Vikki Campion: Females politicians stood out for their compassion in response to Barnaby incident

While others slobbered over an opportunity to kick a conservative when he’s down it was strong female leaders who refused to join the pile on after Barnaby Joyce’s footpath incident in Canberra, writes Vikki Campion.

When the CEO of political lobby GetUp, Simon Sheik, collapsed on live television, there was no rain of condemnation; he wasn’t swaddled off and shipped into the night, and there were no calls for him to resign.

Far from his fellow QandA panellists acting as armchair doctors or psychiatrists, humiliating him, musing on his mental health or guessing how many reds he’d quaffed in the green room earlier, he was whisked straight to hospital where actual doctors with medical degrees and knowledge of his personal history assessed him.

He was allowed to respond in his own time, apologising for causing concern, tweeting that he had been burning the candle at both ends.

This is how a political actor on the other side of the pendulum was treated.

After ridiculing my husband, next on the agenda was armchair diagnoses wrapped in faux sympathy by politicians, not doctors, the same individuals who, utterly inebriated themselves, have been escorted into Z sleds. In their frenzied condemnation, it must have escaped memory.

Rather than opt for back briefing or add dung to the pile-on, it was strong female leaders of the Labor, Liberal and Nationals parties, including Tanya Plibersek, Sussan Ley, Holly Hughes, Jane Hume and Perin Davey, who first chose compassion over cruelty, injecting a shot of humanity in a city that had shown itself sorely depleted of it.

Plibersek, especially, given she got up at Monday’s dawn to debate him, resisted what others slobbered over, an exploitative opportunity to kick a conservative when he’s down.

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