The Victorian state election is on this Saturday and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I could be less inspired about it if I tried. I want readers to understand just how much of a statement this is coming from me. I loathe our political system and most of our politicians but being an Aboriginal woman who works in the union movement and writes opinion, I am deeply invested in it all.
I have been known, for example, to sit at home on election night with a six pack of beer next to me yelling at the screen like I’m watching the AFL Grand Final. This election though, I don’t think I will be doing that. It doesn’t warrant that kind of enthusiasm from me.
The deal was sealed for me when I worked out that women were pretty much expendable in the race to the seats. I’m in a unique circumstance — I live in one of the safest Labor electorates in the state, but it borders two marginal seats where the battle is between the ALP and the Greens. These electorates cover areas that I travel and socialise in on a daily basis, so not getting swept up in these Lefty battles is near on impossible. And that’s saying nothing about my personal involvement in the Left already.
The other day, I noticed a poster (right) authorised by the Labor Party quoting the #MeToo movement and criticising the Greens about existing allegations of bullying, harassment and sexual assault within their ranks. The inference appeared to be that Labor is a safe haven for women, unlike the Greens.
It was an easy kick for the ALP. Jenny Leong had just used parliamentary privilege in NSW to call on her Greens colleague Jeremy Buckingham to stand down due to allegations made against him, and her call was backed at a national level by Senator Mehreen Faruqi. It also followed a series of muckraking news articles — first highlighting some three-year-old social media comments made in jest about shoplifting and drugs by former Greens upper house candidate Joanna Nilson and secondly, a video also from a few years ago featuring Greens candidate for Footscray Angus McAlpine rapping some misogynistic lyrics. Two days after I saw the poster, a staffer for sitting Greens MP Lidia Thorpe resigned after tweets he had made resurfaced featuring sexist and racist content.
The problem for me is that I’m yet to see evidence that the ALP is better when it comes to the treatment of women. Just last year, Young Labor was rocked by sexual assault claims within its ranks allegedly perpetrated by an individual who, according to reports, had been a repeat offender. I have additionally been at union events dominated by Labor affiliates and heard claims that domestic violence occurs because men on picket lines are 'stressed'.
Bill Shorten has himself been accused of sexual assault in historical changes that were eventually not pursued by police because the Office of Public Prosecutions advised there was 'no reasonable prospect of conviction' — a not uncommon finding in such circumstances. No ALP MPs used parliamentary privilege to call for his resignation when the allegations came to light.
"At the end of the day, one party pointing the finger at another and claiming moral superiority on 'women’s issues' isn’t going to cut it for me. I’m too experienced, and cynical, to take these claims at face value."
And that is just the ALP and the Greens. What about all the other progressive parties and groups getting around this election?
Long story short: I am yet to find an area within the broad Left which can lay claim to the fact that women in their ranks are treated well. Indeed, often the Left — being social progressives — believe they’re already across women’s equality and when allegations arise within the ranks it unsettles them because many wrongfully see it as being an attack on a 'movement'. They therefore don’t tend to deal with it well. The Right, on the other hand, are more likely to believe it’s a problem with whomever they've identified as the offending individual alone, and that in all other matters, women simply need to 'lean in'.
At the end of the day, one party pointing the finger at another and claiming moral superiority on 'women’s issues' isn’t going to cut it for me. I’m too experienced, and cynical, to take these claims at face value. I don’t particularly care how many tweets are unearthed; we remain in a patriarchal society where one woman per week is killed due to domestic violence, or a woman cannot simply walk safely home after a gig — our political parties reflect this society.
I’m not sure where my vote will go. I only know, thanks to Antony Green’s analysis, that there is no way I will be voting above the line in the upper house and therefore allowing my vote to go on a 'magical mystery tour across the ballot sheet'.
I am sure though that this use of 'women’s rights' to gain power in inner city progressive marginal seats is dirty politics, and a lot needs to change within the Left for me to see it as anything but.
Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman living in Melbourne, the National Indigenous Organiser of the NTEU, and a freelance opinion writer and social commentator. She blogs at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist.