The story that has unfolded in Canberra over the last few weeks has been horrific by anyone’s standards. To date, 4 women have alleged sexual misconduct against the same liberal staffer who is alleged to have raped Brittany Higgins in the parliament house office of Linda Reynolds in March of 2019.
The women I know are angry. Not just about the current set of facts but that we are still having the same conversation. Every time a woman is raped and/or murdered in this country there is a chorus of “what she might have done to bring this on herself”. Some more subtle than others but it’s always there. It was announced there would be March4Justice protests all over the country. Although there was a rally being held closer to home, I felt this overwhelming urge to be there within shouting distance of the Prime Minister’s office. An office paid for with our tax dollars, which is now the scene of an alleged crime. I wanted to join my voice to the thousands of others to tell the current government that playing duck and cover is not good enough this time.
I had a friend whose opinion I value and who falls on the opposite side of the political spectrum as I do, told me in no uncertain terms that the abuse of women physical, mental, and sexual is unacceptable and needs to stop but he doesn’t feel that it needs to be a political debate as my side of politics has its own share of predators. A point I don’t disagree with. I don’t think this can be broken down to a left vs right issue as much as a power issue. It is however up to each side when it comes up with one of their own to deal with it properly and not just point at the opposition and say well you handled your sexual assault allegation worse than we handled ours. Someone’s sexual trauma is not a political football.
As we stood on the grass in the shadow of parliament house, the human cost of that game was represented in a young, unscheduled speaker who took the stage in front of a sea of people to share her experience. Brittany Higgins explained how things changed once she reported what had happened to her. “I wasn’t a person who had just gone through a life-changing traumatic event, I was a political problem”. She told of the pain of watching our current prime minister publicly apologies about how her complaint was handled while his team privately tried to discredit and unmined her loved ones.
The aftermath of the alleged assault is now subject to a government inquiry and the incident itself, the subject of a police investigation.
As a mum, that day was a double-edged sword. I wanted the kid to see brave, amazing women step forward and fight, but she is also seeing that there is a need to fight and that it’s been ongoing.
This was the Kid’s first time in Canberra, so despite the reason for the visit, I still wanted her to see the sights including Questacon and Parliament House. After the insurrection in Washington, I thought better of taking her straight from the protest to the tour, so the decision was made to do the tour the next day.
On the second floor of this taxpayer-funded building is a huge Lego model of Parliament House. It is a work of art. Commissioned in 2018 and took 750 hours to build. The attention to detail is sensational. Christopher Pyne running through the building with a toolbox because he was “the fixer”, someone throwing a democracy sausage from the balcony, Protestors out the front, which made me smile. Then we came to two offices in the model. One has two people kissing in the corner of the office and a little Lego staffer running away in horror and the other has someone sitting at their desk with a skeleton clearly visible in the closet. Everyone on the tour looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Did anyone think to ask Jenny how she feels about the Lego, as that seem to be the only way to clarify anything in that building. Given the recent revelations, I think that is what they call hiding in plain sight.
On tour with the kid 
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