James Morrow: Albo has chosen faux feminist outrage over justice for Kimberley Kitching

If faux outrage over the term “mean girls” is the best Labor can do to address allegations Kimberley Kitching was bullied, they may as well have their ears painted on, writes James Morrow.

Honestly, if a steaming load of faux outrage over the term “mean girls” is the best Labor can do after reports of alleged bullying suffered by Kimberley Kitching, they may as well have their ears painted on.

We know that Ms Kitching, who tragically died last week of a heart attack (possibly brought on by stress) at age 52 last week was treated absolutely terribly by her party.

Because she didn’t have the correct politics or play the right factional games she was frozen out in all sorts of ways that would not be acceptable in any corporate workplace.

She was all but silenced in the Senate, barely allowed to ask a question in the chamber’s question time.

Her pre-selection was threatened.

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching died from a heart attack in Melbourne.

Party leader Anthony Albanese has deflected from accusations of ‘hostility’ towards the late senator. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

She was forced into late-night Senate sittings, as former Labor MP Michael Danby said, to “(punish her) because she did not agree with people’s ideological views.”

According to a report in The Australian, she was the victim of a “pattern of hostility” that put her “under strain for a long time”.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Yet the best Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese could do was deflect talk about a clique of “mean girls” including Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong, and Katy Gallagher.

Putting on the soiled cloak of the male feminist, Mr Albanese lashed out over the question (and plenty on Twitter, having gotten the memo, joined in).

“It’s astonishing in 2022 I get a question using the term “mean girls”,’ he told a press conference in Brisbane.

“I find that extraordinarily disrespectful to describe strong, articulate, principled women.”

If a group of male MPs allegedly mistreated a female MP and then they had a heart attack, it would be on the front page of every paper for days and there would be an official inquiry.

But because it’s allegedly a group of female MPs - you can’t even ask the question.

For the record, Senators Keneally and Wong have declined to comment on the allegations and Senator Gallagher said many assertions in the article in question are “not true” from her point of view.

The point remains that in the past year or so, Australians have been shocked by all manner of reports about what goes on in and around Parliament House – much, though not all, directed at women.

When the narrative was that misogynist, pig-headed behaviour could be pinned on the Coalition generally and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in particular, the ALP was more than keen to trumpet every allegation of bullying and bad behaviour it could find.

Now that the light is being shone on the behaviour of Labor, all they can do is tone-police journalists quite rightly asking questions about what happened to a remarkable member of their party.