Joe Hildebrand: Why teal should not be persona non grata at lady barber non dentata

Earnest champions of free speech might want to cool their jets on the cancel culture campaign over a saucy Nicolette Boele remark because, as Joe Hildebrand asks, is it a hill you really want to dye on?

Ladies who Lunch, hold on to your hats: I’m going to get real and defend a teal.

Yes, you heard it right, sports fans. In what I believe is a world first, I am actually going to come in swinging for the most pretentious, overprivileged, sanctimonious and humourless people to grace Planet Earth since Harry met Meghan.

Or at least one of them.

I speak, of course, of aspirational teal Nicolette Boele. In my mind, her surname even rhymes with “teal”, though I have heard people pronounce it so many ways it may also rhyme with Timbuktu.

But no matter! It is the principle that counts, and when it comes to principles, I have more than enough to go around.

Candidate for Bradfield Nicolette Boele. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

For anyone who has been living under a rock – or an industrial-strength blowdryer – the Climate 200-backed candidate for the North Sydney seat of Bradfield got into a bit of hot water this week, and not just during the preparatory rinse.

She was at the hairdresser’s and said to her 19-year-old stylist that whatever follicular miracle had been performed on her locks was “so good – and I didn’t even have sex with you”.

The Lord Himself only knows how good her hair would have turned out had she chosen Option B, but let’s not get bogged down in hypotheticals.

Point being, she was at the hairdresser, got a good do and made a saucy remark that was clearly intended as a harmless compliment.

But someone in the salon outed her remark, and soon she was persona non grata at the lady barber non dentata.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am rapt that whoever it was went public. Frankly it has been the best story of a campaign that has been as bereft of colour as the pilot for Leave it to Beaver.

But that does not change the fact that the comment itself was at best boringly beige.

The hair salon from which Nicolette Boele was banned after she made a sexualised comment to a teenage stylist. She has since apologised. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

I don’t know anything about the supposed victim in question. It is unclear whether they were male or female, gay or straight, or whether they themselves even took offence at the remarks.

What is clear that is as soon as a complaint was made – reportedly by a third party – and the comment became public, Boele’s crucifixion was inevitable.

And this I do understand. Because the teals and the wave of affluent inner-city progressivism that they ride on is powered entirely by such outrage.

It is a movement built entirely on holier-than-thou moral posturing about climate change, and integrity and gender and identity politics that casts all who question any of their ideological agenda as dangerous, backward, unreconstructed brutes.

And, of course, there is an infinite wellspring of Boele herself indulging in the same narcissistic pontificating that is currently bringing her undone.

But the hyperbolic outrage about what she said falls precisely into the same secular Mother Teresa playbook.

It is the hypocrisy that matters, not some lame flirty comment to a purveyor of the 21st century’s latest grey balayage.

And, yes, it took me several rounds with spellcheck to get that right.

The core obnoxiousness of the teals is not what they say and do, but what they tell others they cannot say and do.

Like shaming people for not wearing masks and then not wearing them themselves; like talking about safe and respectful workplaces and then working their precious staffers into the ground; like talking about integrity in politics and then having their husbands tear down opponents’ campaign material on the sly. Oh, hang on, I’m talking about Monique Ryan.

The campaign headquarters – or shadow electorate office – of Nicolette Boele in Gordon. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

Back to Nicolette. All she’s ever done is set up a shadow electorate office in a seat she lost – yes, that happened – and maybe got a bit “how’s your father?” with someone who gave her a nice do.

It’s a great story and a great debate, and apparently an even greater haircut. But is it a hill you really want to dye on?

Yes, I said that. The point is that earnest and erstwhile champions of free speech might want to cool their jets on this little cancel culture campaign.

Boele’s crime is not the comment, it’s the crusading. It’s the hypocrisy, not the hyperbole that matters.

And perhaps when we reach a time and place in which every offhand remark is no longer considered a hate crime she, like the rest of us, will finally find a safe space.

The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand – wherever you get your podcasts