Minister for Women isn’t really acting for women

Three women now know personally that the Albanese government is feminist only when it helps their mates.

This goes to a wider sickness in Labor, seen again after MP Luke Gosling was charged with assaulting the King’s representative in the NT: morality is a political weapon, not a principle.

The women are mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, former senior public servant Fiona Brown and Japan’s PM Sanae Takaichi – all victims of these double standards.

Rinehart was the target of barbaric sexualised abuse on the ABC’s Around the World program, which screened a short film fantasising about putting a “stick right up Gina Rinehart’s butthole, stirring it round, mixing her guts up nice and smooth”.

The filmmaker eventually issued a half-apology, but the ABC still won’t.

Yet the government’s Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, has said nothing. Nor has a single minister called on the ABC to apologise or remove the film from its websites.

See, Rinehart is a conservative.

Brown was chief-of-staff of Liberal defence minister Linda Reynolds in 2019 when a staffer, Brittany Higgins, indicated she’d been sexually assaulted by a colleague. Brown urged her to go to the police, even set up a meeting.

Higgins sent Brown a note thanking her for her “absolutely incredible” support, but then decided to attack the then Morrison government, lying it had tried to cover up her alleged rape.

Labor backed Higgins as the victim of Liberal sexism, and the government, freaking at being painted as anti-women, banned Brown from defending herself. She was shattered and attempted suicide. Her career is over.

Two judges have since confirmed that Higgins indeed lied about Brown, and Brown sued the Commonwealth for failing to protect her. Yet the Albanese government – having helped to destroy a woman to seem prowomen – fought her claims for years.

Only last week did its solicitors settle with Brown, keeping the terms of settlement confidential. Yet Gallagher, once so loud in damning this fictitious “cover-up”, has not apologised. Nor has any government minister.

You see, Brown worked for conservatives.

Takaichi came to Australia in May and gave Albanese a crown melon. In Japan, it is a one-tree-one-fruit gift with such ritual significance that it is often given at ceremonies, including to the emperor.

But Albanese treated it as some fruit from Woolies in a podcast with comedian Nikki Osborne, who asked about the worst gift he ever got.

Well, said Albanese, one “strange” gift was this melon, but he turned it into “a couple of melons” to make a Benny Hill dirty joke at Takaichi’s expense, even juggling two hands over his chest. Snigger, snigger.

Osborne got it: “She brought two!” Albanese: “She brought two, as you do.” Osborne: “She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson!” Albanese: “She brought two.”

Last week in Japan, it became clear Albanese’s “joke” has been neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Tokyo resident Melanie Brock, an Asahi Group Holdings director, warned: “We shouldn’t ever assume that just because Japanese counterparts stay silent on any issue that it hasn’t registered and that people don’t have views or thoughts. They do. And they are monitoring closely.”

Waka Ikeda, a research fellow at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies, blasted Albanese in the Japan Times for his sexism: “A woman may run the world’s fourth-largest economy, stare down Beijing’s threats and still be reduced, by an allied prime minister, to two melons on a podcast. The joke was beneath him and beneath Australia.”

Yet our Minister for Women said nothing. Nor has any other minister.

You see, Takaichi is a conservative.

So feminism is only a principle when it can be used as a weapon to help Labor and its mates.

We saw the same sickness again last week after Labor’s Luke Gosling was charged with twice assaulting the Administrator of the Northern Territory, the King’s man, at a Thai festival, allegedly shoulder-charging him and elbowing him in the stomach.

Astonishing if true, although Gosling denies it.

Again, the double standards. When former Liberal ministers Angus Taylor and Christian Porter were merely investigated over various allegations – for which they were never charged – Albanese as opposition leader furiously demanded they stand down.

But he’s let Gosling, who’s actually charged, stay on as his special envoy on Defence, Veterans’ Affairs and Northern Australia.

You see, Gosling is Labor.

And with Labor it’s not the principle that counts, but the side.