Opinion: PM’s apology to Brittany Higgins slap in the face to every male

It’s no mean feat to get over half the electorate off-side in a day, but the Prime Minister may have just managed it, writes Mike O’Connor.

It’s no mean feat to get over half the electorate off-side in a day, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison may well have ­managed it last week.

In the light of the ill-considered wording of the apology to Brittany Higgins, Australian men had every right to think any man accused of rape is now guilty if it helps the Prime Minister gain the moral high ground in the interests of pre-election political expediency,

In spite of Higgins’ accused rapist ­denying that any sexual intercourse – consensual or otherwise – ever took place, the Prime Minister appeared to ­unequivocally take Higgins’ side.

If in the post-election wash-up it is found that Morrison’s standing among men collapsed, then it will be able to be traced back to this moment.

It would be reassuring to think that if Morrison stood for ­anything, then it would be the right to a fair trial and a presumption of ­innocence, but standing for anything in this blighted nation of ours is no longer fashionable.

Politicians of all colours now stand for whatever best serves them this week or the next. When in doubt, apologise to someone. Whatever you do, don’t take a stand.

In an attempt to garner support in Western Australia, Morrison did a complete about-face and endorsed the madness that has been the ­response of its Premier Mark McGowan to the pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an official apology to victims of sexual harassment, bullying and violence in Parliament House. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

McGowan and our own Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk have done their collective best to wreck the National Cabinet and undermine the Federal Government’s health strategies at every turn, but in an ­attempt to win a few votes, Morrison is now saying what a great fellow is McGowan.

To gain the support of the left-wing luvvies who moan interminably about the ABC’s lack of funding, the government last week announced an increase in its budget.

This despite the corporation’s steadfast resistance to editorial accountability, its blatant Green-Left agenda and profligate spending on self-promotion and lawyers, the latter necessary ­because no one seems to be in charge and journalists, lacking either regard or knowledge of the laws of defamation, write whatever they like.

Forget it, Scotty. You could ­double the ABC’s budget and the not only would the luvvies still detest you, but they’d ask for more money. Enough is never enough.

An insistence on transparency would have been nice, but it would have meant taking a stand.

On the other side we have Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, who has decided that the best way to win high office is to stand for nothing. Politicians call this a small target strategy. Voters call it hiding what you plan to do if elected.

Albanese once championed death duties, that is a tax on inheritances. That’s been quietly slipped into the bin marked Political Poison, along with the so-called retirees’ tax that Albanese and Bill Shorten took to the electorate last time around.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese during Question Time yesterday. Picture: Gary Ramage/NCA NewsWire

So Albanese and company stand for higher taxes as a means of redistributing wealth and achieving the socialists’ dream of an equitable society?

So good on them for having the guts to stand up for their beliefs.

Well, no – not quite. They now say they stand for higher wages and more jobs. Given that a platform of lower wages and fewer jobs was probably not going to be received with any great enthusiasm this would seem to be a fairly safe and suitably nebulous aspiration. And then we have the so-called ­independents who are only standing against Coalition members, many of whom are funded in part by left-wing and extremely rich person Simon Holmes a Court who inherited his wealth from daddy or who are fronts for GetUp!

The only thing they stand for is voting with the Labor Party if elected as well as lots of nice things such as zero emissions and electric cars.

If you were truly an independent then it could be presumed that you could offer something independent of the major parties, but no, because the independent label is a sham and they all sing the same song.

They stand for nothing other than attracting dissatisfied voters away from the Coalition. Towards the end of his life, my father offered up a prayer that he would live long enough to, in his words, “vote against that bastard John Howard”.

He got his wish and died four days after the 2007 federal election. Howard stood for something. So did Hawke. You might not have liked it, but you knew what it was.

People want strength and conviction and there’s precious little of it in evidence at the moment, just kowtowing to whoever whinges and whines the loudest.