March for Justice rallies were held all over Australia last week. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
WARNING: This article contains reference to sexual assault.
It's almost bang-on a year since the air bridge between my two homes snapped shut.
And as an Australian living across the ditch there have been days where I've wanted to jump on a plane and be home.
But a week ago the visceral tug to my hometown of Canberra – to the front lawns of Parliament House, no less - was different.
Tens of thousands of my Australian sisters marched for gender equality across the country last week.
Among them were many of my friends – female and male – Members of Parliament, sexual assault survivors, young girls, old women, indigenous women, and my mum.
Australia's centre of government became a battleground between its male, stale bureaucracy and the women who have had a gutful of feeling unheard and unbelieved.
As a Canberra-born woman who now works as a journalist in Wellington, I can't help but wonder if the same situation could play out in Aotearoa, or how it might be different if it did.
I've been lucky to have a small taste of work in both country's Parliaments. I recently spent some time at the Beehive, and what I saw was respected women at the top of their game – both within politics and the press pack.
Jacinda Ardern is New Zealand's third female Prime Minister, and one of the most popular leaders in decades. She masterfully juggles running the country with motherhood. She esteems traditionally "feminine" attributes like kindness, and has been praised widely for them - albeit with a little eye-roll.
And across the chamber is another female leader, successful and inspiring in her own way. And though they are different women with often opposing policies, Judith Collins and Jacinda Ardern speak to each other and about each other with respect.
Of course, New Zealand is not free of misogyny and sexual violence. But the language around the women in our highest office matters: it sets the standard for how we speak and think about women everywhere.
Nearly 10 years ago, I did work experience in Parliament House as a very young woman with an interest in journalism.
It was 2012, and Australia was under the leadership of its first and only female prime minister, Julia Gillard.
A decade before Australian women took to Parliament House last week, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott stood in the very same spot at a rally opposing the Carbon Tax - in front of placards referring to the prime minister as a "b****" and a "witch".
He normalised the sexist language that would come to shape Gillard's time in office, and within two years he was Australia's prime minister. We made that language acceptable.
I watched as Gillard was belittled, shamed and disrespected by male politicians and the media, criticised for everything from her fashion sense and her weight, to the fact that she had no children and was unmarried.
That same year a fictional parody TV show picked apart Gillard's relationship and sex life on the national broadcaster.
Sydney radio presenter Alan Jones said on air that Gillard's father must have "died of shame", and a year prior he had stated she should be "put into a chaff bag and thrown into the sea".
These comments make me feel sick to write about even a decade later.
But as a 17-year-old sitting in Question Time in 2012 the message to me was clear: women can make it into Parliament House, but "we won't make it easy for you".
When sexual assault survivor Grace Tame became the Australian of the Year in January, a tidal wave generations in the making swarmed the women of the nation. Some have called it Australia's own #MeToo movement.
A photograph of Tame alongside Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison prompted young woman Brittany Higgins to come forward with a shocking allegation – that she was raped within the walls of Parliament House during the time she worked there as a political staffer in 2019. And that the party she worked for turned a blind eye.
Women's rage snowballed further still when allegations emerged that Attorney General Christian Porter – Australia's chief law officer - had allegedly raped a young woman in 1988. After withdrawing her complaint to police, the woman took her life last year. We'll never hear her story.
Porter emphatically denies the allegations, and the Prime Minister has ruled out an independent inquiry to investigate the claims.
The two alleged rapes 30 years apart have united women old and young, who are sick of fighting "this same tired, stale fight" - as Higgins herself said on Monday when she bravely returned to Parliament House to address the crowd.
I stand with sexual assault survivors on both sides of the Tasman, on both sides of party politics.
But when I look at New Zealand's Prime Minister and her modern family unit, or I hear a colleague challenge a careless reference to "Cindy" - the fight doesn't feel quite so stale over here.
Maybe that's because New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote. Or perhaps former prime minister Helen Clark had already forged the path for a new generation of Kiwis who would view the election of a female leader more kindly. I'm sure much of it is the Jacinda factor itself.
But there's no doubt the way we speak about our female leaders matters. And I can only hope that Australia's next female prime minister – wherever she is – enters a landscape now bolstered by the outrage of thousands of women.
'We know who is not telling us the truth. They need to reconsider what they have told us.'
