Is anyone surprised that in this environment of contempt for the public, the disadvantaged, and for principles of public stewardship, that disrespect for women rages, and that abuse of women is seen more through the lens of political damage?
There’s probably not a politician who does not pay lip service to the idea that sexual harassment and assault are crimes and that victims should be treated with decency, compassion and help. But appalling and sexually oppressive misbehaviour is but evidence of far wider cultural problems on both sides of politics.
The general culture, and the subculture of sexual oppression it embraces, is entrenched. It was evident in two separate ways over the past week as parliament continued to wrestle with the case of a woman allegedly raped while virtually insensible on a couch in a minister’s office. One can more or less take it as read that not a single politician would have wished such a fate upon her. But the spontaneous reaction to the news that it had occurred was essentially partisan, if disguised by tender expressions of sympathy for the victim.
The culture was also on display in another context. If one Googles “petition for consent to be included in sex ed earlier”, one finds hundreds of accounts of sexual assaults on girls attending private single-sex high schools by young men from the private single-sex schools. The abuse culture comes from entitled boys from almost all the most expensive and privileged private schools – the germ of Australia’s ruling class. It was not a culture as strong and pervasive when I attended such a school 60 years ago, but when one looks at the moral, ethical environment, and the approaches to respect for women in these men destined to be leaders in politics, law and finance, one can only despair of the future.
It’s not only women who are disrespected and abused, sui generis though that may be. It’s a pervasive culture of contempt for almost anyone outside the political class.
It involves the conscious demeaning of, and disregard for, people who are unemployed, and conscious cruelty in the way miserable benefits are administered and managed. It involves conscious cruelty, and outright racism, to some classes of refugees and immigrants. It involves a studied indifference to the mistreatment of elderly Australians, and complacency about continuing, even increasing, disadvantages for many Indigenous Australians. These are not accidents. They are policy – in many cases ideology. The odd backbencher actually embarrassed by it — and there are all too few — has learnt a few slogans or “cruel to be kind” rationalisations to distract from their fundamental lack of humanity, charity, and common decency.
A robber baron culture is emerging by which ministers think that public money is there to dispose of as they will. Not by principles of equity, need, or open process, but secretively to party donors, party friends and relations, for political purposes. Ministers are increasingly taking over the distribution of public grants, and more blatantly using their discretion to distribute them to cronies.
The culture also embraces chronic secrecy, lack of transparency, failures of proper documentation and refusal to answer questions, FOI requests, or other forms of account. That comes from contempt for the process and the presumptions of any system of fairness or accountability.
Hard to be surprised that a government that laughs at ordinary citizens and holds them in contempt treats women so badly
I don’t point this out to again call for strong anti-corruption mechanisms. Rather, it is to show that the government is laughing at ordinary citizens. Phrases about giving a go to those who have a go means no more than that those who donate money to the governing party, or when the government needs partisan assistance. They will be lavished with public money, tax concessions and special privileges. Those in similar circumstances but not playing that game are out of the game. So are more deserving causes. Indeed, a good deal of the tens of billions of dollars handed out to private sector cronies has been distributed without rules of accountability, accessible public records of who got what, when and for what reason, and on what terms.
It is not new that some of those most given to abuse of the public trust, duties of public stewardship, and assumptions about charity, honesty and respect for others are among those most given to pretending they are guided by their religious values. The “Christianity” of many in the present government is not recognisable to most Christians, even if Matthew 23:14 seems to apply.
We live in an age of dismemberment of the sense of community and citizens living in a society, of a common cause, mutual respect, and mutual obligation. Community is becoming more atomised, politicians thriving by setting groups against each other, with politics of blame and resentment, and of punishment and coercion, and with appeals to selfishness and self-interest.
Even if the tendencies are most obvious in the present government, they are not unique to one side. Even though every is keen to point to significant problems of culture in the other.
Can anyone be surprised that in this environment of contempt for the public, for the disadvantaged, and for principles of public stewardship, that disrespect for women rages, and that physical or sexual abuse of women is seen more through the lens of political damage than a sincere desire to help, to comfort, or to create the circumstances where such things cannot happen again?
The very number of reviews commissioned by the prime minister after he finally became aware of the alleged sexual assault are a measure of the embarrassment in which he found himself — remember, he didn’t “get it” until his wife explained. But he doesn’t need reviews. He has access to reports tackling the problem head-on but they have been generally rejected by Morrison himself as well as his cabinet. One gets sensitivity to abuse of women only when the media spotlight is on it.
We don’t need more studies; more consultation; or more evidence or bad examples. What we do need, in spades, is leadership. From people who can command respect. And who show us by example they “get it” and that they will not put up with the culture of the status quo. The problem is that such people are in short supply. Morrison is not in their number, and cannot be re-invented to fit.
That’s why the public should be cynical. This government does not have the cred to change the culture. Indeed it has yet to show that it disavows it in practice. Or that some of the arch-practitioners, from the top down, would relent except when it suits them.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
Comments
36 responses to “The abuse culture comes from entitled boys from almost all the most expensive and privileged private schools – the germ of Australia’s ruling class.”
OMG. Are you seriously positioning yourself as the protector of women, Jack Waterford? What about Audrey Fagan? And what about the reporter at The Canberra Times who was attacked by a male colleague but you made her work beside her attacker? Very concerning that white men can make themselves saviours in this narrative when they have contributed to the problem.
Weirdly after leaving there almost 40 years ago I received an email today from a College checking in with anyone who may be traumatised by the past in relation to this week – so much water under the bridge and so much unsaid.
And now we’re going to have an independent inquiry, just like the independent inquiry that was unnecessary because the police had already closed the case. The task of proving the AG’s innocence with respect to something that ‘never happened’ is no longer the impossible conundrum it was a few days ago. Jen and the girls must have been at it again! Perhaps the Com Car could pick them up on Monday, instead of the usual useless disengaged and disingenuous passenger.
Well done Jack,
Your long experience of the House on the Hill bubble (NOT the Canberra Bubble!) shows with your long observations over many decades, just how corrupt and sleazy our so called political leaders have become. It’s time we booted the whole lot out of power.We need to end the dynastic and boys club culture, so embedded in both major parties, so young fresh, NON private elite school , just ordinary ‘battler’ Australians can rise to positions of power and responsibility. As a Old Boy of a so called boys Catholic College (a GPS school I might add) of the 1960’s, I am disgusted with the latest reports of misbehavior against women. Seems their ‘betters’ are not very good examples!
Why and how does the media repeatedly assert that sexual crimes are merely “misbehaviour”? Conflating sexual crimes with misbehaviour is symptomatic of the disease that is so deeply entrenched in our existence.
Marx said a civilised society is judged by the equality of women in it (not that Marx was very kind to Jenny Marx, he wasn’t vile either). The bourgeois brothers treat women and children as private property; now they are drunken louts, as that despairing master of St Andrew’s College, Sydney said in: “Finishing school for blokes”. They are thrilled to have Morrison as the undertaker of Australia, but saviour of their snivelling selves. A lot goes back to John Howard who destroyed the little progress made, as others below also testify.
Hear hear! Bravo!
Institutions of private education are a failed state. That teenage boys bred of these institutions are obscene and who become obscene bankers, Parliamentarians, aged care executives etc etc demonstrates the feebleness of these failed state institutions of private education.
Don’t I know it. As someone who’s job was offshored a decade ago I ended up driving a school bus for a few years before retiring. I drove primarily for private secondary schools, and what an eye opener that was to the assumed superiority, arrogance and certainty of a bright future these students displayed, often parroting their parents (fathers) attitudes to the poor and needy and misogyny towards the female students and teachers (who I might add found their behaviour amusing). The state school kids were far more down to earth and were usually verbally slapped down for speaking in the manner that private school kids thought was normal. I couldn’t help thinking the female of the private school species are 50 years behind the rest of us in the progress of feminism which is probably why we don’t hear anything other than support from them for their vile politician husbands.
One day it will be realised that the people involved treat everyone else as sh*t under their feet. Something to be removed from the bottom of their boots on a scraper.
A quick check of the number of the present Cabinet who attended “elite” (translate as “expensive” rather than necessarily good) private schools is enlightening.
Please share the results here. Then again John Dubya attended a state secondary school – as did many politicians state and federal in past years – until the anti-public school campaigning – and vast sums (of taxpayer money) were flung at “private/elite” – while simultaneously being deducted from public! Ugly! Divisive! Greedy! Selfish!
Will a subsequent cabinet reshuffle see a new position created? Minister for Sexual Assaults?
Given they offer the highest funding to those richest private boys schools as well, it’s obvious that they are even willing to pay to keep the culture alive. Born to rule, above the law, impunity for their actions while they crack down on the poorest and most vulnerable for fun. They believe also that Women as a group are not due equal rights and are there to serve men. Some in private girls schools are taught to support the same behaviour, even if it is against women. Women should know their place.
One could be mistaken for thinking this to be a description of 19th Century England where the aristocracy also saw themselves as above the law, driven by a sense of exceptionalism, born to rule, superior in every way, and backed by God as a justification for what they did. Wealthy industrialist men were also added to that growing aristocratic class. Married wealthy men had beautiful formal photos taken sitting with their perfect families while skipping across the Channel to exploit under age prostitutes on the other side in France.
According to Emmeline Pankhurst, many politicians and higher-ups had private brothels in London and likely in other major towns where they could exploit 14 year old girls, sometimes younger, for their pleasures. Women still had no rights to stop it because they had no vote. Poor women and girls in the workplace, married or not, could do nothing for the predatory advances of the wealthy factory owner. It was part of the job. God, Queen, and Country, euphemistically hid the rot.
In Church’s on Sundays they sung “All Things Bright and Beautiful” with its infamous verse:
The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estates.
“A woman should know her place.”
James Thurber had this right, George. “A woman’s place is in the wrong.” He, of course, was joking. Too many are not.
I totally agree Barney
Interesting how now the respect for the formal legal process without social commentary or trial by media is suddenly respected within the views of the Liberals, yet only a few years ago:
“Three Liberal Ministers Are Being Hauled In Front Of The Vic Supreme Court This Week”.
https://junkee.com/liberal-mps-contempt-court/108608
“Christian Porter missing in action amid ‘shocking attacks’ on Victorian judges, Labor says”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/18/christian-porter-missing-in-action-amid-shocking-attacks-on-victorian-judges-labor-says
“Dutton Continues to Undermine the Rule of Law”
https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/dutton-continues-to-undermine-the-rule-of-law/
I said as much to Poynton 20 months ago
Well said Jack. I said as much to the John Poynton, Chairman of my old school in Perth, Christ Church Grammar School for boys. Poynton recently stood down from his conflicted position as a director of Crown Casino.
I spelt out my disgust at the attitude of the school toward refugees, Indigenous Australians and the thinly veiled racism. I deplored the worshiping of money and the elitism actively promoted and nurtured. He claimed he saw none of it and as justification pointed to a couple of token Aboriginal students who were scholarship recipients. These kids often have a lousy time, particularly after they leave school.
The government defiant/blasé in defense.” The minister claims innocence, so innocent till proven guilty”
The opposition acquiescent “we will leave it to the conscience of the government.”
Governor General ?
There are some countries in the world where women would be on the streets, hitting pots, and demanding justice for their sisters.
It really is up to the people to organize.
IT’S TIME.
Very incisive and penetrating article which condenses so much of what has gone wrong with our government and our country. Thank you Mr. Waterford.
I think Jack always shines as an authentic journalist who knows the political Canberra situation exceedingly well and does his homework like few others. In his maturity he reflects the quality of something that is very rare in the age of chequebook, lazy, yellow, biased, pro-Liberal, and junk food for the mind journalism. He gets even better with age.
I think it is also indicative to how much Nine Entertainment has compromised what it used to stand for. Jack still writes in the Canberra times, and while the rest of Fairfax fell into Nine’s hands, the Canberra Times did not.
Is.10:1-4: Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims —laws that make misery for the poor, that rob the destitute of their dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children.
This requires sending to “Hallelujah” Morrison at once!
Thanks, Jack! All true as you write. Sack the lot – send them all to face court for the culture they have walked by – gaol terms would send a message. Start with the A-G – currently being named – then his protector the PM – already with form over his protection of the Hillsong paedophile protector!
We don’t have the power to put them in gaol Jim, but we do have the power to sack them.
It requires us, many of us, to step out of our tribal identification and vote for someone else.
We can write whinging comments like this, or we can stop giving them our power.
You have to say this on the News Corp websites, Geoff. I doubt that a single person who posts here voted for the Morrison government. It’s so dismaying to read the comments on pieces at The Australian – and hard to have counter-cultural comments published.
Time for Morrison to invite the cabinet round for dinner and have Jen give them all a lecture in decency and respect. Then again I’m not sure Jen had anything to say to Scott. It sounded like a marketing tool to me.
Does protecting a paedophile, and then a rapist, assist a religious man in his ascent to heaven when the Rapture happens?
That respect for women as equals not anything else is at the hear of Australian and world culture. It leads to the spectacle of what is now the Commonwealth Government. A male prime minister who unless he is told by a woman in his life about the gravity of sexual violence, who resides at the top of a male dominated pyramid that fosters the murder of a woman a week by their male partners is corrupt beyond reproach.
A real man who respects women as equal would not have committed or tried to commit the act of sexual assault. A real man even pothumously accused would stand up and say yes that was me and then resign from public life. It is not a matter of natural justice but a higher moral response as a human being. If he does not do so then the women member of the Government should resign together and leave the party. Simple you either Lead, be a human and a man. There is no other course.
That is the culture that has to be changed Jack. The Morrison Government is symptomatic of that sickness in our society – it is simply oblivious to the pain it causes all women. Making excuses for it is not being a man or a human being.
Michael, the sentiment is fine, but may I point out that it is hard to stand up posthumously and say “that was me”. Consciousness is a minimum requirement.
Retailing the anonymous “denial” from his Minister, Morrison takes a side, not that of justice. He hasn’t read the dossier, and his vigorous 1950s attitudes are visibly part of the problem, not the solution.
Jack has broad clues in here, for armchair sleuths, but that’s not the point. For self interest alone, Morrison should name the Minister, forget the cops, and (like Kiefel with Heydon) enable an independent probe.
The denial is extraordinary, he’s like Basil Fawlty when it comes to not accepting the obvious, or the cop from South Park. ‘Nothing to see here’ as always.
I note Morrison’s method of dealing with questions now involves talking as if he is not even part of the government, more like a reporter commenting from the sidelines. He’s not personally involved in what is going on. More like a narrator commenting on a story. He’s simply not part of the story.
So why should he take any responsibility, he’s effectively edited himself out of the picture. Meanwhile a large section of independent media has already figured out which minister it is, and we’ll eventually all be aware of who it is, while he pretends there is nothing to see. He’s got this head firmly buried in the sand. This is yet another lesson he has learned from Trump, he’ s inventing his own view of reality beyond what everyone else perceives and hoping if no one notices that he’ll get away with it.
Scott ‘I don’t hold the hose’ Morrison is proving that he is even better than Trump in his sheer deviousness and cunning. But but… conservative Australians still love him, probably because they are as reactionary as he is. The rest of us will just have to put up!
Every day however, Scott has only one direction that he is headed in, and that is further out on a limb that will definitely snap. We could also say he is painting himself into corner. How much time do the Liberals now spend thinking about how to cover their tracks and get their stories consistent? Its a dangerous game. By not exposing the minister involved in recent allegations, it makes his entire government look sleazy, we are kept guessing – that makes most of the males in his cabinet look bad to everyone. He seriously underestimates the sisterhood, and the many men in this country who also support them on this issue. We don’t need Jen to tell us.
Meanwhile it will not be long before everyone in this land will have guessed who it is given the information available; independent media is in advance already. Odd things have happened on Wikipedia entries lately.
Things are coming out of left field now, and I think once the egg cracks everyone will see the rotten egg yolk inside, straight into the putrid core of all things this government does.
His appeals to his base have become a parody of Homer-Simpson like symbols, such as when he did the sideshow of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine – which he has now done twice. He wears a number of sporting items to appeal to the teams that Australians in his tribal base support. He completely re-staged the first weekend’s vaccination event.
It was supposed to be on the following Tuesday with Albanese and Adam Bandt from the Greens all receiving the vaccine together, but he gazumped both of them by pushing his own show forward using his nasty side to get what he wanted. A solo performance. Another strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde all in one.
Hopefully the branch will break soon and pull down the whole LNP .It does have the feel of things crumbling apart.