Mike Baird Mocked A Female MP During Question Time, Compared Her To A Calendar Pin-Up
This guy just keeps getting worse and worse.
NSW Premier Mike Baird, a man who supports the axing of the Safe Schools program and loves passings laws that condone sending protestors of mining and coal-seam gas projects to jail for seven years, just got a little worse.
Yesterday during question time Jodi McKay, the Member for Strathfield, was persistently and obnoxiously interrupted by Mike Baird, who was on what the ABC’s Sarah Gerathy politely called a “red cordial” rant. Baird, gesticulating wildly in the way that your least favourite uncle does when he gets too drunk at family functions, was ranting about NSW Labor’s Deputy Leader position, which Jodi McKay was touted to fill before she decided to put her support behind Michael Daley.
“She’s up there taking calendar shots,” Baird says as he strikes poses and the Old Boys behind him cackle. “Who wants me? Who wants me?” Calendar shots, get it? Because she’s a woman? And women often appear in calendars, sometimes in bikinis? Because all women should be reduced to their appearance and how other people view their appearance?
Yesterday Jodi McKay posted the video to her Facebook, saying: “It is not funny nor is it appropriate to liken women seeking leadership to a ‘calendar shoot’. This is what happens when you take on the Premier of NSW in question time”.
We should be doing all we can to encourage women into leadership roles in NSW – this behaviour shows how far we still…
Posted by Jodi McKay MP – Member for Strathfield on Wednesday, 23 March 2016
It’s tempting to say that Mike Baird was ‘crazed’ or somehow intoxicated by the laughs he was getting from his similarly red-faced, coiffed mates, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows that he can trivialise a woman by making her seem like a preening attention-seeker who is more interested in superficial appearances than politics. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew exactly what he was doing.
But hey, this is an isolated incident in Australian politics, right? We’re not like all those other countries, the ones who treat their female politicians as hysterical, nonsense-machines that are only there to fill a quota and aren’t really to be taken seriously, right?
… Oh, yeah.
That’s right.
Oh, man.