The prime minister has called an urgent national cabinet meeting as thousands rallied to end men’s violence against women. Follow the day’s news live
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has appeared on Channel Nine’s Today, addressing controversy around yesterday’s rallies against gendered violence.
One of the organisers of the rallies, Sarah Williams, has accused Albanese of lying about asking to speak and being told no (see previous post).
The organisers throughout the country deserve credit for organising these rallies. I was happy not to speak. I was happy to speak, it was about raising awareness of the issue, but a call to action by all governments, quite clearly, we need to do more.
It’s not enough to just have empathy. The fact that one a woman dies every four days, on average, at the hand of a partner, is just a national crisis. So I’ll be convening the national cabinet on Wednesday. We’ll talk about what more we can do. Clearly governments need to do more, but as a society as well, we need to acknowledge that we need to change behaviour. We need to change attitudes. We need to change culture, because it is completely unacceptable.
I’m focused on the issue, Karl. It was an emotional day for people and I get that, on what is an emotional issue. Because women were saying yesterday, enough is enough.
We weren’t able to land that by the time the rally started … I think the rally expected to hear from their prime minister so he stood up and spoke… He wanted to show that he was deeply interested in [and] cared about the matters that were being raised at that rally.
I’m not aware of the invitation for the government to speak …
There was some concern about the demands, you know, the five key asks that were being sought at that rally and, you know, a commitment that they were seeking from from us and we weren’t able to reach agreement on how to proceed. So in the end, we decided to just walk and attend the rally and as a sign of respect, and as the sign of solidarity with women around the country.
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