https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/eds-blog/women-dont-need-peter-duttons-protection-and-outdated-views-we-need-policy/

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When asked on the campaign trail what he offers “modern working women,” Peter Dutton immediately turned to his housing policy because “homeless women are at a record level under this government.”

He said he was “offering women the opportunity to own a home”.

Pressed further on what he’s offering in female-dominated sectors, he turned to general comments about bringing inflation and interest rates down.

And then he applied a quick “women’s angle” on the Coalition’s fuel excise promise, which he said is “targeted at women who are driving to work or driving kids around, or delivery truck drivers or people who have a second or third job under this government.”

His agenda for women appeared so big for a moment during questioning on the campaign trail on Wednesday that he could pull every talking point on his party’s policy offering to share how they’ll benefit women.

Except that these policies do not specifically benefit women, nor has there been any gender analysis to show how they will impact issues like women’s economic empowerment, security and safety.

Indeed, Dutton’s fumbling of the response to simple questions about what he’s offering working women was so terrible that one could assume he never anticipated he’d get asked such a question, or that he didn’t care enough to put in the effort of ensuring he had a decent response ready.

An alternative view could be that women are little more than victims of violence and at risk of homelessness.

But even if this were the case for Dutton, what is he offering women, other than some grand belief that, as a former police officer and given his tough reputation on immigration, rates of violence against women will magically fall under a government he leads?

Another view is that “modern working women” are simply a lost cause for the leader of the opposition, following his attempts to position a ban on working from home in the public sector as an election-winning strategy. A strategy that took a further turn for the worse when he told reporters that women who couldn’t get to the office five days a week could instead take on job-sharing roles.

Dutton’s had almost three years to think about what he could offer women in this election.

Back in 2022, as Dutton was mere months into his role as opposition leader, he could have acted on some of the recommendations in his party’s own internal report into what went wrong at the Federal election, which found that the party lost significant support among women. The recommendations weren’t particularly hard, never daring to suggest that quotas would be the fastest option for improving women’s representaiton in the party.

The Liberal party’s internal report also described the need for unity and a “real hunger to win”. Did Dutton at least read that part and realise that the appetite for votes needs to come from men and women? Luckily, the report is still readily available for Dutton, and anyone else to read, on the Liberal party website.

The question about what Dutton’s offering “modern working women” came from a reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday, who noted that during his campaign there has been lots of talk about mining, construction, energy and agriculture being the four pillars of the economy. But women were mentioned twice during the Liberal Party’s campaign launch: once as victims of crime and a second time as victims of domestic and family violence.

During Dutton’s speech at the party’s campaign launch over the weekend, he positioned himself as a “protector” of women from crime and terrorism, rather than a leader with ideas and ambitions to enhance women’s economic empowerment and safety.

As Paula Matthewson has shared on The Guardian today, Dutton is leaving the “female Liberal diaspora” with no more options than they had in 2022 – when so many fled the party to vote for alternatives.

Dutton has done nothing on female representation, with just six of the 33 mostly safe Coalition seats being held by women. He’s done nothing on policies supporting women’s economic participation. And despite positioning himself as a “protector” and all about the safety of Australians, he’s offered nothing on ending the national crisis of violence against women.

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#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam #Women #WomensRights #Equality #Gender #Sociology #Demographics

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8945326/jenna-price-peter-dutton-duffed-it-for-women-and-jane-hume/

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Here I am, two weeks into Christmas for journalists, otherwise known as election season. And I've finally figured this conundrum out. Despite the way this election result is looking, Peter Dutton thinks he can have another go at leading the Coalition to another election!

Wondering why I'm writing him off with still two weeks to go? Polls are definitely trending in the wrong direction for a Coalition victory. Even The Australian Financial Review's Phillip Coorey says Dutton has squandered his lead.

How weird that a party which looked to be relaxed and comfortable in December looks like a shadow of its former self a few months later. And how amazing that the Leader of the Opposition was interrogated by a young reporter, Canberra Times alumna Olivia Ireland, on these very issues and Dutton sounded very back-footed.

Ireland is clearly as bored with Dutton hooning around petrol stations as the rest of us and she asks him what he's doing for modern working women.

He replies he's helping them buy a house. Right. He's helping them as much as he's helping women. And as Ireland put to the Opposition Leader, "When you speak about female-dominated industries like education, you talk about the 'woke agenda'."

Can we please never let another political leader in this country use that phrase? It's so dull, so wedgifying, so predictably culture war gaming.

How did this happen?

Here's my take. I have a really strong feeling that the Coalition learned absolutely nothing from the last election. You remember? The one where women blew Scott Morrison out of the water?

Why didn't they like Morrison? Rather than me providing my own take on that, let me take you to the details of the review of the election loss, conducted by Brian Loughnane and Jane Hume.

Even as I type Hume's name, I have a tiny frisson of sadness. Hume read over 600 submissions to the Liberal Party's review. No matter what you think of her because of her ideological position, she is smart. She gets across her issues quickly.

So when she managed to wrangle all those submissions and deliver, with Loughnane, the final review within six months, that was impressive work. It was the biggest number of submissions the Liberal Party had ever received - obviously, members had something to say. We all did.

Here's the bit which baffles me in light of the way Peter Dutton has run this campaign. "In the 12 months prior to the federal election, there was a loss of political capital and an accumulation of negative issues impacting on the government. This included ... allegations of the poor treatment of, and attitude toward, women within the government and the party, and by associated figures."

I'm loving the heavy lifting the word "allegations" does in this sentence. I mean just the fact that Morrison found he could not empathise with former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins until his wife told him to do that takes you to the heart of the problem. Anyhow, thanks Jenny Morrison for your service, for your emotional and cognitive labour on behalf of all the women in Australia and beyond.

But that wasn't all. The report uses the word women nearly 40 times.

Here we go: "A series of national political issues prosecuted aggressively against the government were not sufficiently and effectively addressed in a timely manner ... very importantly, that the Prime Minister was not attuned to the concerns of women and was unresponsive to issues of importance to them."

Oh my god. It's like Peter Dutton was given access to a manual, co-authored by a Liberal woman, and never consulted it. Wowza. The sheer arrogance of the man and the party behind him.

So let me share my conspiracy theory right now.

We've all seen the way Angus Taylor hasn't really succeeded as a salesperson in this election. He's a bit too shopfronty, nothing seems real or authentic.

So Taylor's out of the running to step up into a leadership position. Which brings me to Jane Hume.

Why did Dutton get Hume to deliver the whole "you will never work from home again in your lifetime" message?

You'll remember this one. It will now be on the leaderboard for being among the Liberal Party's worst mistakes in the 2025 election campaign.

As I wrote earlier this year, Hume announced that we must all return to the office for the sake of productivity. Apparently, she meant it only for public servants. And despite her sizeable intellect, she never read to the end of the Stanford University paper she cited, where it explained clearly that hybrid work is absolutely fine.

In any case, the backlash was so hard that Dutton had to dump the policy (in the same way he's still trying to find ways to dump public servants). Labor did a hilarious job of reminding people that WFH was at risk under a Coalition government. And of course, this whole fiasco has dumped Hume right in it.

Hume, the co-author of the report, who knows that women have been deserting the party since 1996. Hume, who knows all too well that women are not joining the party. Hume, who knows this from her own report, there's "a sense that the Liberal Party is failing to adequately represent the values and priorities of women in modern Australia".

Did Dutton get Hume to deliver the bad news to protect his own ambitions? Surely not. Surely.

Hume must have predicted the response - and if she didn't, then the shadow minister for finance, pretty good with numbers, didn't learn a single thing from that review. That's hard to believe.

• Jenna Price is a regular columnist.

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#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/17/2025-election-peter-dutton-ignores-women/

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In 2022, Scott Morrison made bungled, offensive comments about women. Three years later, Peter Dutton is just ignoring women altogether.

At a press conference on the campaign trail yesterday, Sydney Morning Herald reporter Olivia Ireland asked Peter Dutton a pointed question: What, exactly, does he plan on doing for “modern working women”? Dutton responded by saying his housing plan will help homeless women (questionable), and that in his 10 years as a cop and 24 years as a federal politician, he has “worked hard every day to keep women and young girls safe”.

This flubbed answer is part of a trend I’ve been tracking. Despite all politicians taking part in a new media and podcast blitz this election, Dutton has so far only appeared on one women’s podcast, Mamamia’s No Filter, declining invitations to be interviewed by other women on podcasts including Abbie Chatfield of It’s A Lot, Billi FitzSimons of The Daily Aus, and Hannah Ferguson of Big Small Talk.

By my count, it took until day 14 of the campaign for Dutton to be photographed with a young woman (who is not a member of, or candidate for, the Liberal Party), when he met workers at a manufacturing facility in Perth. He posted the photo to his social media accounts, making it only the second post to show Dutton with a young woman this year.

If that’s all just optics, news publication Women’s Agenda is hosting a debate on April 24 on the policy issues that matter most to Australian women. Labor’s Katy Gallagher, the Greens’ Larissa Waters and independent Allegra Spender are participating, but so far no-one from Dutton’s Coalition has agreed to appear.

Taken together, it certainly paints an image of a man — a very tough man, as his campaign keeps insisting — who is not only disengaged from women’s issues but, if we’re going by campaign mentions, seems barely aware that women can and will vote in this election. There is almost no effort being made to attempt to win us over.

Until yesterday, the only moment in the campaign when Dutton appeared to remember that women exist was when he reversed the Coalition’s promise to crack down on public servants working from home. Although even then, he was hardly front and centre. After learning the policy was going down like a lead balloon with working women, Dutton first sent out one of the party’s few female politicians, Jane Hume, to take the first bite of crow on his behalf.

As Ireland rightly pointed out in her question, the only time Dutton mentioned women in his campaign launch speech was when he said the Coalition would protect them from domestic violence and crime. Positioning crime, particularly youth crime, as a women’s safety issue has been a common framing from the Coalition throughout the election — in fact, as the days tick by, it looks like that’s all it’s got.

Can you win an election by taking this disinterested attitude to half the voting population?

We’ve seen this film before in 2022, and the answer was a resounding “no”. The women’s vote was a huge factor in Scott Morrison’s loss, with the Liberal Party’s own review admitting its disastrous election outcome was primarily because “the prime minister was not attuned to the concerns of women”. The review considered the women’s vote so important — and the party’s relationship with women voters in such tatters — that it included a set of recommendations to increase women’s representation in party membership and Parliament (you might even say they were DEI initiatives).

Yet under Dutton, the Coalition has done little to address these issues.

Strangely, in last week’s episode of the Crikey Electioncast, columnist Rachel Withers explained that many of the polling analysts she has spoken to don’t believe those same “anti-Scott Morrison factors” are at play in this election.

Dutton’s obsession with a masculinised narrative bamboozled the commentariat in the lead-up to the election, prompting them to focus on a narrative imported straight from the US presidential election: that young men radicalised to the new right would propel Dutton to the Lodge. Or Kirribilli House, as is his preference.

The Australian polling data never really bore that out. Sure, among Coalition voters, there are more young men than young women, as has been the case since the late ’90s. But at least two polls have shown young men are more likely to give their primary vote to Labor than the Coalition. Indeed, the finding by Resolve Political Monitor is striking for how resoundingly it debunks the premature storytelling: “After [men 18-34] nominate their preferences, the result in two-party terms is that Labor leads by 62 to 38% against the Coalition.”

Nevertheless, it’s clear Dutton initially thought he had a path through. Where Morrison made bungled, offensive comments about women, Dutton would just avoid the subject altogether. Corporate media followed his lead, missing the story that this could be a repeat of 2022 after all: for at least the past year, women have never preferred the Coalition over Labor on a two-party preferred basis, apart from a brief blip in early 2025.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception. The Coalition is in opposition this time, so women voters won’t be the reason Dutton will lose government. But if he loses the election, they’ll almost certainly be a big reason why.

The longer the Liberal Party — whatever mangled version of it remains after May 3 — refuses to address how it engages with women, the worse its future looks.

Of course the Libs aren’t the only ones who need to evolve: an increasing number of young women say they’ll give the Greens their primary vote, with preferences ultimately flowing to Labor. Just like in 2022, if Labor wins off the back of the women’s vote, it will not be an endorsement of Albanese’s government so much as a rejection of the alternative. There are lessons here for all.

• Crystal Andrews is Crikey’s readers’ editor. She is also the founder of Zee Feed, a digital media outlet producing feminist commentary on news, social issues, digital and pop culture for young Australian women.

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#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam

In November, Missouri voters approved an amendment to the state's constitution that provided the right to reproductive freedom, legalizing abortion. Yesterday, the House Republicans voted to essentially repeal that, making abortion illegal in Missouri again, with limited exceptions. Here's more from St. Louis Public Radio.

https://flip.it/hvixH7

#Abortion #StLouis #USLaw #Missouri #ReproductiveFreedom #USPolitics #WomensRights

Per usual, "deeply held" religious beliefs lose out to... money! Yup. They're "pro-life" until it starts costing them hits to the pocketbook. Further proof that pro-life is just a scam to control women. #News #Catholics #WomensRights #ChaoticQueer #GeekCrafts

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/04/09/aiming-to-limit-damages-catholic-hospital-argues-a-fetus-isnt-the-same-as-a-person/

"All-women/all-female astronauts" Yay! But remember we still have these issues to deal with: reproductive rights, gender-based pay inequality, gender-based violence, fossil fuel CO2 emissions, etc.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8e5gq8ljo

#spacetourism #spaceexploration #spaceresearch #genderwashing #tourism #astronauts #blueorigin #space #gayleking #laurensanchez #katyperry #womeninspace #tourism #fossilfuel #inequality #blueorigin #CO2 #femaleastronaut #jeffbezos #genderinequality #womensrights #spacetravel

⚖️ This morning, the UK SupremeCourt decided in the case FWS v Scottish Ministers that "sex" in the Equality Act means "biological sex". They also made it clear that the Act protects trans people against discrimination and harassment on the basis of their perceived gender.

🌟 Justice is done when the law delivers actual equality for all people. Until that day, until the law lives up to the best humanity can achieve...
#TransRights #WomensRights #Solidarity #UntilWeAreAllEqual 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-knives-are-out-dutton-has-to-win-over-voters-and-win-back-his-party-20250414-p5lrmf.html

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For weeks, Peter Dutton has behaved like a man doing high-speed doughnuts in one of those monster utes, hoping the smoke from the burnouts will cover the wreckage left behind at his last stop.

First he was against working from home, then he wasn’t. First he wanted a series of referendums, then he didn’t. First he was gushingly pro-Trump, then he wasn’t.

After Donald Trump expressed contemptuous delight in having world leaders line up to kiss his arse, Dutton toned down his boast that he would be able to secure a better deal with the US president on tariffs.

Then along came Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whom Dutton appointed as opposition Indigenous affairs minister in 2023 to destroy the Voice referendum. Price, a compelling speaker, gave white Australians permission to vote No.

Deploying those same skills, without even realising it and without a functioning political radar to sense the dangers, Price on Saturday parroted Trump’s slogan, promising the Coalition would “Make Australia Great Again”.

If he loses, that will be seen as one of the (many) key moments of the campaign. Price drove a nail into Dutton’s coffin. For those who believe in these things, it will be remembered as karma played out live in full technicolour.

Dutton needed to use Saturday to frame his launch on Sunday. He should have been trying to build momentum for a faltering campaign. Yet, instead of stepping gently around the latest self-inflicted disaster, he leaned in, pointedly interjecting at his press conference to urge journalists to keep asking Price questions. More damage, another precious day lost.

The next day, Dutton unveiled billions in spending which risked being branded as too much, too late. Thanks to Easter, Anzac Day and the school holidays, voters have only a few days to digest the competing offers.

Dutton’s pledge to allow tax deductibility for mortgages at least gives him a story to tell, if he can stay disciplined enough to tell it.

It has been a haphazard campaign studded by policies thrown together in haste with increasing concerns expressed privately about the disconnect between Dutton’s office and campaign headquarters.

Dutton’s freelancing hasn’t helped, including on Sunday, when he insinuated the prime minister had been drunk when he called in to a Darwin radio station to gazump the opposition’s Port of Darwin announcement. It made Trump calling Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe” positively benign, especially as Anthony Albanese has been near teetotal since January. Launch speeches are designed to show leaders are ready to be prime minister. It was off-piste and definitely off.

Afterwards, one seasoned Liberal campaign official described it as “the most uninspiring campaign I have ever worked on”.

Before Price’s weekend comments, there were murmurs about Angus Taylor positioning for a post-election challenge to Dutton’s leadership. By Sunday night, angry Liberals reported “the knives are out”.

Another pivotal moment for Dutton was on March 3 when opposition finance minister Jane Hume announced a Coalition government would end working from home for public servants – that’s if they still had work.

Within hours of Hume’s speech, senior Liberal women who sensed the dangers urged the party hierarchy to dump it. Immediately. They were ignored. Dutton stuck with it for more than a month.

Another senior Liberal who last year dared to dream the Coalition could win, or at least form minority government, answered their phone at the end of last week without even saying hello to predict:“Labor majority or Labor minority.”

Dutton has no choice now except to knuckle down and concentrate on selling the fuel tax rebate and tax relief for mortgages.

There are still plenty of soft voters waiting to be won over who could be tempted by two fists full of dollars. Others will not be swayed by hearing the son of a wealthy politician complain about the difficulties of buying a house.

It highlighted something else very wrong with this debate. Poor old taxpayers are expected to fork out billions for housing because it’s now seen as unfair for kids to expect help from the bank of mum and dad. Even if they are loaded.

If the Coalition loses this election, the size of the loss will determine the extent of the post-poll bloodbath. If Dutton gets to 68 seats but fails to secure minority government, it will be seen as a respectable loss. He will be re-elected as opposition leader, assuming he wants it, and live to fight another day.

If it turns out to be a status quo election, Taylor is expected to make his move. Taylor is already being blamed for the policy failures, even though in theory and in practice everything flows from the leader and his office. The briefing against him is designed to thwart his leadership ambition.

According to my sources, Taylor’s surrogates have spent weeks sussing out the disposition of colleagues, taking the kind of temperature checks regarded as precursors to a move against the leader. He has made some surprising gains across factions and states.

Weeks ago, I said on ABC’s Insiders there were three leaders running in this election, and only one of them was definitely not Trump. Yesterday, in response to this masthead’s Resolve poll showing how much Trump had wounded him, Dutton insisted there were only two – him and Albanese. Too late, she cried.

Dutton’s campaign needed to be blemish-free in the days before, during and after his launch. It wasn’t. It needed to grab attention. It did, although again not always for the right reasons. Time is running out. He needs to win every one of the few remaining days.

Although Albanese has campaigned better than expected, it has not been fault-free. Trying to pretend he hadn’t fallen off the stage when he had was dumb. Almost, not quite, as dumb as continuing to show his aversion for Tanya Plibersek.

• Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam #NikiSavva

Comelec unit seeks to disqualify Pasig’s Ian Sia over lewd ‘joke’ about single mothers

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.rappler.com/philippines/elections/comelec-unit-petition-disqualify-pasig-ian-sia-joke-single-mothers/