Labor wounded as double-edged sword cuts both ways

Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese during Question Time on Wednesday. Picture: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

Anthony Albanese has not retreated or surrendered on his demand for an independent inquiry into historical sexual assault allegations against Christian Porter but Labor’s aggressive advance has stalled.

Questions about sexual misbehaviour, potential rape and selective partisan defence of women under attack within ALP ranks have put the brakes on Labor’s politicised and two-faced pursuit of the Attorney-General in recent weeks.

Allegations, including a Labor figure plying a staffer with drink and having sex without consent, a parallel to Liberal staffer Britney Higgins’s claims of rape by a Liberal staffer, have changed the political dynamic.

After weeks of attacks on Scott Morrison’s handling of sexual assault allegations and attempts to remove Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and Porter, the ALP’s free run is coming to an end. What’s more, there are now not only Liberal women prepared to fight back but also Labor MPs, such as Mark Dreyfus, demanding “senior Labor figures” out themselves as the anonymous perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault.

There is also a growing move to get some proportionality into the politics of sexual assault by seeking attention and help for Indigenous women, the most oppressed and damaged victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in Australia.

This has combined to put a focus on Labor’s behaviour and question the arguments the Opposition Leader, Tanya Plibersek, Labor Senate leader Penny Wong and her deputy Kristina Keneally have used to demand Porter face an independent inquiry.

The argument that Reynolds and Morrison should have acted on sexual assault allegations although the victim had not sought an inquiry or had dropped the request was derided but is now being used by the Labor leadership to defend its own lack of action.

Even as legal affairs spokesman Dreyfus called for Labor people to identify themselves, he was uncertain how it would work. “I’m not sure about the mechanism because … this is a closed Facebook group. The allegations have been put on an anonymous basis. But men who have been perpetrators of these kinds of acts need to reflect on their conduct, they need to be part of the change we need to take place,” he said.

Such calls from within Labor have even pressured the media, some of which has been uncritical and unquestioning of Labor’s tactics, to start to ask harder questions and seek detailed responses.

So the whole episode is beginning to end as it was always likely to — damaging both sides of politics, bringing parliament into disrepute and creating public heat and fury but unable to change society or point to real advances for victims of sexual assault.