Richard Di Natale defends himself and Sarah Hanson-Young after fiery exchange with Nationals’ Barry O’Sullivan
Julie Bishop has called for the Liberal Party to boost the number of women in its ranks as male politicians in the senate copped a dressing down over ‘sexist’ slurs.
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Julie Bishop has called for the Liberal Party to boost the number of women in its ranks as male politicians in the senate copped a dressing down over ‘sexist’ slurs.
It comes as the Morrison Government reels after Victorian MP Julia Banks sensationally quit the party yesterday to move to the crossbench, blasting its treatment of women, “blinkered rejection of quotas” and “reactionary right wing”.
Senators were told to shape up this morning after an extraordinary clash over a “sexist” gibe saw Greens leader Richard Di Natale booted from Parliament yesterday.
“There clearly is a need for us to discuss the level of representation of females in the Parliament,” Ms Bishop told reporters in Canberra this morning.
“There’s a need for us to increase that. When I talk about a nation not reaching its potential unless it fully harnesses the efforts and energies of 50 per cent of the population, that goes for organisations as well, and that includes the Liberal Party.”
Ms Bishop was speaking at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra where she was donating the red heels she wore on the day she resigned as foreign affairs minister after the leadership spill in August.
She added: “I would hope that every person who is elected to lead the Liberal Party would be a champion for women.”
Ms Bishop also said she was not told by Ms Banks that she intended to quit until after she spoke in Parliament yesterday.
Meanwhile in Question Time, Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer prompted raucous laughter from the Labor benches today when she said: “This government is the natural government for Australian women.”
Ms O’Dwyer had been asked about her comments on Monday, where she had warned colleagues during a crisis meeting for Victorian MPs after the state Liberals copped a thrashing at the state election, that voters now viewed the party as ‘homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers’.
MALE SENATORS BLASTED OVER ‘SEXIST’ SLURS
Senators copped a pasting over ‘sexist’ slurs levelled at female politicians this morning after an extraordinary clash saw Greens leader Richard Di Natale evicted for calling Senator O’Sullivan a “pig” and a “grub”.
Senate President Scott Ryan issued the rebuke to the Senate, saying the house was “rightly a place of vigorous debate” but “personal abuse has no place”, while Labor frontbencher Penny Wong demanded to know whether Senators wives or daughters “would permit themselves to be treated in such an offensive way”.
“The shaming of women has been used for decades, even centuries, as a tool of control by those in power,” she said.
“It is odious behaviour, it has never been appropriate and it is not acceptable in this place.
“To use a sporting analogy: play the ball, not the man or woman.”
Senator Di Natale was temporarily suspended yesterday for refusing to withdraw calling Nationals Senator Barry O’Sullivan a pig after he made a “sexist” remark about Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
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“There’s a bit of Nick Xenophon in her, and I don’t mean that to be a double reference, but there’s a bit of Xenophon in her,” Senator O’Sullivan had said.
The Nationals senator walked out of the Senate this morning, along with crossbench senators Fraser Anning and David Leyonhjelm, as Senator Di Natale again fired up, saying: “The repeated shaming and innuendo, directed and not just across at this side of the chamber but directed right across the Senate, is reinforcing a culture of workplace harassment and the open harassment of women in our society.
“We must no longer tolerate workplace harassment in the chamber. It must stop,” he added.
“There has been a repeated pattern from a small number of men in this chamber who, either through whispers or, sometimes, on the record, make the most demeaning and insulting comments directed against many of my colleagues.
“They do it over and over and over again. Sometimes you don’t hear it, but we do. “Sometimes they put it on the record. It’s deliberate. It’s calculated. Then they withdraw it. But those words can never be taken back. They hurt and they damage. That’s why yesterday I made the statement I did.”
He added that he had apologised to Senator Hanson-Young for remaining silent when she clashed with Senator Leyonhjelm earlier this year.
‘CASCADING INTO FARCE’
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann also backed the Senate President’s rebuke this morning, calling on all senators to behave with more respect.
“Ours is a chamber in which of course we engage in the battle of ideas on behalf of the communities, states and people we represent, and at times that debate can become quite robust, but there is always a requirement and a responsibility on all of us to engage in the debate in a way that is appropriately robust but also appropriately respectful,” he said.
Senator Ryan suggested a new rule that would reduce debates via an attempt to suspend standing orders on motions that had already been rejected.
He added that debates on government business were “rapidly cascading into farce” because of the tactics senators were now using.
“This is not just a matter of rules, this is a matter of respect — of each other, of the institution and of those who elected us,” he said.
It comes after furious Mr Di Natale unleashed on Mr O’Sullivan yesterday, slamming him as “a grub”.
“We have endured on this side days of sexist filth coming from that man,” a furious Senator Di Natale shouted in parliament.
“He is a pig and he should consider and reflect on the standards he is adopting in this chamber.”
While Mr O’Sullivan withdrew his comment, Di Natale refused, and the chamber joined forces to suspend him for the rest of the day.
But Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, insisted that the Opposition’s support to remove the Greens leader was not in support of Mr O’Sullivan’s “reprehensible” joke.
Ms Hanson-Young then weighed in the motion passed, taking aim at Mr O’Sullivan while speaking in support of her leader.
“I am thankful for Senator Di Natale standing up and calling them out. That is what real mean do. Real men don’t insult and threaten women, they don’t slut-shame them and they don’t attack them and make them feel bullied in their workplace,” Ms Hanson-Young said.
“I have sat in this chamber for weeks and weeks, months, and heard the disgusting slurs and attacks coming from a particular group in this place, and I for one am sick of it.
“You are not fit to be in this chamber, you’re not fit to represent your constituents, you’re not fit to call yourselves men.”
She was not shy in calling out Mr O’Sullivan, along with Senator Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi and David Leyonhjelm as members of the group.
“Expect to be named and shamed,” she said.
Mr O’Sullivan recently courted controversy when publicly declared him a woman while defending his stance on abortion.
The Nationals Senator was responding to an argument between him and Greens Senator Larissa Waters over late-term abortions, where Ms Waters told him to: “get his hands and his rosaries off my ovaries and those of the 10,000 Queensland women who have an abortion each year.”
Mr O’Sullivan told the chamber: “I am going to declare my gender today, as I can, to be a woman and then you’ll no longer be able to attack me.”
Originally published as Richard Di Natale defends himself and Sarah Hanson-Young after fiery exchange with Nationals’ Barry O’Sullivan
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