On the afternoon of the 30th of November 2021; after Greens MP Adam Bandt had asked a question of the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) and after the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) had given his non sequitur of a reply, the call then passed to the Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese, who was about to speak with the Defence Minister Peter Dutton, interrupted and stood at the despatch box on the government's side of the chamber. Mr Albanese who had clearly had enough of the Defence Minister's shenanigans, then told the in MP in question to "Sit down, boofhead." This created a furor which rippled throughout the rest of Question Time and has been the subject of at least one milliunit of faux outrage on Sky News Australia.
The Opposition Leader was not asked with withdraw his comment; which now means that not for the first time, the word "boofhead" has appeared in Hansard, which is the official record of what is said in the the parliament of the Commonwealth Of Australia.
How Australian is that?
Parliaments in Australia, which have carried forward the tradition and the legal direction from the Bill Of Rights Act 1688, that what is said in parliament ought not to be impinged and nobody can be made to answer criminally for what they've said on the floor of the chamber. Parliamentary Privilege is in fact the only place at law in Westminster Parliaments where free speech is absolute. Not even the United States with its very Roman view of law can actually say that there exists a place where the right to free speech is absolute. Famously, one can yell "Fire!" in crowded theatre or perhaps "Theatre!" in a crowded fire. Not only are both acceptable on the floor of the two chambers of parliament, I suspect that both have been done just to prove the point.
Of course there was the usual malarkey and political thesp where groans and hoots of disapproval came from the government's side of the chamber and an equal amount of woots and whelps on the opposition's side of the chamber but that principle of unqualified free speech in parliament remains.
There wasn't even a call from the Speaker which mentioned anything about unparliamentary nature of calling the Defence Minister a boofhead. Admittedly this is because the insult of "boofhead" is rather mild and if the Leader Of The Opposition had called the Defence Minister a cussing cuss (insert your favourite cuss word), then we'd have a cussing problem and the cussing Opposition Leader would probably be ejected under the standing rules because of his cussing cussing. Famously, Australia is a nation which was in part started with an empire faced with the prospect of losing its biggest place to dump its criminals and ne'er-do-wells decided to dump them on a land which they then declared was empty even though there was people living here. One could arguably make the point that a nation started with criminal stock, doesn't really change all that much and that the language which its citizens employ which would ordinarily make sailors blush, is likely to be filled with cussing - and it is.
I think that we are probably one of the only nations where the captain of a national sporting team is alleged to have said "Which of you bastards called this bastard a 'bastard' instead of this bastard?" and be proud of the fact.
The Federal Parliament in Canberra is bigger than both the United Kingdom's House Of Commons and the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, where the two sides of the chamber are in fact close enough to physically spit at each other. As such, I think that this may have resulted in slightly more creative shenaniganry and actually less vicious direct insult than the those two other places. Direct yelling is not as much rewarded and so barbs have to be better fashioned, as opposed to just meeting a wall of sound with another wall of sound.
In the course of events though, this government has locked up asylum seekers of tropical gulags with no chance of arriving at Australia, it has placed pensioners onto cashless debit cards so that they can not spend their pension monies at their local shops, it is trying to pass legislation whereby it demands the identities of the users of social media accounts but defends the identities of those funding legal Defences, it has engaged in open corruption and awarded contracts for carparks and sporting facilities within its own electorates, it has demanded that poorer people pay back overpayments via Robobdebt but is perfectly happy with letting multi-billion corporations keep JobKeeper payments including if they were profitable; so perhaps "boofhead" is a mild word which doesn't actually do the amount of rebuke required, justice.
"Boofhead" is the name that I call my cat Micah, if he is particularly naughty and has decided to attack Nana for no reason. I might call my cat Micah "boofhead" if I am about to stick my face into him (how can you not put your face in a fluffy kitty?). I think that's why the Speaker let the Leader Of The Opposition Anthony Albanese get away with called the Defence Minister Peter Dutton a "boofhead". I almost suspect that at about 5pm on a Friday, that there might actually be a bit of camaraderie in the parliamentary bar at the end of the week. Calling the Defence Minister Peter Dutton a "boofhead" lets him know that someone is annoyed with him and let's be honest, the offence is very mild compared with what might have been said in the chamber.
One of our client who phoned us later in the afternoon and who is a lawyer, made the suggestion that "mere abuse" doesn't constitute defamation and therefore Mr Albanese could probably get away with this outside the parliament; he that joked that truth is an adequate defence in a defamation case and that if the Defence Minister Peter Dutton genuinely is a boofhead, then all Mr Albanese has done is stated a fact. I have no idea how you even go about proving the truthiness of such a case.
I find that in all three of the daily newspapers in Sydney and backed up by the chorus Sky News Australia and 2GB, that they were questioning the suitability of Mr Albanese to be Prime Minister; while at the same time overlooking the fact that Mr Dutton had just deliberately interrupted him and was being disruptive in the chamber.
In those same three newspapers, Sky News Australia and 2GB, the fact that Senator Jackie Lambie was being met with growling dog noises, wasn't even remarked upon. Senator Penny Wong, the Leader Of The Opposition in the Senate and who isn't even from the same party of Senator Lambie, had to being this to the attention to the President Of The Senate; who them promptly denied that he had heard anything at all.
On one hand you have the media crying foul because a mild insult like "boofhead" was used in one chamber of parliament. On the other hand, you have institutional misogyny in a workplace which has had an inquiry because rape has occurred on the premises. The former has become the subject of column inches and outrage, while yet again misogyny appears to be tolerated and even ignored.
With the Jenkins Report into the culture and behaviour within Parliament House due to be tabled, I seriously wonder what if anything that that report is likely to achieve. We have more than a few members apparently committed to the prospect of letting the institutional misogyny in the parliament and its building not only continue and flourish. Not only that, we have the backers in the media who benefit from this current government being reelected, not only singing from the same sheet music but actively writing it.
How Australian is that?
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