Is this the death of the “MeToo” phenomenon in Australia? Ever since it broke in the US, the Australian left, being the slavish imitators of the worst of American culture that they are, were desperately casting about for their own “MeToo” poster girl.
For a while, Grace Tame was their golden idol — then along came Brittany Higgins, and the left whipped themselves into an onanistic stupor. The whole story was tailor-made for the media-left to savage a conservative government.
Only, now the whole thing’s collapsed around their ears and the “MeToo” strategy of media-verdict first, legal process later, is damnably discredited. As it should always have been.
Naturally, the left-media are desperately trying to save their narrative, but the emperor stands exposed for all to see.
In a sign of how skewed this story became, the evidence to date suggests that two people, and only two people, encouraged Higgins to go to the police when there was an inkling of sexual activity: her old boss, senator Linda Reynolds, and former chief of staff Fiona Brown.
But Higgins and her crepuscular boyfriend chose to weaponise the allegations through the media and friendly Labor party politicians. It’s a bit rich to whine about “privacy”, when if she’d followed proper legal procedure and police advice, her privacy would have been protected by law.
Indeed, there are several extremely important protections available to complainants, such as the right to remain anonymous, that would have been available to Higgins had she followed the usual criminal justice process.
Instead, she chose a strategy of maximum publicity. To the extent of avoiding police requests for interview so as to be the star speaker of a “MeToo” rally in front of parliament.
The effect of the Higgins-Sharaz media and political campaign was not merely to put themselves in the spotlight but to deprive Lehrmann of the presumption of innocence and the due process a normal criminal justice investigation would have given him.
The inference is open that they wanted to convict Lehrmann in the media, whatever a jury decided. This dreadful strategy drove Lehrmann, not surprisingly, to the edge of suicide. Not that the Higgins-Sharaz media cheer squad seemed to care one jot about this. Just another necessary victim of the movement, the hardheads of #MeToo no doubt would have thought.
But the victims of the MeToo witch-hunters were more often other women: Higgins’ boss, then-Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and her supervisor, Fiona Brown, the only two people in the entire saga who properly urged her to go to police immediately. Brown attempted suicide, while both her and Reynolds’ careers and reputations were crushed.
The witch-hunt claimed even Labor party women. Kimberley Kitching died of a suspected heart attack after being subjected to horrific bullying from Labor’s trio of “Mean Girls”. We now know that Kitching had learned of what was in the wind with the Higgins allegations, and, properly horrified, tipped off Reynolds.
When is too much for these people? How they can live with any of these events that followed the deliberately chosen and carefully considered media and political strategy of Higgins and Sharaz is for them and their consciences.
“Too much”, apparently, is when the witch-hunters turn on them. Exposed to the blowtorch of media scrutiny in their own turn, like Harry and Meghan they suddenly start bleating about their “privacy”.
Hearing Higgins’s support club in the media wail about privacy and leaked material rings hollow indeed given the role they played in upturning the presumption of innocence […]
Where is the gnashing of teeth about Lisa Wilkinson and producer Angus Llewellyn, caught in the five-hour audio discussing Higgins’s plan to tape a private conversation she had with senator Michaelia Cash?[…] What about the teals? These apparent paragons of virtue appear to have gone missing in action on Gallagher’s dubious statements, not to mention the need for the new National Anti-Corruption Commission to examine the circumstances of Higgins’s multimillion-dollar, uncontested payout […]
Hypocrisy of Olympic level heights has abounded in this affair and no doubt there is much room for more.
The Australian
Which may be the only good thing to come out of it all: that the whole “MeToo” narrative, and its strategy of trashing the rule of law, will be thoroughly discredited.
As Robert Bolt asked, in A Man for All Seasons, having cut down all the laws to corner the Devil, where do you run when the Devil turns around to meet you? “All the laws of England having been cut down and flattened, who would protect you then?”
The harpies of “MeToo” are finding out in the most well-deserved way possible.