Politics & Government

Morrison monsters women

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I’m going to take one more shot at PM Scott Morrison, because I think he bullies women in circumstances where if the person were male he would act differently. Bullies are instinctively drawn to perceived weakness, or one might say, soft targets.

Scott Morrison’s treament of Aust Post CEO Christine Holgate has not gone down well, writes Dennis Atkins. Photo: AAP

The first is from the Michelle Grattan article John Davidson linked to ie Scott Morrison finds strong women can be tough players, the case of Christine Holgate from Australia post:

    Immediately after Holgate had told a Senate committee about the watches, a furious Morrison let loose in the Parliament. Declaring the action disgraceful, he said: “The chief executive has been instructed to stand aside and, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go.”

I understand the Cartier watch idea came from an employee who knew the tradition of Deutsche Post giving them as a reward.

Many are saying Morrison would not have ripped in so hard if it was Christopher Holgate.

Dennis Atkins has a great take-down of Morrison in Scott Morrison’s treatment of Christine Holgate shows his true colours. He says:

    In just under 50 words late last October, Prime Minister Scott Morrison set an improvised explosive device for himself while thinking he was kicking goals for his natural constituency – that being white males who drive RAM trucks, carry a lick of grievance and love their sports.

    Confronted with the freshly exposed “fat cat largess” of $5000 Cartier watches handed out to Australia Post executives by chief executive Christine Holgate, Morrison could not have been in higher dudgeon.

    He was clearly loving himself, riding his elevated steed.

Bullies bully to get a rise, to boost their own self-esteem. However, it is hard to think of Morrison that way, he loves himself so much, or rather he loves the crafted image he presents to us.

Atkins says:

    That “she can go” was delivered with the junkyard puffed-up attitude we have seen before, although it’s been absent lately as the Prime Minister musters whatever he can from the right side of his brain, dressed often in soft purple and mauve shirts.

Remember Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech? After that Julie Bishop became the attack dog, spouting lies that she knew were lies about Gillard’s pre-parliamentary life. I’ve never forgiven her for that.

Abbott responded by smooching and slobbering over any female he came near.

So much of politics is performative. I can’t imagine Pasul Keating or Gough Whitlam taking coaching on how to act.

The second was when he got stuck into Annastacia Palaszczuk over Sarah Caisip, who came to Brisbane from Canberra to see her sick dad but was prevented from going to his funeral.

Morrison was by general agreement on the side of the angels, but it still does not excuse the way he behaved. This is the short story of what happened.

    Sarah Caisip, frustrated with the Qld medical authorities, got in touch with the media. It came to the notice of Ray Hadley, who often helps people because when he calls, politicians will always pick up the phone.

    He explained that he often does this on the quiet to avoid people being caught up in a media circus.

    So he rang Scott Morrison.

    Morrison rang Palaszczuk and shouted at her. When Palaszczuk told him she didn’t make the call, by law it was the Chief Health Officer call in a declared health emergency, he demanded that she overrule the CHO. When he was told that overruling would be illegal it made no difference. He demanded that she overrule anyway.

    Palaszczuk asked “Are you OK?” it being R U OK Day, and promised to convey the case to the CHO.

    Both promised that they would not talk to the media about the phone call.

    Morrison immediately rang Ray Hadley and talked to him on air about it. And, yes, he did get tearful, when they were talking about Morrison’s dad dying recently.

    Pretty soon after that Palaszczuk was asked a question in the House about it. I heard her reply. She said Morrison had talked to the media like he said he wouldn’t. She knew he would break his word.

    Morrison then sent his goons/staff out to brief the media that it was Palaszczuk who had spoken first.

That’s the truth of it.

There was plenty of press coverage, but not all had the full story:

History shows that Palaszczuk did keep us safe by allowing the Chief Health Officer to do her job without political interference.

The CHodid her job, and to an audience of women recently exp[lained that she didn’t always know what she was doing and didn’t get everything right.

Those people learn by experience. Atkins says of Morrison:


    Morrison never takes ownership for any mistake or misstep, error or egregious behaviour, action or attitude.

    In anything but his scripted self-congratulatory announcements he is the Prime Minister who wasn’t there.

He’ll never learn, but will work out a way of looking as though he has.

Finally, I came across this old one from Sam Langford at Junkee in August 2018 when Morrison got the gig:

We May Have Escaped Prime Minister Dutton, But Scott Morrison Is Also Pretty Shit

Sorry about the swearing, and there is more in the piece. So too in John Birmingham’s The Empty Smirk.

Now I’ll get on with my life.

12 thoughts on “Morrison monsters women”

  1. This started as a longish comment. Then I saw Dennis Atkins comment. Be sure to read it.

    Amazing to think Atkins spent his working life as national affairs correspondent for the Murdoch rag, the Courier Mail.

  2. The empty smirk from marketing (ESM) isn’t helping the Libs get back to the good old days when a higher % of women preferred the Libs to Labor. Dunno whether he is attracting male voters. My disdain for the ESM makes it hard for me to judge.

  3. “The empty smirk from marketing (ESM)” is a bit clumsy even though it captures the man.
    Is “Smirk Morrison” sufficient?
    OR “Smirk Morrison the Shallow”

  5. John, Scotty’s latest is that her issues are mainly with the chair of the board, not with him. We were told that by Mr Hunt, so it must be right!

    There can’t be cultural change unless your default position is that when women complain of being bullied you believe them.

    Especially when they say what you’ve done made them think of suicide.

    Of interest also was her revelation that these mad nutters who occupy the treasury benches were going to flog off the parcel delivery service. She stopped them doing bit, and we didn’t even see the report.

    Holgate saved the local post office and the services it provides, which for some is banking for the poor.

  6. Brian: “Scotty’s latest is that her issues are mainly with the chair of the board, not with him.” Smirk seems to be selective about what responsibilities he admits to (or claims if something good has happened.)

  7. Scotty has said sorry, not sorry.

    A few weeks ago he apologised for ‘wrong’ toilet claim to News Corp journalist because he was wrong. Now he won’t because he reckons he was right. He says:

      he did not intend to offend Ms Holgate.

      “The language in the Parliament was very strong,” he said.

      “It was not my intention to cause distress to Ms Holgate and I regret any distress that that strong language may have caused to her, and indeed did cause to her.

      “That was not my intention.”

    If she was wrong because Cartier watches don’t pass the pub test, I’d suggest his performance doesn’t either.

    I’m sick of the pub test.

    If you make a government-owned organisation into a corporation and get experienced corporates to run it, you should not be surprised if they act like corporates.

    The people receiving the watches did not need money, and did not need time-pieces. It’s the symbolism that counted.

    Holgate says the Board agreed that she should give them some special reward, at her discretion, and I believe the watches were delivered with a hand-written card signed by Holgate and Lucio Di Bartolomeo, the chair of AusPost.

    Yes, Labor was originally getting stuck into her, and Albo has spun their story a bit.

    I’ve got to go to bed, but interesting that the bloke from Woolworths who the board picked to replace Holgate (although she may technically still be CEO) used to work for Deutsche Post, where the idea of Cartier watch rewards came from.

  8. Bhutan went from no jabs to being a world leader in COVID-19 vaccine rollout in three weeks. Here’s how they did it: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-17/bhutan-had-one-of-the-worlds-most-successful-coronvaccine-drives/100069540
    Brilliant by Buddhist Bhutan effort that was not a fluke. Key points:
    “But having a smaller population size and a sense of civic duty has also been key.
    “Our strength lies in our smallness and inherent value of solidarity,” Dasho Dechen Wangmo, the Bhutanese Health Minister, said.
    Dr Jackson agrees that Bhutan has used its size to advantage, which sets it apart from other countries.
    “[In Australia] we have got to get our vaccines to a lot more people,” she said.
    “We have got a much, much more diverse population with much more diverse attitudes towards government decision-making, which in some respects is extremely good. This is why we love to live in Australia.
    “But it does add a level of complexity to consumer attitudes and the generosity of the population.
    “So one of the lessons that we have learnt from Bhutan is the positive outcomes of listening to instructions and following guidance when it comes to successful vaccine rollout and … the fast, decisive action with strong leadership, but we’re in very, very, very different countries.”
    It was not just about consulting the stars re an auspicious starting date.

  9. John, I was hoping to do a brief post, but rushed off my feet.

    Prof Mary-Louise McClaws is saying that if we get our finger out with mass injection sites we could get through the population in about 8 months. Means something like 160,000 per day 7/7.

    Heard that 50 Million Pfizer now ordered may not show up until; the end of the year.

    McClaws is saying we may not reach herd immunity until the end of 2022.

    US is talking about everyone who wants a jab getting it by independence day. Heard the other day they have 600 million jabs on hand right now. Not sure how many are J&J, but that was the kind of contingency they were planning might happen.

    UK and Canada are looking at July.

    We have badly dropped the ball and there is no way of glossing it over. We never had a plan that would have worked, and still don’t, but NSW looks as good as can be under the circumstances, because they made plans for 100 injection hubs.

  12. Jumpy, thankyou for the link, it looks like a useful site.

    If you click on “Table” below the first box it gives an alphabetical list of countries showing the share of people with at least one jab.

    The Australian data is out of date. I think we are over 1% now.

    However, our record is pathetic. I heard one estimate that we were running 92nd.

    Our government’s duty is to its own residents in the first place. We obviously need to help other countries, especially in our region, but we are a trading nation, with a need for freedom of movement, eg. for tourism, education, fruit and vegetable harvesting etc, so we need to get on with it.

    Apparently our foreign student market was a $40bn industry. It looks like becoming a less than $10bn industry, and may not revive until 2023.

    Universities were using profits from overseas students to do research, which put our larger universities in the top 100 in the ranking, so setting up a virtuous circle.

    The Govt just said ‘tough, shit, go find a new business model’.

    We are going to lose out to the US, Canada and Britain, all of which have policies to help the universities with foreign students.

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