Page 4081 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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which is well-known for this type of commentary, we are so close to promoting these views that it makes no difference.
The ACT government would be lagging behind community sentiment if we continued to advertise him. As at 16 October, 144 businesses and corporations had withdrawn from using Jones’s show for their advertising, including companies such as Volkswagen Australia and Bing Lee.
As there are more than 500 signatories to the petition, it will be referred to a committee, and I really hope that the committee can think through the best way to word the Transport Canberra guidelines to make sure we do not accept Jones and his comments as an acceptable product to advertise.
Why does it matter what he has said? Even the federal Minister for Women is clear that, until gender inequity issues are addressed, the violence against women will not stop. One in three women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15. Every two minutes, police are called to a domestic and family violence matter. Every day, 12 women are hospitalised due to domestic and family violence. More than one woman a week is killed by a former or current partner. Every week, we hear about more women murdered; 55 women have been killed so far in 2019. That is 55 women in 40 weeks. That is unacceptable.
One of the things that we have to do to address this is to stop gender violence in our words as well as our actions. We need to address the gender inequality which is leading to this. Women will never be safe until we are seen as equal citizens, and Alan Jones’s comments do not help. The same goes for non-Anglo-Saxon people. They will not be safe in Australia until they are seen as equal citizens; again Alan Jones’s comments do not help.
MS CODY (Murrumbidgee) (10.07): I would like to thank Ms Le Couteur for supporting this petition. As she explained in her comments, it is only able to be sponsored by one member of this place, and it is good to see that Ms Le Couteur did that. It is not often that Ms Le Couteur and I agree 100 per cent on everything we say, but in this instance it is very clear that we both agree on a lot of what Ms Le Couteur has just talked about.
This is just terrible. The words that Alan Jones used were inappropriate, unforgivable and unacceptable. He is just an embarrassment to this country. We are able to stand up in this place and have the right to say what a revolting thing was said about the Prime Minister from across the ditch—and some of our closest allies are the New Zealanders. To have someone in Australia denigrate the New Zealand Prime Minister—who happens to be a woman—in that way is appalling, and I do not think any of us should be standing for it.
This is also quite common in some of the other advertising we see on building sites around Canberra. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about the misogynistic and sexual objectification of women on some of our Geocon sites around Canberra. That, too, is an issue. Canberra says no to misogyny, sexism and objectification. It is wonderful to see the Minister for Women and the Minister for
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