It was a landmark moment in Scott Morrison’s personal history with handshake-recalcitrants – a long and ignoble tradition which dates back to pre-pandemic times, when angry victims of the 2019 bushfires refused to shake the Prime Minister’s hand, so he shook it for them.
Grace Tame, outgoing Australian of the Year, turned up at a pre-Australia Day event at The Lodge on Tuesday with her fiance, to be greeted at the door by Morrison and his wife Jenny – his consigliere in matters pertaining to sexual assault/chick stuff.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison greets 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame at the Lodge in Canberra on Tuesday.Credit:Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
As the cameras gawped, Tame visibly snubbed Morrison.
Her loathing for the man radiated from her.
She refused to smile, barely acknowledged the PM, and then, when asked to pose for a snap with him, gave him some of the most awe-inspiring side-eye a political photographer could ever hope to capture.
It was breathtakingly rude behaviour by the social standards of most people.
And lo, the head shakers and tut-tutters were outraged.
She is petulant! She is ill-mannered! She is ungrateful!
Hot-takes were written quickly, tweets were dashed off even quicker.
It was a bit like the public commentary-equivalent of that guy (we all know one) who cries, “Smile, love! It can’t be that bad!” at random women walking down the street minding their own business.
Except that Tame is now a very public figure.
The incident was the perfect dénouement for her tenure as Australian of the Year, which has now ended.
Her time in the role has been marked by the fierceness of her advocacy for sexual assault victims, her strong critiques of the Prime Minister and his government, and her posture of defiance.
This defiance, presumably, has helped her deal with the shame and trauma of being victimised by a paedophile, and having an entire system protect him and apologise for him.
It is the same defiance with which she has urged victims to heap the shame for sexual abuse at the feet of its perpetrators.
Some say Tame has wrongly politicised her platform, but it’s a weak argument – she is not appointed by the government and no one has ever defined the role as non-political.
Perhaps she has been divisive – her snubbing of the man she calls Scott (in protest of Morrison’s habit of calling young female assault survivors by their first name) was certainly cringe-making.
Many people will be alienated by it, and perhaps, by extension, the cause they see Tame as representing.
Former Australian of the Year and anti-violence campaigner Rosie Batty told the Herald/Age this week that she “felt a bit sorry for [Morrison], actually”, after one of Tame’s criticisms.
On Tuesday, Morrison did seem to have the fixed-smile freeze of a man who knows he’s in for it and has no idea how to cope.
But this is a bloke who knuckle-crawled his way up through the NSW Liberal Party, knocked off a rival for pre-selection, and ran Australia’s notoriously tough offshore detention system.
He has probably seen worse than a lip-curl from a lady-activist.
Tame’s critics have a hard time accepting that she doesn’t care what they think, which in turn exposes their insecurity in a changing world.
They have a hard time accepting her generation’s model of activism, which is predicated on the stance that it is not the job of a victim/survivor to disguise negative emotions so the powerful feel comfortable.
They also seem to have a hard time remembering their history, which has shown time and again that activists and revolutionaries tend to prioritise messages over manners.
It was probably very rude of suffragette Emily Davison to ruin the Derby at Epsom racecourse in 1913 by jumping in front of the king’s horse.
It was traitorous of Muhammad Ali to refuse the draft for Vietnam.
And the activists who established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy showed up at Parliament House in 1972 without any invitation at all. Just imagine!
Twitter: @JacquelineMaley
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