Grace Tame: I was ordered not to say anything ‘damning’ about PM
Grace Tame has revealed she was threatened by a member of a “senior federal government organisation” not to speak badly of the PM in the lead up to the election.
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Five months after being named Australian of the Year, Grace Tame says she received a “threatening” phone call from a “senior member of a federal government organisation” begging her not to say anything “damning” about Scott Morrison close to the election.
Speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Ms Tame said she felt she had “nothing to lose” after being constantly branded “politically divisive,” and revealed she received the call from an unnamed official on August 17 last year who was fearful about her impact on the Prime Minister’s reputation.
“I received a threatening phone call from a senior member of a government funded organisation, asking for my word that I would not say anything damning about the Prime Minister on the evening of the next Australian of the Year Awards,” she said.
Ms Tame said the caller told her she was an “influential person” and Mr Morrison would “have a fear” about her behaviour.
“What kind of fear — I asked myself. A fear for our nation’s most vulnerable? A fear for the future of our plan? And then I heard the words, ‘with an election coming soon’,” she said.
“A fear he might lose his position or, more to the point, his power.”
Ms Tame said she had watched how even her most “common sense movements” were “lost in translation” because others deliberately misrepresent them, and then “projected division onto them” that was not “real”.
“For instance, certain members of the commentariat have consistently labelled me as politically divisive, failing to mention that I spent most of last year having frank, productive meetings with politicians on all sides at both the state and federal level,” she said.
“So, after a year of being re-victimised, commodified, objectified, sensationalised, delegitimise, gas lit, thrown under the bus by the biased, mainstream media, despite my inclusive messaging, I would like to take this opportunity to … remind you that I really have nothing to lose.”
Higgins fears ‘moment of reckoning’ slipping away
In the year since former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins revealed her alleged rape in parliament, “too little has changed” and the federal government’s response has not “measured up”.
In a powerful speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Ms Higgins said she was fearful the “national moment of reckoning,” sparked almost a year ago when she came forward to publicly allege she had been raped in parliament, was slipping away.
The man charged over the incident has pleaded not guilty.
“Nearly a year after the March4Justice made its way to the threshold of federal parliament, too little has changed,” she said.
“I stand here today fearful that this moment of transformative potential, the bravery of all those women who spoke up and stood up and said, ‘enough is enough’ is in danger of being minimised to a flare-up, a blip on the radar.”
Ms Higgins was critical of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, saying much of his language when talking about the treatment of women in parliament, including her own experience, was “shocking and at times … a bit offensive”.
“But his words wouldn’t matter if his actions had measured up,” she said. “Then, or since.
“What bothered me most about the whole, “imagine if it were our daughters” spiel wasn’t that he necessarily needed his wife’s advice to help contextualise my (alleged) rape in a way that mattered to him personally.
“I didn’t want his sympathy as a father. I wanted him to use his power as Prime Minister.”
Ms Higgins said she wanted Mr Morrison to “wield the weight of his office and drive change in the (Liberal) party and our parliament and out into the country”.
“One year later, I don’t care if the government has improved the way that they talk about these issues,” she said. “I’m not interested in words anymore. I want to see action.”
Ms Higgins said recognising there was a problem with the sexual assault and harassment of women in Australia was “50 years short of what’s required”.
“The women and girls of Australia deserve so much better than an improvement in the way that we publicly discuss the dangers that they face at home and in their daily lives,” she said.
“Last year wasn’t a march for acknowledgment. It wasn’t a march for coverage. It wasn’t a march for language. It was a march for justice.
“And that justice demands real change in our laws, as well as in our language, in our national culture, as well as our national conversation.”
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Originally published as Grace Tame: I was ordered not to say anything ‘damning’ about PM
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