Tony Abbott’s Sister Takes On The Tampon Tax In Brilliant Snoop Dogg Parody Video
'Drop It Coz It's Rot'
It was in May this year that a student from Sydney University, Subeta Vimalarajah, succeeded in getting the tampon tax on the national agenda. Her Community Run petition — ‘Stop Taxing My Period‘ — eventually garnered over 101,000 signatures, and her video submission on #QandA forced Joe Hockey to confront the issue in front of a live audience.
“Since 2000, the Australian Government has taxed every menstruating Australian 10% every time we get our period. It is estimated that our periods earn the government a whopping $25 million each year,” she wrote on the petition page. “On the other hand, condoms, lubricants, sunscreen and nicotine patches are all tax-free because they are classed as important health goods. But isn’t the reproductive health and hygiene of 10 million Australians important too?”
But despite renewed public interest on the issue — and a promise from Hockey that he would “raise it with the states at the next meeting of the Treasurers in July” — the Australian Government has continued to drag its feet.
Enter: Sydney-based actor and film-maker Mia Lethbridge, and her brand new Snoop Dogg parody ‘Drop It Coz It’s Rot’ — starring Nancy Denis, Rachel Kim Cross and, in a surprise twist, Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster.
Lethbridge says the idea came to her after watching Amy Schumer’s ‘Milk Milk Lemonade’. “I initially thought it would just be me dancing solo in front of a camera with a huge blood stain on my crotch, but the more time I spent on the idea, the bigger and more ambitious it became,” she said in the accompanying press release.
Which is why a gif like this can now exist:
“I took on the view that if the government are going to classify our tampons and pads as non-essential items, then surely it’s not essential we use them. I bet if we didn’t use them, and bled out on the bus seats and in the libraries, these items would suddenly become a necessity.”
Christine Forster, Liberal Councillor for the City of Sydney, is a personal friend of Lethbridge’s — and this isn’t the first time the LGBT advocate has broken with her brother’s party policy. “[She] doesn’t believe that it’s fair to apply GST to some items and not others, especially when those items are essential.”
“I think Australia has a pretty outdated attitude around periods,” Lethbridge says. “There’s a certain shame and stigma attached to menstruation that makes it still a very hush-hush topic, despite it being one of the the most normal and common biological bodily functions. I feel like the tax is reflective of this attitude. We are supposed to be a progressive country, yet here we are taxing menstruating Australians!”
Or, to put it another way:
Ain’t no shame in the fact we B-L-E-E-D /
So why we gotta pay this bloody GST?