By Stephanie Bastiaan
It was an all-male pile-on to shut down women’s voices at the #LetWomenSpeak rally in Melbourne over the weekend. Moira Deeming has been threatened by trans activists, drowned out by Neo-Nazis, and is now being cancelled by Leader of the Opposition, John Pesutto.
On Sunday night, Pesutto released a media statement informing the public he was moving a motion to expel Deeming from the Liberal Party Room for her involvement at the #LetWomenSpeak rally in Melbourne on Saturday. The event, led by UK women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen, provided a platform for women to voice their concerns about the erasure of women and women’s rights, spaces, and safety in favour of men who identify as women.
The Liberal Party’s bar for exclusion from the Party Room is now alleged guilt by association of an associate if Pesutto’s justification in his statement is anything to go by.
Going by that measure, one wonders how former Liberal MP Nick Wakeling survived so long, given that his brother is a self-described Nationalist and holocaust denier.
I attended the rally on Saturday, and what started as a peaceful gathering of women very quickly turned ugly, with trans rights activists threatening violence and a face-off between Fascists and Communists.
The police permitted the Fascists in black masks to stand on the steps of parliament, where they used a megaphone to drown out the women speaking before walking in front of the trans activists riling them up. They were there to antagonise and start a fight. The crowd became so uncontrollable the police asked me to leave with my daughters for our safety.
Disappointed with @VictoriaPolice, who let a bunch of masked men into the LWS buffer zone, terrifying women who were just trying to speak about their rights. Police managed to stop hordes of TRAs, but somehow could only walk masked men past us they did a horrible Nazi salute. 😡
— Moira Deeming MP (@MoiraDeemingMP) March 18, 2023
In an extraordinary turn of events, rather than slamming the trans rights activists, Communists and Fascists for bullying women, the media and politicians have attempted to smear Kellie-Jay Keen and the #LetWomenSpeak rally with the Neo-Nazis.
The Liberal Party should be standing up for women’s rights. Their silence on male rapists and criminals being housed in female prisons under self-ID laws has been a disgrace. Their lack of concern that girls attending public school now have to share bathroom facilities with boys in the name of ‘inclusion’ is appalling. They are now trying to cancel a woman brave enough to fight for female rights in the public arena.
The Liberal Party boys club has one rule for women deemed undesirable to their collective apologist tendencies and one for their own. MP David Southwick has never had to explain his relationship with Rabbi Meir Kluwant who resigned as President of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia after a damning testimony in the witness box during the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse. Nor why he falsified his resume to include qualifications and positions he did not have.
Similarly, long-term Liberal Party power broker David Davis waltzed through a preselection challenge last year despite the media reporting on unruly drunken behaviour that included abusing staff and touching guests on two recent occasions.
If you are in the Liberal Party’s boy club, it’s a freewheeling do what you like culture and protection racket.
The Liberal Party’s internal morale is at an all-time low. Cancelling women like Deeming and the attempted cancellation of Renee Heath before the election tells the strong, articulate, non-woke women they need not apply.
Over the past twelve months, the voting public has learned more about who the Liberal Party wants to purge from its membership – seemingly a significant cohort of their traditional supporter base – than any particular policy or philosophical direction. Surely, the Liberal Party does not believe it can sack and cancel its way into government.
If Pesutto is foolish enough to stake his leadership on removing Deeming, he and all those sponsoring this motion should resign from the leadership if it fails.
Pesutto should have learned the lessons of Malcolm Turnbull. You can team up with the radical left and attack your colleagues for only so long. Once no one is left more offensive than you, then you’ll be next. No level of appeasement will disarm the radical left. They will always have another campaign, another social justice cause and another excuse for big government to tell us all what to do.
Enough about the Nazi nonsense. It’s a distraction.
When did standing up for women’s rights and safety become politically unacceptable?
Stephanie Bastiaan is a Research Fellow with Women’s Forum Australia
Women’s Forum Australia is an independent think tank that undertakes research, education and public policy advocacy on issues affecting women and girls, with a particular focus on addressing behaviours and practices that are harmful and abusive to them. We are a non-partisan, non-religious, tax-deductible charity. We do not receive any government funding and rely solely on donations to make an impact. Support our work today.
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