Julia Gillard misogyny speech anniversary, Digi Mart USA News (Australia): Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, is recalling Tuesday, October 9, 2012, the day she delivered her famous misogyny speech. Gillard, her adversary at the time, Tony Abbott, and others who were present have revisited the day for an episode of I Was Actually There, set to air on the ABC on Monday night.
The speech went viral both in Australia and internationally, becoming a rallying cry for women and an unforgettable moment in Australian political and television history. Speaking on the program, Abbott said his relationship with Gillard, once one of mutual respect, had deteriorated before the speech.
“I thought it was a pretty over the top and unjustified attack,” he said. “Gillard trotted out a whole lot of things where I was regarded as having acted in, I guess, an old-fashioned, ham-fisted, insensitive way.
But again, I think most of those accusations were either over the top or slightly unfair.”
At the time, many in the press gallery and parliament viewed the speech as Gillard’s attempt to distract from a scandal engulfing Speaker Peter Slipper, which threatened Labor’s hold on power. Her government was in minority and relied on independents to pass new legislation, so every vote was critical.
Slipper had quit the Liberal Party to take up the speakership, removing himself from that side of the parliamentary ledger, but the period remained precarious for the government. Abbott was eager to attack Gillard over the Slipper issue, which dominated headlines on October 9.
“He was essentially a Liberal party turncoat put into the speakership because Julia Gillard was desperate to prop up her numbers,” Abbott said.
Slipper had been accused of sexually harassing a staffer, James Ashby, who later became Pauline Hanson’s right-hand man and is now party director of One Nation. Court proceedings revealed text messages from Slipper in which he likened female genitalia to molluscs.
Slipper denied the allegations, and they were struck out in 2012. Ashby challenged the findings in the federal court and won the appeal against that decision but later dropped the case.
Gillard’s office expected the opposition to weaponize the issue, particularly its sexist nature. Gillard said the irony was that Abbott was “almost … rent-a-gaffe about sexism issues.” He had famously referred to what “the housewives of Australia” needed to understand about climate change, and had stood in front of “ditch the witch” and “Bob Brown’s bitch” signs at a protest.
“I always thought, you know, in the early days of my prime ministership that I didn’t need to answer the gendered critiques because over time they would fall away,” Gillard said on the program. “And here I was two years later, and it was as bad as it had ever been, if not worse.
Now all of this was going to be weirdly spun against me.”
Gillard and her staffers gathered some of Abbott’s “greatest hits” for a potential response, and those quotes would eventually become part of the otherwise unscripted speech. She described the adrenaline kicking in as she approached the chamber for question time.
Abbott stood up and called for a vote to sack Slipper over the text messages. In his motion, he said the government should have “died of shame,” a phrase echoing one used by shock jock Alan Jones.
Jones, who is on trial for charges of indecent assault and sexual touching, which he denies and has pleaded not guilty to, had said after Gillard’s father died that he had “died of shame.”
Abbott remains unrepentant about the remarks, describing them as “a bit of niggle.” “I think it was reasonable of me to say that it was a government that should be a little bit ashamed of itself,” he said. “I am not conscious of ever treating women differently simply by virtue of them being women.”
Slipper resigned as speaker the next day, which Abbott said vindicated his position. Abbott’s use of the same phrase spurred Gillard into action, and she said she felt “a kind of cool anger” as she rose to speak.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not,” she told parliament, adding that the government would not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by him.
