Albanese’s big test as leader is responding to women’s anger. So far, it’s a bad look

It’s not in the official job description, but there are times when your job as prime minister is to be the locus of national emotion.

When the primary national emotion is rage – Molly Ticehurst’s death having reminded women, again, that male liberty is valued more highly than their safety – it must be deeply uncomfortable.

Anthony Albanese speaking at the rally in Canberra on Sunday. Credit: Nine News

It must be difficult to handle. It must make you defensive and chippy.

So we saw with Anthony Albanese on Sunday, when he went into self-justification mode addressing a rally at Parliament House protesting over the epidemic of violence against women.

He reminded the crowd he had shown up at a previous rally of the same nature – the March 4 Justice protest in 2021.

Then he said: “To be clear, we did ask to speak, myself and Katy (Gallagher, Minister for Women), and were told that wasn’t possible, and that’s fine. I respect the organiser’s right to do that.”

Standing behind him, rally organiser Sarah Williams shook her head and said: “That’s a lie. That’s a full-out lie.”

She proceeded to become visibly upset. The prime minister looked baffled but plugged on with his speech, ignoring her distress. It was captured, as everything is now, on the smartphones of those present.

A further video seemed to show the PM saying to Williams: “Do you want me to speak or not? I am the prime minister.”

It was a bad look.

On Monday, Williams doubled down on her accusation, posting on social media that the prime minister abused his power, was aggressive and “demonstrated his entitlement”.

Albanese did a round of breakfast interviews in which he deflected questions about who said what and attempted to reassure voters he is taking seriously the problem of gendered violence. He has called an urgent national cabinet meeting for Wednesday, and his government is two years into a National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children. It also implemented family and domestic violence leave as an employee entitlement.

This is a big test for Albanese. At times of national crisis, a national leader’s job is to sponge up emotion, and he will be judged on how well he does it. (It’s pretty much always a he, isn’t it? But interesting to ponder how a female PM might have handled such a situation.)

Just ask former prime minister Scott Morrison; he copped national anger over the pandemic response and he was further walloped by a wave of female outrage over his handling of Brittany Higgins’ allegation of rape in Parliament House, a rape now proven to a civil standard.

Morrison was scorned for not appearing at the March 4 Justice rally at Parliament House in March 2021.

He was (rightly) lambasted for saying, in the House of Representatives, that it was a “triumph of democracy” that “not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country”.

Scott Morrison listens as then-opposition leader Anthony Albanese criticises him in parliament on March 15, 2021, over the then-prime minister’s response to the March 4 Justice rally. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Morrison must be feeling either empathy or schadenfreude as he watches Albanese cop bad press for his handling of the rally.

Morrison clearly still feels as if he was misunderstood. Last week he told this masthead’s James Massola that Australians had not known who he really was.

“I think at the end of the day, to my detriment, they [voters] bought a narrative peddled by others to destroy me, which was effective, but they didn’t know [me],” he said.

The urge for self-defence and justification must be strong at times like this, particularly for Albanese.

Unlike Morrison, the prime minister has a broadly friendly political persona.

His background as a Labor-left progressive gives him some genuine credibility when it comes to traditional issues of the left, which include gender equality and violence against women.

But you can’t always be the good guy.

As prime minister, you’re most importantly the man who commands the federal budget.

You have the responsibility to find a way of speaking that is really about listening.

You have to acknowledge the scale of the human tragedy involved – the waste of female potential, the injustice of the women living in terror, the fear and the frustration, the extremely high stakes.

You have to acknowledge the powerlessness of women in this situation, then contrast it with the huge power you have, and pledge to use that power on their behalf.

The same, by the way, goes for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Where is he?

As a former Queensland cop with years of experience on the front line of family violence situations, Dutton is extremely well-placed to offer practical solutions that can be implemented quickly. What would a Dutton government do to attack this problem?

Ultimately, it is immaterial whether Albanese was invited to speak to the rally or not.

This problem is too important, and it needs total focus and unity of purpose.

Albanese might have been chippy and fragile, but there is goodwill and momentum in the government on this issue.

Let’s exploit it, starting with the federal budget in a fortnight’s time.

It doesn’t matter what Albanese says at a rally.

What matters is what he says in the expenditure review committee, and what his treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says on budget night.

If ending violence against women is a priority for the Albanese government, we will know soon enough.

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