The backlash against Price stemmed from labelling Badham “hysterical” in a verbal exchange about the issue of domestic violence in Australia.
Advertisement
Price says he has no regrets and said he was accurately describing Guardian Australia commentator Van Badham when he called her “hysterical” on ABC’s Monday night Q&A program. So was watching Plibersek accuse the Greens of planning to collude with the Liberals, and watching both accuse the other regarding which party should be more embarrassed about their pathetic primary vote when the correct answer was “both of them”.
Badham replied: ‘You’re proving my point very excellently about the attitudes’.
“I hope you’re not suggesting I was part of those jokes”, Price said.
‘But now that you do, do you think or accept it’s the way to respond, particularly when they’re speaking about belittling women?’ Waleed pressed.
Badham was a guest panellist on Monday night’s Q&A, and was responding to an audience member’s question about attitudes leading to the deaths and disability of women. Audience member Tarang Chawla revealed that his 23-year-old sister was stabbed to death by her partner last year and asked how public figures can help overturn a culture that casualises and trivialises violence against women.
ABC’s Q&A panel heard from Tarang Chawla, the brother of a murdered woman, who brought up the Eddie McGuire’s “drowning” joke about Caroline Wilson, which made headlines again last week when AFL personality Sam Newman defended McGuire’s comments. My sister Nikita was stabbed to death by her partner in January a year ago, with a meat cleaver. “Far too much was then made of it…”
With a genuine catch in her voice, she started by expressing sympathy for Chawla and his family, “and it’s one of the reasons why we have to take this seriously, and why we have to look at the different treatment of women, and the disadvantaged treatment of women in our society”.
“I think good will come out of it”.
She said gender construction relegated women to lower status and “that we can make jokes and it’s all jokes and, oh yeah, they apologised and that’s fine but on the receiving end is the ludicrous proportion of women who do endure violence”.
Price was widely criticised for this and another comment, where he interjected to tell Badham: “just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you’re the only person who can get upset about this”.
“This is just further proof that men are not well-suited to the political arena or being in positions of power”, a top political analyst told the Backburner.
“It is probably my ovaries making me do it, Steve!”
We are trying to have a national conversation about family violence, about domestic violence and about violence against women. “I think you’re just being hysterical”.
“I will describe things as I see them”.
Advertisement
On a related note: if #myovariesmademe isn’t a trending hashtag by sunrise, internet, then you’ve let your nation down.
