The definition of insanity, it is said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. On that score, the Australian media can be forgiven their periodic pack-hunts because until now, depending on how Attorney-General Christian Porter’s defamation case against the ABC goes, they’ve not only gotten away with it but actually been rewarded with higher sales and more clicks.
Australia’s politicians, on the other hand, just never seem to learn. Whenever they launch a witch-hunt against their opponents, it almost invariably comes back to bite them, too. Travel rorts, dual citizenship, offshore detention… now we can add the sexual harassment scandal currently gripping Canberra.
Labor clearly thought it was on a winning ticket to exploit the Coalition’s supposed “women problem” to maximum advantage when it joined its media arm, the ABC, in unleashing the unhinged harpies of gender war. First, it was unproven allegations against an unnamed former Liberal staffer, then the lynch mob really hit its stride, howling for Porter’s head over a long-dismissed rape claim dating back 30 years.
Recalling the similar claims made against shadow cabinet member and leader at the last election, Bill Shorten, more than a few observers outside the Canberra bubble watched the circus with raised eyebrows.
And, sure as night follows day, the fire they lit is coming back to burn Labor.
Dozens of anonymous allegations shared on a private Facebook group for current and former Labor staffers have been published this week, including that a married man “plied” a woman with drinks before having non-consensual sex.
Well, having set the shabbily low bar in trumping up unproven, anonymous allegations, Labor is reluctantly being forced to play by the new rules they helped to write.
After Labor cabinet secretary Jenny McAllister urged male colleagues who had made women uncomfortable to think about how to change their behaviour and apologise, [Mark] Dreyfus, the opposition’s legal affairs spokesman, told the ABC men at the centre of allegations should self-identify “as far as that’s possible”.
“I’m not sure about the mechanism that we’d go about it because … this is a closed Facebook group. The allegations have been put forward 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.”
So, we don’t know who you are, we don’t know who’s accusing anyone of what, but you’re all guilty until proven innocent.
Shadow special minister of state Don Farrell told Labor colleagues on Tuesday there were several avenues that MPs and staff could use to make complaints, such as through the party’s recently updated sexual harassment and bullying policy and the newly set up government-funded, 24/7 support hotline for incidents that occur in parliamentary workplaces.
Questioned over what Labor was doing to investigate allegations made in the Facebook group for staffers, opposition women’s spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said the party was unable to investigate anonymous allegations unless victims came forward with complaints.
The Australian
So how does it feel?
Now do you get why we spent a thousand years or more developing such fundamental Common Law principles as the statute of limitations, presumption of innocence and burden of proof?
That’s the trouble with rewriting the rules to get your opponents: you have to play by them, too.
Let the revolution commence eating its own.
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