Comment

Thousands upon thousands of women marched across the nation, holding aloft placards and signs demanding change, demanding justice, demanding an end to the chronic lack of safety endemic in their lives. They asked that the government, with all its power and authority, create that change, implement that justice, forge a safer world for them. The government’s response was, at best, indifferent, and at its worst, malicious.

All of a sudden, the Morrison government is looking very vulnerable. And the prime minister knows it. Like all governments staggering towards the political abyss, it is not only events beyond their control at play but also, more importantly, their misreading of what needs to be done.

We are now two years on from the massacre of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, a terrorist attack perpetrated by an Australian man. And once again the responsibility has fallen on members of the community who were targeted to remind Australia that this horrific incident occurred and is still to be reckoned with.

The joint statement describes it not as something new but something coming, something due to a people who have been waiting too long. “Today has been owed for 233 years,” it says. “233 years of violence, dispossession and deprivation. 233 years of deliberate silence. Today we commit to telling the truth.”

If there’s one thing white people hate more than racism, it’s being accused of racism. That racism exists is not really a point of contention. But in nine years of living in Australia, I’m yet to meet anyone who admits to being racist. It’s not that dissimilar to how one in six women experience sexual assault in Australia, but somehow almost no one ever gets arrested for it or found guilty of committing it.

Key ministers in the political line of fire over the past two weeks will be missing in action when parliament resumes on Monday. The Morrison government, currently being held together by gum and string, is in full strategic retreat in the hope it can brazen out the crisis. But you can’t sideline an attorney-general and a defence minister on indefinite leave and it not become an obvious admission of wilful impotence and avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny.

The Online Safety Bill was introduced by the Morrison government last month with much fanfare about its mission to improve and promote the online safety of Australians. A lot of analysis of the bill has focused on its attempt to minimise harm to children online and to restrict the sharing of non-consensual images across digital platforms. The bill aims to do this by providing several new powers to the eSafety Commissioner, an office that was established in 2015.

Media commentators were quick to attack mention of a widely read self-help book in the dossier of Christian Porter's accuser. But the science of trauma is complicated, and we lack the nuance needed to understand it or its treatments.

The instinct of our country’s first law officer, when accused of a terrible crime, is to seek the advice of a lawyer, one renowned for his skill in defamation proceedings. To the media, the message is clear. And so the country waits, for days, for the cabinet minister to name himself.

This is how it should have gone: When allegations of a historical rape made against a cabinet minister come to light, the prime minister steps up and says he’s doing everything in his power to find out what’s alleged to have happened. The accused parliamentarian has been asked to step down until the police decide about an investigation. The prime minister demands an overhaul of the toxic culture of Canberra.