Politics

Tracy Grimshaw Absolutely Grilled Scott Morrison Making Her 2021’s Most Unlikely Hero

"You know the rot is deep when 'A Current Affair' starts asking hard questions of the LNP."

by Michelle Rennex  26 March 2021
scott morrison tracy grimshaw

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In one of the more surprising moves of 2021, Tracy Grimshaw has become an unlikely hero after she absolutely slammed Scott Morrison over his piss-poor handling of all the sexual assault allegations plaguing parliament.

On A Current Affair last night, the Prime Minister had his first sit-down interview since the government was plagued with a number of sexual assault allegations — and it didn’t go well for him.

Not holding back, Tracy Grimshaw immediately questioned Scott Morrison’s response to, and handling of, the alleged sexual misconduct within Parliament House walls.

Starting with Brittany Higgins, the ex-Liberal staffer who claimed that she was raped in Parliament House by a male colleague in 2019, Grimshaw slammed Morrison for essentially leaving Higgins “on her own” when processes failed her.

“Why was she on her own? People failed her. You don’t need processes to know how to act humanly and with humanity to someone who has a human problem,” Grimshaw queried. “You don’t need processes to make them a cup of tea, drive them home, make an appointment for a counsellor.”

“Don’t just give them a counsellor’s number and say ‘here, call this number, do your best’. She was abandoned, wasn’t she?”

“I agree with you that clearly that didn’t pass the test and failed Brittany. No one is disputing that,” the Prime Minister agreed, before Grimshaw asked why ministerial staff who failed to help Higgins weren’t fired. “They were trying like everyone else would be trying in those circumstances.”

Tracy Grimshaw then grilled Scott Morrison about his defence of Attorney-General Christian Porter after historic rape allegations were made against him.

Criticising the Prime Minister’s decision to not open an independent inquiry into allegations that Porter raped a 16-year-old girl in 1998, Grimshaw noted that it seems that women are always branded the liar while the men are presumed innocent.

“What I have done is to respect the rule of law in this country and how people need to be treated under that rule of law. An allegation can be made against you, me, against anyone else,” Morrison said in an attempt to defend his decision to not open an inquiry.

“There really wasn’t an investigation because his accuser died, she took her life. There really hasn’t been an investigation,” Grimshaw hit back. “There has been no investigation, Prime Minister, you have just believed him.”

“A criminal investigation is not the only way of probing something like this,” she added. “Christian Porter has vehemently denied it, we watched the press conference, and he said ‘imagine if this isn’t true’. It seems like nobody in the government has thought, ‘imagine if it is’.”

“You’re backing Christian Porter, you have believed Eric Abetz… the pattern here is that women are always liars,” Grimshaw continued. “Brittany Higgins was a liar, Sue Hickey is the liar, Christian Porter’s accuser has not told the truth either.”

“No that is not the assumption. In this country, people will make allegations and we have ways of dealing with it. I am not making that judgement about the truth of neither statement,” Morrison said in response.

While the Prime Minister shared that he was doing “the best a bloke can”, Grimshaw didn’t let up.

Instead Grimshaw accused the Prime Minister of treating the claims of sexual assault and misconduct in Parliament as a political issue instead of seeing the allegations as the very sad reality that women across Australia face daily.

“You have treated it like a political problem right until right up until Tuesday,” Grimshaw told Morrison. “It is not a political problem, it is a human problem, a lived problem. It has never been a political problem.”

Continuing the deserved criticism, Grimshaw suggested Morrison had to be in a “bubble” to not be able to fully grasp or see these issues Australian women feel daily.

“Where have you been?” Grimshaw said. “You are not on an island, or maybe you are in a bubble. You must know, you have a wife you love, daughters, you have referenced them several times. How did you not know the depth of it?”

“This is the difficult part of this. You understand it in a way that only you could,” the Prime Minister responded. “I have a different experience to yours but I can tell you, for many Australians, this has been like a big wake-up call and it’s been like a red light to say ‘stop, look at this.”

“It hasn’t been a wake-up call to 52 per cent of Australians,” Grimshaw remarked.

But Tracy Grimshaw’s biggest dig at Scott Morrison was her attack on the Prime Minister’s seeming support for a quota for female politicians.

“I don’t know many self-respecting, confident women who would want a quota to be the reason why they got a promotion or a job. They would want to get there on merit,” Grimshaw explained.

“I am not sure if quotas are a solution, and I am wondering if instead of quotas, and actively discriminating in favour of women, you would be better off starting to actively discriminate against Neanderthal man like the so-called Big Swinging Dicks Club that Julie Bishop says stood in her way,” she continued.

“If you clear out the dinosaurs, maybe more women would want to be here.”

Truly iconic. Who would’ve though that Tracy Grimshaw would emerge as 2021’s most unlikely, but necessary, hero?

You can watch Tracy Grimshaw’s entire Scott Morrison interview on 9Now.