Unfit For Office: Rowland Blames the Victim

The first law officer of the land, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, has engaged in what looks remarkably like textbook victim-blaming, implying that Pauline Hanson should examine whether her own behaviour, ideology, and political party are somehow encouraging the violence and death threats directed against her.

This is the Attorney-General's reported response:

"I don't wish ill on Ms Hanson in a physical way; I don't wish any politician any ill will, irrespective of their political persuasion, BUT I think sometimes when comments like this are made, one needs to look at oneself and one's behaviour ..."

Rowland also reportedly suggested Hanson should examine "what her party and what her ideology and her behaviour is doing, and whether or not that is encouraging that."

What an absolute disgrace.

That "but" tells you everything.

The nation's chief law officer should never be searching for excuses for political violence or shifting even a fraction of the responsibility onto the person being threatened.

Death threats are a crime. Violence is a crime.

The responsibility lies with the person making the threat or committing the violence, not with the victim's political opinions, ideology, party membership, or speech.

Suggesting that a politician facing threats should "look at herself", her behaviour, her party or her ideology is an attempt to rationalise intimidation: Perhaps the threats are wrong, BUT look at what she said. Perhaps the violence is wrong, BUT look at what she believes.

That is not the language Australians should ever hear from their Attorney-General.

Michelle Rowland is unfit for office.

Consider where this poisonous logic leads.

Only a fortnight ago, an elderly woman wearing a One Nation T-shirt was reportedly assaulted in Brisbane and hospitalised with a broken rib.

Would Rowland tell her to "look at herself" and consider whether wearing that T-shirt had somehow "encouraged" her attackers?

Would she stand before a court and argue that the perpetrators deserved some understanding because their victim's political beliefs provoked them?

Of course not.

Yet that is precisely why an Attorney-General must never muddy the fundamental principle of individual criminal responsibility.

The Attorney-General is not merely another Cabinet politician trading insults across the political divide. She is the Commonwealth's first law officer.

The office carries a special responsibility for upholding the rule of law, the administration of federal criminal justice, and the principle that the law applies equally, regardless of whether the victim is politically fashionable or politically despised.

That duty does not disappear when the person being threatened is Pauline Hanson.

Threatening to kill or violently attack a senator is not a debating point. It is not something to be qualified with a lecture about the victim's politics.

The first law officer's response should be unequivocal:

The person making the threat is responsible. The victim is not.

Her speech is not on trial.
Her political party is not on trial.
Her ideology is not on trial.

The person threatening violence is responsible for the threat.

Once an Attorney-General starts implying that a woman's own "behaviour" and "ideology" may be "encouraging" violence against her, she introduces a political qualification into a principle that should be absolute.

Imagine applying Rowland's reasoning elsewhere.

Would anyone dare suggest that a woman who was sexually assaulted should "look at herself and her behaviour" and consider whether the way she dressed somehow "encouraged" the attack?

The very suggestion would rightly provoke outrage.

Yet the underlying logic is disturbingly similar: condemn the offence, insert a "but", then invite the victim to consider what she did to encourage the offender.

No.

Violence is the responsibility of the violent. Threats are the responsibility of those making the threats.

An Attorney-General should understand that principle better than almost anyone in Australia.

There is also the extraordinary political hypocrisy surrounding all of this.

For years, Labor politicians have responded to One Nation not merely by challenging its policies, but with increasingly inflammatory accusations and denunciations.

Instead of debating the issues millions of Australians are concerned about, such as unprecedented rates of migration and the resulting pressure on housing and rents, the cost and consequences of Net Zero policies, electricity prices, jobs, and repeated attempts to place restrictions around political speech, Albanese and senior Labor figures too often reach for vilification instead.

Rather than concede that Australians are entitled to raise these concerns and debate them democratically, Rowland today reportedly resorted to claims about One Nation entertaining "convicted criminals" and being "infiltrated by extremists and neo-Nazis".

Labor cannot continually portray its political opponents in the most inflammatory possible terms and then pretend the political temperature exists in a vacuum.

Political leaders have a responsibility to lower that temperature, particularly when threats of violence are being made.

But even then, there can be no qualification whatsoever:

Nobody's political rhetoric, however objectionable someone may find it, excuses a death threat or an act of violence.

That is precisely the principle Australia's Attorney-General should have defended.

Instead, Rowland effectively delivered a "violence is wrong, but..." response and invited the woman receiving the threats to examine herself.

For the Commonwealth's first law officer, that is an appalling failure of judgment.

The minimum standard for an Attorney-General is the unequivocal defence of the rule of law and individual criminal responsibility, without political caveats and without asking victims whether their own beliefs "encouraged" their tormentors.

Michelle Rowland failed that test.

She should resign, or Anthony Albanese should sack her.

But the worst Prime Minister in our nation's history will do nothing because he is just as guilty of the same offence.

“Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”
– Martin Luther King Jr