Making serious allegations against one’s boss is a daunting experience, especially if the accuser is isolated and vulnerable, and the alleged offender the most powerful man in the state. But having accused Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews of being a misogynist and a bully, Victorian Labor MP Kaushaliya Vaghela must nonetheless feel heartened at the show of support from the party, particularly her female colleagues.
I assume that is the case. Immediately following the Herald Sun’s detailing of the allegations, social media must have been awash with hashtags such as #IStandWithKaushaliya and #BelieveHer. The Victoria Labor Women’s Network would have released a statement insisting that Andrews announce an independent inquiry into the allegations. Feminist commentators would have loudly opined this was yet another example of a white male dehumanising a woman of colour. No doubt the ABC has commissioned an all-female panel for tonight’s episode of Q&A to discuss, in Vaghela’s words, Labor’s “toxic culture”.
The chances of all that happening are, of course, about the same as boarding a Spring Street tram and discovering the driver is a Farsi-speaking unicorn. The party’s reaction to Vaghela’s allegations was one of denial, indifference, and gaslighting.
When Vaghela crossed the floor last week — the first Victorian Labor MP to do so since 1987 — to support a motion to refer the “red shirts” rort back to the Ombudsman and the anti-corruption commission for investigation, she was a pariah.
Now she has named Andrews, she is an unperson as far as the party is concerned. If Treasurer Tim Pallas’s comments on the weekend are an example, Vaghela would still not have been believed even if she were sporting a black eye or missing a couple of teeth when she went public. “I’m not going to get involved in an analysis of the thought processes that led Ms Vaghela to make the comments she did,” he said.
“It is worrying for me that she said that, and it goes to her state of mind, and I hope, and I can assure her should she need assistance from the government, in any way, to help with her state of mind, we will support her in the way through this.” In other words, Vaghela suffers from hysteria, but if she gets the right treatment she can be cured and will recant. I hear the Chinese Government has a similar process that works wonders on problematic female tennis players.
Appearing at a level crossing removal press conference the day after Herald-Sun ran its interview with Vaghela, Andrews was accompanied by four female colleagues: Jacinta Allan, Gabrielle Williams, Pauline Richards, and Sonya Kilkenny. According to the ABC, “the government said the female MPs were present because the project runs through their electorates, and the event was planned weeks ago”. Perhaps Andrews should have uttered that cinematic line “Deidre Chambers — what a coincidence” for effect.
Someone should have reminded Kilkenny of her parliamentary speech in 2017 in which she cited approvingly an unnamed constituent who had attended a seminar on family violence in her electorate and remarked: “ … when I found my voice, [I] felt it somewhat empowering to be able to have an opinion and not be judged according to my ‘emotional outburst’.” How odd then that Kilkenny is silent when a senior male colleague judges Vaghela accordingly.
Neither did Williams, the Minister for Women, call out Pallas for his disparaging remarks, instead praising Andrews. “We have a cabinet of over 50 per cent women, we have … in the Premier’s own leadership team, his chief of staff and deputy chief of staff who are women, we have a caucus which is almost 50 per cent women,” she said. “This is not the sign of someone who is a misogynist.”
This breezy response is a non sequitur, not to mention a dangerous precedent. By saying what she did, the Minster for Women implied that allegations of misogyny and bullying can be refuted merely by attesting to the man’s feminist credentials.
Contrast this with her remarks in 2018 about family violence: “There are some people who do not want to think about the fact that sexism itself, misogyny itself, paves the way for that kind of violence or creates a culture that leads to a silencing of that reality … So frequent is it that often we do not dwell on it or do not always think to call it out as it happens,” she told Parliament. Do tell, minister.
When self-declared male feminist and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his inaugural cabinet, he was asked why he insisted on a 50:50 gender composition. “Because it’s 2015,” he declared to the delight of women’s groups. Just six months later he was forced to apologise after elbowing a female MP in the chest during a confrontation in the House of Commons, telling her and others to “get the f--k out of the way”.
Canada’s first indigenous attorney-general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, knows all about the difference between what male feminists say and what they do. In 2019, Canada’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, found Trudeau had acted unlawfully in pressuring her to permit Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin to enter an arrangement to avoid criminal penalties for bribery in relation to its overseas operations. But by then Trudeau had already expelled her from caucus.
This is our Cabinet. And there's something unique about this group. For the first time in Victoria's history, the Cabinet is 50 per cent women. It's a government that reflects this state. As it should. Here in Victoria, this is what merit looks like. pic.twitter.com/xb6URtXlK0
— Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) November 30, 2018
Like Trudeau, Andrews constantly makes public statements about his commitment to gender equality and the protection of women. That commitment was not apparent in 2016, however, when he forced the resignation of then Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett, having undermined her when she opposed the militant United Firefighters Union when it sought more control over the Country Fire Authority. It was reported later that year that UFU secretary Peter Marshall had reportedly threatened to “put an axe” through Garrett’s head during negotiations, a claim he strongly denied. Andrews declined to answer whether he had known about that allegation.
A careerist, Andrews has since graduating from university worked solely in politics. He was elected at 30, bypassing altogether the backbench. He has a reputation for being evasive, ruthless, and at times spiteful. At times he has caused resentment with his tendency to intervene in ministerial decision-making. The irony did not go unnoticed when in 2020 he told an inquiry into the hotel quarantine debacle that then Health Minister Jenny Mikakos was “primarily responsible” for the program, despite her evidence it was a shared responsibility between departments. From that moment on, her position was untenable.
Does that make Andrews a misogynist? I would not yet draw that conclusion.
But Sunday’s carefully choreographed display of him flanked by smiling and adoring female government members was political theatre at its most cringeworthy.
Rather than give a full account of himself, Strongman Dan — the architect of Melbourne’s much vaunted ‘ring of steel’ — chose to hide behind a ring of skirts.
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