Yahoo News Scott Morrison’s warm welcome to Andrew Laming is a rebuke to Australia’s women
It was a little over a month ago that Scott Morrison furrowed the prime-ministerial brow and assured reporters he was taking action against Queensland MP Andrew Laming.
In his best ‘I’m-not-angry-I’m-disappointed’ voice, Morrison announced he had ordered the scandal-plagued MP into empathy training after it emerged he had been accused of online harassment and abuse that had left one woman suicidal.
Saying he wanted to see a “significant change” in Laming’s behaviour, Morrison acknowledged that the besieged MP needed to get “appropriate assistance through an appropriate course” to build his understanding and awareness of his actions.
“This is one of the important things that we need to do – the way you fix this is we’ve got to educate, inform and increase awareness to change behaviour. I want to see behaviour change,” Morrison said.
Related: The ongoing scandals of Liberal MP Andrew Laming
Cue empathy training – an online course of Laming’s choosing, the details of which remain a mystery to the public, and also apparently, to the ever-incurious PM.
And what, exactly, did Laming learn from this online course? Well, according to him, he learnt he was “overly empathetic”.
“I was almost overly empathetic because I was getting involved in stuff I shouldn’t have, getting immersed and obsessed and determined to ‘fix it,’’ Laming told News.com.au.
So while he had initially retracted and apologised for the online behaviour towards two constituents, Alix Russo and Sheena Hewlett, this week he told LNP members that some of the allegations made against him were “petty” and part of a “carefully choreographed” campaign against him. Thanks empathy training.
And after taking time out to reflect on the “inappropriate” photograph he took of a woman’s behind at a Brisbane workplace, Laming said any suggestion he had done anything wrong was “ridiculous”, and he had been vindicated by police.
Explaining his operation of more than 30 Facebook pages under the guise of community and news groups – currently being investigated by the Australian Electoral Commission – Laming described it away as “an addiction and a focus”.
Indeed, the result of the empathy training appeared to be Laming concluding that there was nothing in his erratic 17-year parliamentary career worth apologising for, choosing instead to lay blame for his pattern of behaviour on his freshly diagnosed ADHD.
All this, apparently, is enough for the PM, who this week welcomed Laming back into the Coalition fold and partyroom, seeking to brush aside the behaviour of the MP as not worth a second thought from anyone, and certainly not any prime-ministerial rebuke.
Nor will Laming lose his lucrative chairmanship of a parliamentary committee that boosts his annual pay packet by $23,000, despite stepping aside from the role while on leave.
By welcoming Laming back it is hard not to conclude that Morrison has been prepared to overlook this standard of behaviour when it is one of his own
“He [Laming] has formed a view since then that the issues that were the subject of complaints made against him have now altered and there have been new facts that have come forward,” Morrison told ABC’s Leigh Sales on Wednesday night.
“Andrew will serve out his time in the parliament. He’s been here a long time. He’s done many good things while he’s here as part of the government and I expect him to keep working hard for his electorate all the way to the next election.”
Despite Morrison’s fervent hope that everyone is as satisfied as he is with this conclusion, it needs to be made clear that not a single one of the “issues” that were the subject of complaints against Laming have “altered” in the past five weeks. That would be a physical impossibility.
The only thing that changed while Laming was on extended health leave was that the police cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing for the photograph he took of the Brisbane woman after she lodged a formal complaint.
No “new fact” emerged to somehow magic away his online behaviour over many years, which has seen him relentlessly attack his political opponents and constituents with whom he disagrees.
Nor does his diagnosis make his long-running pattern of complained about behaviour, particularly towards women, acceptable or excusable. It is an insult to other sufferers of the condition to suggest so.
There is a central theme to the many complaints about Laming’s behaviour – he has repeatedly behaved in a way that women say has made them feel uncomfortable, or worse.
Being cleared of any criminal behaviour doesn’t make that OK – just ask the women involved.
Women in the coalition certainly didn’t think so either, with his colleagues describing his alleged behaviour variously as “unacceptable”, “abhorrent”, and “completely outrageous”.
Related: Andrew Laming: Simpsons memes, 'extraordinary behaviour' and the end of an MP's career
Morrison has said that “we all have a job to do” to stamp out poor behaviour towards women, including “unconscious acts, born out of a lack of understanding and appreciation and awareness”.
He has also specifically talked about the misuse of social media online and its harmful effect on women: “It can be a very dangerous tool in disrespectful hands. And we’ve seen that with the trolling and abuse and harassment, particularly of women,” Morrison said in March.
But by welcoming Laming back into the Liberal National partyroom, it is hard not to conclude that Morrison has been prepared to overlook this standard of behaviour when it is one of his own.
The message it sends is that this type of behaviour is acceptable to the prime minister. And if it is acceptable to the prime minister, then it is acceptable elsewhere – and that is a message Australian women do not want to hear.
