The man in the mirror

WHAT women want is uplifting, visionary, adult politics.

THE Spectator magazine's recent cover headline was bold: Abbott Examined. Under it, the names of four distinguished contributors: Peter Craven, Neil Brown, Greg Sheridan, Peter Coleman. Anything wrong with that?

Let me bring in Virginia Woolf. "How to speak to a man who does not see you?" Each of these writers had insightful things to say, but nowhere did The Spectator present a woman's opinion, let alone trumpet it. Was it simply that a voice representative of half the population was deemed unnecessary? Surely not. Yet there are men out there who (still) feel they know best, they will speak for us, they don't feel our view is worth considering, or worthy. Yes Virginia, they just don't see us. Still.

At their peril. Because we have a vote and we often perceive differently. To wit, Tony Abbott's recent admission that he did call a woman senior to him a "chairthing" for a year - despite her wishing to be known as "chairperson". I gasped at that, as did a lot of women around me. It was a telling indicator of the divide in thinking that many men dismissed it as mere uni prankishness. But some women flinched because it indicates a male they're instinctively wary of, and on the bare bones of public actions narratives are created - perceptions firmed - whether they're true or not. Of the kid up the back of class constantly disruptive for disruption's sake. Of the pugilistic rule-breaker always getting away with it. Of the testosterone-fuelled alpha male professing his love of women but does he really, actually like them? Especially, most unforgivably, when they're senior to him - these women think he can't quite hide it. "It's a gut instinct," they say at the school gate, the supermarket. They may be wrong; his wife says they're wrong. But according to Newspoll, fewer than a third of female voters are satisfied with his performance.

There must be a man of rich complexity under there but they don't see it. This is someone who regularly attends mass, who almost became a priest. The tenets of the Christian faith are compassion, forgiveness love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek - but we don't seem to get any of that subtlety in the relentless, snarly attack-dog before us. The most holy of people I've come across seem to have one thing in common - they're brimming with love. Abbott doesn't seem to have this in him; his tactics embody a brutalising negativity, a rat-tat-tat of naysaying. In the real world, as one mum said, "it just comes across as a barrage of un-niceness".

Margie Abbott let slip recently that "one problem" she has with her man is how "he likes to make a competition of everything". Too right. Political writer David Marr claims he's changed forever the way the Opposition operates in this country; made it so much more gruelling, negative, destructive; expertly flurrying up a feeling of chaos and imminent catastrophe. A lot of women are starting to see through it; they want uplifting, visionary, galvanising, adult politics. The tactics are starting to feel wearyingly petulant and, worse, predictable.

Margie Abbott tells us her husband loves watching Downton Abbey - but he's nothing like the show's patriarch, the Earl of Grantham. Would that decorous gentleman ever turn his back on a woman socially (as Nicola Roxon says Tony Abbott does to her), repeatedly insult a female in authority (the chairwoman thing), happily stand in a crowd among damning placards (the "Ditch the Witch" signs at a rally anchored by Alan Jones)? No. Malcolm Turnbull wouldn't either. A lot of women despair at the coarsening of the national discourse and feel Tony Abbott has encouraged this veering, that he allows it. Back to Virginia Woolf: "The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages." Mr Abbott, the perceptions of women are your cages. Prove them wrong. They need to see it.

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