaby Joyce step down as Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister on Monday.
“There was implied innuendo the whole way along about staff movements between Liberal staffer’s offices,” Mr Laundy told Sky News this morning.
“The unspoken reality was they were attempting to sling mud looking back to a couple of weeks ago linking it to the movement of staffers around the Nationals offices.”
Cabinet minister Peter Dutton appeared to add fuel to the fire by saying it “was a bit rich” for Labor to be “moralising” on the coalition.
“I think Mr Shorten has demonstrated on a number of occasions in relation to many issues that he is not a genuine person and he shouldn’t be taken at face value,” Mr Dutton said.
Mr Dutton declined to expand on what he meant by his remarks about Mr Shorten. “All I am saying is over the course of the last couple of weeks, I think we have been lectured to and moralised on by people that really should check their own situation first.”
Minister Cash — who was the federal Minister for Women before moving to the Innovation and Jobs portfolio two months ago — threatened in Parliament yesterday to name young women in Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s office that she claimed there had been rumours about for years.
Senator Cash made the extraordinary threat while being grilled by Labor Senator Doug Cameron about her own former staff’s involvement in tipping off the media to raids on trade union offices late last year.
MORE: Michaelia Cash says she will ‘name Bill Shorten’s female staffers’
Senator Cameron has rejected the suggestion his line of questioning contained innuendo about Senator Cash.
He had asked the Minister to name her new chief of staff, and whether the staffer had previously worked for the Department, an agency within her portfolio or another Liberal MP’s office.
“I was pursuing a line of questioning relating to concerns over what appears to be a web of influence between the Minister’s office and her portfolio agencies,” he told News Corp.
“A number of staff including media advisers and senior advisers have rotated between the Minister’s political office and agencies including the ABCC, Fair Work Ombudsman and the Registered Organisations Commission.
“My questions about Minister Cash’s incoming chief of staff were an attempt to discover if the appointment was related to these concerns and had nothing to do with anything else.
“I was as surprised as anyone by the Minister’s response. I have no interest whatsoever in anyone’s personal life.”
Meanwhile, Liberal Senator Lucy Gichuhi’s response when asked about Cash’s comments about female staffers was awkward. She was speechlass and said: “Well, well, Next question. See ya!”
ABBOTT WEIGHS IN
“There’s too much cheap smear and it’s time it ends,” Mr Abbott told 2GB radio when asked about the remarks.
“It must end. It’s bad when it comes from the Labor Party, it’s bad when it comes from the Liberal Party and it’s particularly bad when it comes from a Minister of the Crown.
“I do not know what was going through her mind at the time. I gather she’s apologised. She certainly should and let’s hear no more of it.”
Senator Cash withdrew the remarks yesterday after Labor heavyweight Penny Wong demanded she retract them.
She offered the qualified apology: “If anyone has been offended by my remarks, I withdraw.”
Minister Cash’s remarks have had a mixed response from her senior colleagues today.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann praised her as an “outstanding minister”.
“The Labor Party doesn’t like Michaelia because Michaelia is a very good operator,” he told 2GB radio.
“The unions don’t like her because she’s been successful passing reforms like the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the Registered Organisation Commission.
“She’s been fighting union corruption and the Labor Party is an agent for the union movement and some of the worst elements of the union movement clearly don’t like her.”
Education Minister Simon Birmingham however told ABC News Breakfast: “I think Michaelia acknowledged in estimates yesterday that perhaps a line had been crossed which is why she withdrew the remarks in the hearing.”
LABOR DEMANDS APOLOGY
Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek has demanded a stronger apology than simply withdrawing the remarks, saying it was tough enough for young women in the male dominated environment of federal politics.
“Look them in the eye and say ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to make life harder for you, I slipped up and I’m sorry’,” Ms Plibersek told ABC radio on Thursday.
Senator Cash made the threat yesterday when she was asked to name her new chief of staff in Senate Estimates, while being questioned about AFP raids on the Australian Workers’ Union Offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
Her former chief of staff, David De Garis, resigned last year amid a scandal over the raids after admitting he tipped off media to the raids before they occurred.
Cameras were waiting when AFP officers arrived at the union headquarters.
An investigation into the media tip off is ongoing. The maximum penalty for unauthorised disclosure of government information is two years’ jail time.
Under fire, Senator Cash warned Senator Cameron to be “very, very careful” if he wanted to start discussing staff matters.
“Because I am happy to sit he here and name every young woman in Mr Shorten’s office over which rumours in this place abound. If you want to go down that path today, I will do it,” she said.
Senator Cameron brushed off the claim as “nonsense”, prompting Minister Cash to fire up further.
“Do you want to start naming them,” she said.
“Do you want to start naming them for Mr Shorten to come out and deny any of the rumours that have been circulating in this building now for many, many years?
“It is a dangerous path to go down and you know it.”
Within an hour, Labor frontbencher Penny Wong fronted the committee to call on Senator Cash to withdraw her “outrageous slurs” against Mr Shorten’s staff.
Senator Cash’s threat to name female staffers comes after the government was rocked by three weeks’ of fallout from the scandal surrounding Barnaby Joyce’s affair with his former staffer, Vikki Campion.
- with AAP
Originally published as Political members have weighed in on Michaelia Cash comments about Bill Shorten
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