On the 17 August last year, not five months after being named Australian of the Year, I received a threatening phone call from a senior member of a government funded organisation, asking for my word that I would not say anything damning about the Prime Minister on the evening of the next Australian of the Year Awards.
“You are an influential person. He will have a fear,” they said. A fear? What kind of fear – I asked myself. A fear for our nation’s most vulnerable? A fear for the future of our planet? And then I heard the words, “with an election coming soon…”
And it crystallised a fear — a fear for himself and no-one else, a fear he might lose his position or, more to the point, his power.
This was the jaw-dropping statement made by child sex abuse survivor, Grace Tame yesterday afternoon at Canberra’s Press Club.
Revealing more about her harrowing story and the impetus for her relentless advocacy, she lay a stake in the ground for the Prime Minister with what boiled down to a frank warning: “I see you, and will continue to make sure Australians see you too.”
Tame’s accusation, that she was called and threatened by a government funded organisation to “not say anything damning about the PM”, shows the gross and disturbing inadequacy of Australian politics and leadership right now.
It also proved that we have a Prime Minister more concerned with his own reputation than creating a legacy of progress.
In 2019, when first elected, Scott Morrison stood at the mouth of a critical decade in which he had every opportunity to use his “miracle” win to create a better, fairer, safer Australia. He could have made bold calls on climate change, reconciliation, sustainability, social progress, gender equality and innovation that would have reshaped everything we knew.
Instead? He has repeatedly dug his heels in to uphold an Australia that few of us remain proud of. A country where one woman a week loses her life to domestic violence. A country that sees some of our most vulnerable Australians homeless in their later years. A country in which our care industries and hardest workers have been repeatedly sidelined. A country that does little to protect or heal the wounds of First Nations communities. A country that stays inert on climate change action despite the rest of the world begging us to come to the table.
He has fumbled through the pandemic with grave missteps that have caused too many Australians to lose not only their livelihoods but their lives.
The way Grace Tame leads is the antithesis of the Prime Minister’s own approach. She may not be a politician but her power (which the PM is rightfully afraid of) hinges on something we’ve lacked but sorely needed in this nation for decades: courage.
In Tame’s own words she “has nothing to lose”– her objective centres only on telling the truth. And that’s exactly what she’s done.
She has used her platform to call time on a long history of power imbalance, corruption, cover-ups and ingrained sexism. She has given other victim survivors the strength to come forward themselves. She has spurred a cultural reckoning as the leader we needed.
Grace Tame has changed Australia in a way Morrison never will. Afraid of her influence? He absolutely should be.