Bullying claims show Labor future
THE bullying that contributed to Labor senator Kimberley Kitching’s early death matters because it reveals the likely nature of any future Albanese government. The “mean girls” who ganged up on Kitching because she dared to think differently will all be senior cabinet ministers in a matter of weeks if Labor wins the looming election. Is that what we really want: a potential PM who rails against the Liberal Party’s “problem with women” but ignores his own; and ministers who says that women must “have each other’s backs” while ostracising and ridiculing one of their own?
At one level, the treatment of Kitching – the hostility and the nastiness that her close friends, including former Labor leader Bill Shorten and union leader Diana Asmar, say added to her stress and made her a “physical wreck” – is gossip from the Canberra bubble.
At another level, it’s a window into how shallow and vindictive our public life has become, and a sign that this would only get worse under Labor. The problem for Anthony Albanese is that while Kitching can no longer speak for herself, her friends are speaking for her. And his claims that calling out the bullying she suffered and using the term “mean girls” is somehow “disrespectful” to the three senators accused of her vile treatment, but not the victim, just makes him look gutless and weak.
After all, Senators Penny Wong,
Katy Gallagher and Kristina Keneally have all loudly demanded that others treat women better than it seems they have treated their own colleague.
It was only two years ago at a breakfast in Adelaide for International Women’s Day that Wong lectured the room, saying that “so much of our work as feminists is dedicated to supporting and enabling other women ... whether it’s in the public square or on social media, we need to have each other’s back”. Supporting women?
Having each other’s back?
Back in 2019, the ABC reported that a Labor colleague had needled Kitching in a Senate tactics meeting that she didn’t understand the issue of schoolchildren protesting over climate change because she was childless. As a woman who wanted children but couldn’t have them – like Kitching – I can’t think of a more wounding insult. Thanks to Sharri Markson’s outstanding reporting, Penny Wong was named as the woman who belittled Kitching’s infertility, with Wong forced into a humiliating admission on Thursday that, yes, it was her, and she now deeply regretted what she said. By Friday, after earlier refusing to make any media comment on these horrific allegations, Keneally joined with Gallagher and Wong to issue a statement disputing the claims of systematic bullying and intimidation, and confirming that all three would attend her funeral in Melbourne tomorrow.
Yesterday’s heartbreaking tribute from national secretary of the Health Workers’ Union Diana Asmar, who held her hand as she was dying, shows her friends will not accept Albanese’s refusal to deliver Kitching some justice.
This tragic but instructive episode exposes the hypocrisy of the left against the right and of Labor versus Liberal.
If Kitching had been a woman of the Labor left, as Wong is, as Katy Gallagher is, and as Kristina Keneally is – in ideology if not in formal affiliation – there’s no doubt that she’d have been a protected species.
Instead, Kitching was one of that disappearing breed, a Labor right-winger in the Hawke tradition – a supporter of the US alliance and of sensible economics.
As Kitching’s friend, the longserving former Labor MP Michael Danby, said, “the left wing of the Labor Party is too strong … and the reason (Kitching) was difficult was because she represented the mainstream, the Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Kim Beazley point of view, which is now not in the ascendancy in Labor”.
So not only have these sad events exposed the Opposition Leader’s double standards, they’ve also revealed the hollowness of his aspirations to be a leader in the mould of Labor’s longest-serving