Much has been said about minister for immigration, Peter Dutton’s misogynist comments about a senior journalist who had the temerity to report on his colleague’s bad behaviour. Most miss the point.
It’s the attitude of a person who thinks it’s okay to call a woman a ‘mad f…ing witch’ just for doing her job, that’s very disturbing. Malcolm Turnbull knows this better than anyone. Turnbull also understands the potency of language.
If Turnbull’s rhetoric about the need to respect women in order to stamp out violence against women is sincere, he must set an example in his own government. People with attitudes such as Dutton’s should not be in parliament, let alone a senior ministry.
It’s frightening that people like this are running the country!
Dutton should be gone. Yesterday.
Louise Doran, Ocean Shores
Quite right Louise. Dutton is two time dud as a minister and his most recent blunder should be his last.
His clear support for the axed minister and attitude towards the journalist who reported the issue, and the public servant by releasing a pixilated photo of her, is sickening. Turnbull inherited him now he should dismiss him
Totally in agreement with your text message Louise. I sent to the PM’s website portal and Cc: Peter Dutton MP the following:
PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA THE HON MALCOLM TURNBULL MP
Is your position untenable
For the last month you have as our leader in government had the following issues placed upon you namely:
Mal Brough MP who by all accounts has either lied to Nine Network or the cabinet;
Jamie Briggs MP who had some sort of scandal in Hong Kong whilst on diplomatic business with a female; and
Immigration and Border Protection Minister, Peter Dutton MP who ‘mistakenly’ sent an offensive text message to a journalist being key points:
• Dutton called journalist a “mad f***ing witch” in text intended for Briggs;
• Immigration Minister Peter Dutton called The Sunday Telegraph’s political editor Samantha Maiden a “mad f***ing witch” in a text message sent on Sunday.
Given the magnitude of the perverse actions, especially a minister that has a responsibility for his staff and in particular, refugees and border protection, gaffs like these are either deliberate to unsettle your future ability to be the leader of the nation or total stupidity on behalf of your government members of parliament.
To this end, I see no reason as a voter considering the LNP as my preferred vote to the elections this year given that you can’t control your parliamentarians shooting off at the mouth or worse, being discriminatory towards the opposite sex.
There is no room for any form of domestic violence in the public, especially in government and as your aware, domestic violence is not only physical but mentally abusive.
Immigration and Border Protection Minister, Peter Dutton MP must resign as he has squandered all of his resources of being totally incompetent in his position as minister.
As the Prime Minister of Australia, you need to desperately reign in these factional bodies and bring intelligent harmony to the position of leadership by all members of the LNP.
Back in 2014 the Attorney General George Brandis came out into the media in wanting to change the Defamation laws, saying that people had the right to be bigots and to air their belief on Free Speech.
George Brandis is a man of the law, and he wanted the laws changed because in many polls and forums the majority of Australians want Free Speech and an expansion of the culture we had now in freeing up more speech with verbs and adjectives.
Here is the conundrum; “What is Free Speech?” It is not defined.
Someone’s Free Speech is another person’s censorship.
Many people think we have Free Speech. This outburst by Peter Dutton means we don’t have Free Speech, not in the idiom of what George Brandis wanted when Malcolm Turnbull is the prime minister. Yet when we had Tony Abbott as Opposition leader we had swear words flung at Prime minister Julia Gillard and we never twitched a hair when it was said that we should “Ditch the Witch”
So it all depends on the person who is being disparaged. Julia was our first female prime minister, it was OK to lambast her, but not a female journalist. Where is the equality in circumstances?
Was it because secretly many Australians wanted Julia Gillard to go and be replaced with Kevin Rudd.
Many years ago Australian were called “They’re a Weird Mob” I agree with that statement. There is still much Irish in our character.