Vikki Campion: My sons should not be used in cruel political memes

Women are off-limits to the Labor Party but my toddlers, the sons of a rival MP, are apparently fair game to be used as a punchline in political memes, Vikki Campion writes.

Discussion in parliament has been dominated for at least a year now about being better to women, driven largely by the Labor Party.

Yet it was a Labor Party woman who used photos of my two and three-year-old boys in a derogatory graphic on her web page after they attended the swearing-in ceremony for their dad Barnaby Joyce this week.

Women are off-limits to the Labor Party but boy toddlers belonging to rival MPs are apparently fair game to be used as a punchline.

There has not been a single time in all of Australian political history when babies of Labor women have gone into a government house for swearing-in ceremony, or the chamber, and been used in political memes.

One of the memes circulating using Barnaby Joyce’s and Vikki Campion’s children.

They would not have had political slogans typed across their infant heads and then published on official Coalition party web and social media pages.

Yet the party supposedly for “working families” did just that to me and my family.

The person behind it was Queensland mother of two, Lilley MP Anika Wells, who, coincidentally recently took her twins into the chamber for a speech.

Her graphic carries the official ALP authorisation of J. Campbell of Peel St, South Brisbane.

“Women problem? What women problem?” is the post from Wells, with the meme of my toddler.

Laylor MP Jo Ryan, a former school principal from Melbourne, then commented: “And their progeny.”

What does that even mean?

Ms Wells published comments from Julie Cairns: “They ignored their children while they ran around.”

I’m so sorry Julie.

I’m so sorry that Labor has conditioned you to believe that we should chuck our kids in government-funded childcare centres instead of bringing them into public spaces like restaurants, churches, shops, aeroplanes or, dare I say it, government house.

I’m sorry that you think they should behave perfectly when they do come out in public.

I’m sorry that you espouse the values of a culture that sees young children as a burden instead of a joy.

I’m sorry you are so unhappy. A happy culture would welcome babies and young children as a sign of prosperity, and see their upbringing into future taxpayers as something the entire village should support.

Vikki Campion joined her partner Barnaby Joyce at the swearing-in ceremony at Government House, Canberra with his young sons. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

A second version of the meme was published by two no-name Labor wannabe male candidates in Queensland whose campaign material is littered with pictures of their own children – with a scarce chance that the LNP is going to authorise an attack graphic of them.

If someone had taken a photo of Ms Wells in the chamber with her children and put Labor on her forehead and tax and debt on her twin babies, there would be an appropriate meltdown.

The left-leaning media – think the ABC, the Guardian, the SMH and the Age – would run headlines screaming for heads to roll for bringing family into it or for attacking women and babies or the like. What was the media’s response in this case? The Age decided to get in on the act as well, using the same photo of my toddler son as a political gag along the same lines as the Wells’ meme. There is one rule for them. And one for the rest of us.

When Ms Wells brought her children into the chamber and another Labor MP brought his baby daughter recently, no political party machine attacked their babies.

In fact, when they came to the National Party deputy speaker seeking permission to bring their children into the chamber under the protocol, he approved it without a second thought.

Labor like to claim they are the party of working families but suddenly when a working family shows up they attack them because the toddlers don’t sit still.

The Age “decided to get in on the act as well, using the same photo of my toddler son as a political gag,” Vikki Campion writes.

Kids run. Try to stop them. (Please if you ever see me around please, please, please help me stop them because they usually go in different directions and they are very fast.)

Very few MPs use the day care centre at parliament regularly as they have nannies or stay-at-home partners. We don’t.

And some members and staffers of different political persuasions have been compassionate and generous with the boys.

Others in the building began filming the parliamentary day care centre as the boys played outside. Early childhood educators were forced to adopt a role of personal protection unit, and what’s worse, many kids were forced inside and denied their ability to run around in fresh air to protect them all from the privacy intrusion.

The centre cares for the children of security guards, cleaners, staffers, journos and very few MPs.

The educators have never had to do this before in the history of parliament. Their babies were suddenly in a zoo. When Labor use their sacred totem of political restrictions of thou-shalt not to be opportunistic, and then thou shalt when it suits them, the only message they sell is one of intellectual inconsistency.

Their faux rage is merely a political tactic, to prohibit attack on them and allow them to attack two- and three-year-olds.

Never have I felt such relief as I did on Thursday, when it poured rain, preventing low-life hacks from intruding on their innocent lives.

Filming kids at a daycare centre is creepy. Doing it from the breezeways above the centre where there is no CCTV is especially so.

Publishing cruel memes of them online? Sick. And it says more about Labor than any of their virtue-signalling speeches about women.

Originally published as Vikki Campion: My sons should not be used in cruel political memes