Federal election: How women got Scott Morrison in the end
One problem plagued Scott Morrison throughout his leadership, and in the end he couldn’t escape it.
Federal Election
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Scott Morrison didn’t always “get” women but in the end they got him.
They got him good.
Women in Western Australia and in Victoria decided they’d had enough of him.
And they came for him silently this time, in pre polls, in postals and at the ballot box.
The quiet Australians indeed.
It was grim work, dismantling a government that for many years thought it normal to have a single woman in cabinet — foreign minister Julie Bishop.
A government where the prime minister bullied the Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate into quitting her job.
Who thought it was fine and dandy to humiliate her on the floor of Parliament to score political points.
Or whoever else he was backgrounding against that day.
A government where the prime minister was bemused and confused by female anger over sexual violence.
Or had to ask his wife Jenny to explain to him how he should respond or believed that women would forget.
On the eve of the election, we learnt that he believed that female representation meant picking Katherine Deves, a photogenic political rookie.
She spent the campaign defending range of offensive social media posts saying trans people are “surgically mutilated” that would have seen any other candidate dumped.
Last night, it looked like of the 14 seats nationally that had changed hands 12 have been won by women.
But female voters got the job done on Saturday night and they did it systematically across the country.
Many of these women had decided that Scott Morrison’s time was up a long time ago if the ALP’s political research is any guide.
And the reverberations of the political murder committed by Australian women will unfold in the Liberal Party for years to come.
Of course there were also some high-profile political victims of the case for change that were women too.
Female and male voters were not happy with being taken for granted.
In the seat of Fowler, Anthony Albanese’s decision to parachute in former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally was rebuffed by voters in favour of a female independent Dai Le.
Voters told the ALP they didn’t want a blow in and went with a local independent who lived and worked in their community.
The other big story of election night was the Greens.
For all the talk of the teals, the Greens picked up two seats in Brisbane.
Until now they’ve only had one seat in the House of Representatives Melbourne held by Greens leader Adam Bandt.
Now they will have a trio and the crossbench will be bigger than the Nationals.
The Labor Party will have a big task ahead of them managing those pressures in the Senate and in the lower house unless they can make it to a majority.
But the biggest lessons are for the Liberal Party.
As one strategist for the independents told me: “the Liberals used a bunch of bland men as facades to cover their incompetence on climate, integrity and women.”
“When offered the real deal, they took it over the fake moderates,” he said.
After thousands of women marched for justice and against sexual harassment and assault last year, many believed it looked like a political earthquake.
The Prime Minister told us that across the world such protests were met with bullets, which was supposed to be some sort of tone deaf praise for Australia’s democracy.
Instead, it just pissed women off.
Originally published as Federal election: How women got Scott Morrison in the end
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