- The Guardian
- Issue #2109
Julia
Clare Marino
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man; I will not … If he [Abbott] wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror. That’s what he needs.”
The words of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, delivered in the Australian parliament over a decade ago (9 October 2012), struck a powerful chord. The speech was reported around the world at the time and continues to stand out as a marker in Australian political history.
Now the misogyny speech is a play, Julia, by acclaimed writer Joanna Murray-Smith. Like Gillard’s words at the time, the play is about so much more than the political sparing between Gillard and then leader of the opposition Tony Abbott.
Julia, commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Kip Williams, explores the political and social climate in the lead up to the famous speech. Even for those who closely watched the political landscape at the time, to have the blatant gendered abuse against Gillard set out piece by piece before us is still disturbing.
You might remember when Gillard was pilloried as “deliberately barren” (by Liberal MP, Bill Heffernan) or when conservative shock jock Alan Jones said her recently deceased father died of shame over his daughter. There were the images of Abbot standing in front of placards describing Gillard as a witch and “Bob Brown’s bitch.”
Those were the more obvious examples of the gendered double standards and disrespect. But the play does a brilliant job of describing the smaller, insidious examples of sexism, that Gillard endured. In one sharp aside, Gillard, played by Justine Clarke, notes that her first major media interview becomes a discussion of her kitchen and the absence of bananas in her fruit bowl.
The attacks on Gillard were driven by the conservative side of politics and the Murdoch press, but some also came from her own party.
While the play is not a celebration of Julia, it is overwhelmingly positive and critics have noted that it gives little time to some of her more controversial and damaging decisions, including those that disproportionately impacted women. Gillard’s refusal to back marriage equality and her cut to the single parent pension are mentioned, but not in depth.
The play also tries – and fails – to justify Gillard’s opportunistic and cruel decision to resume offshore processing of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru.
The story deals gently with Gillard’s flaws, but the real villain of the piece is Australia’s entrenched social and political misogyny. Misogyny, defined as contempt and hatred of women and prejudice against them, is the bedrock of patriarchy.
The play builds up to Gillard delivering the speech itself. In it she quotes the leader of the opposition, Abbott, saying that “people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office” and says that if he believes this, he should surely resign.
The speech is now twelve years old but as distressing as Julia the play is, the words of Julia the ex-prime minister still ring true. It’s not the leader of the opposition that needs a mirror it’s the Australian bourgeois political system and broader society that needs a reflection to see its own deeply ingrained misogyny.
