There isn’t much to defend about the ABC sketch involving Gina Rinehart.
It was dumb, unnecessarily graphic and, at a time when Australia is having such an urgent conversation about violence against women, difficult to see how this could ever pass the pub test.
The ABC apologised and there was widespread, cross-party and social condemnation. I think that’s the right response.
ABC managing director Hugh Marks acknowledged the treatment of Rinehart “was not fair”, adding: “we got this wrong.”
Satire can and should be provocative, and powerful people should absolutely be fair game. But there is a difference between making a powerful woman who’s still alive the subject of a joke and using an imagined act of violence against her as the joke itself.
Rinehart was entitled to call it out and seize on the ABC as she did. But there is another part of her response that deserves a little more scrutiny.
In a statement issued after the ABC’s apology, Hancock Prospecting said the content “normalised violent torture against a woman till death” and “dehumanised an Australian”.
It went further, arguing that the ABC Ombudsman’s finding that the segment did not breach editorial standards “fails all Australian women and the millions of taxpayers who fund the ABC”.
“All Australian women”.
The weight of these words from Australia’s wealthiest and most influential woman, who is almost single handedly puppeteering Pauline Hanson’s political campaign right now, are fairly galling.
To be clear, Rinehart does have some record of supporting initiatives addressing violence against women.
Hancock Prospecting has been a major sponsor of the Path of Hope Gala, which raises funds for Salvation Army services supporting women and children escaping family and domestic violence, since 2016. Hancock also sponsored the International Women’s Day “Kiss Violence Against Women Goodbye” luncheon in 2017 and 2018, and has delivered some funding to Parkerville Children and Youth Care.
So it would be unfair to suggest Rinehart has never put money behind this issue.
But it is also reasonable to ask what that support looks like today, particularly when compared with the extraordinary political influence she is willing to exercise elsewhere.
In April, for instance, a company associated with Rinehart donated a new aircraft to One Nation, reportedly worth around $1.3 million. Rinehart has also provided Hanson with private jet travel and other support.
At every turn, Rinehart has made it clear to Australian voters that Pauline Hanson is her pick for the next PM.
The same Pauline Hanson who, just a couple of weeks ago, was asked about domestic violence and the message she would give to men who hurt their partners. Her response was that domestic violence was a “two-way street”, before telling women experiencing abuse that they should not “put up with it”.
“I just feel if you’re in a relationship and you’re not happy and you’re not feeling safe, get out of it,” Hanson said.
It was a nice dose of victim-blaming, that sadly, women are all too used to.
The Australian Human Rights Commission swiftly criticised Hanson’s comments, highlighting the dangerous realities faced by victim-survivors. Even Hanson supporters were broadly unhappy with her take. But it shed a lot of light on how Hanson thinks about the current crisis of violence and her easy aptitude to point the finger objectively in the wrong direction.
Of course, money and influence are choices. Rinehart has an extraordinary amount of both.
She has used them to support Australian athletes, philanthropic causes and, increasingly, political figures and movements that reflect her own worldview. Her support for Hanson is one of the clearest examples.
Meanwhile, there are women across Australia right now trying to leave violent relationships. There are refuges struggling to meet demand. There are frontline workers dealing with increasingly complex cases and children living with the consequences of family violence.
The scale of Australia’s violence against women crisis is enormous, and no individual philanthropist can possibly solve it. But Gina Rinehart, with an estimated $40 billion behind her, could make a significant dent if she wanted to. Her meagre support for domestic violence initiatives in the past has never kept pace with the scale of what we’re facing.
Ultimately, two things can be true at the same time. In this case, the ABC failed community expectations by airing the sketch on Race Around the World. But, if Gina Rinehart is going to accuse the national broadcaster of “failing all Australian women”, while still backing Pauline Hanson as our next PM, then it’s fair to have a chuckle.