Grace Tame has said in a speech to the National Press Club that she received a “threatening” phone call from a senior member of a government-funded organisation warning her not to criticise the prime minister, Scott Morrison, on the eve of last month’s Australian of the Year awards because there was “an election coming soon”.
Tame, who attracted criticism from some commentators for her negative body language during an Australia Day reception with Morrison at the Lodge in late January, declined on Wednesday to name the organisation or the person who allegedly made the call in August.
The 2021 Australian of the Year said the caller told her “you are an influential person” and that “[Morrison] will have a fear”.
“And then it crystallised, a fear – a fear for himself and no one else,” Tame said in her press club speech on Wednesday. “A fear he might lose his position or, more to the point, his power.”
She said the intimidatory behaviour felt familiar to her as a survivor of grooming by a paedophile teacher. “I remember standing in the shadow of a trusted authority figure, being threatened in just the same veiled way.”
“I remember [her assailant] saying: ‘I will lose my job if anyone hears about that, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’”
The revelation came during a joint address to the press club by Tame and former Liberal party staffer Brittany Higgins. The social services minister, Anne Ruston, later told Sky News an investigation was under way into Tame’s claim.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said the first time Morrison became aware of the claim was at the press club. They added: “The prime minister has not and would not authorise such actions, and at all times has sought to treat Ms Tame with dignity and respect.”
The spokesperson said while Tame had declined to identify the person “the individual should apologise”. They characterised the intervention as “unacceptable”.
Tame later said on Twitter: “Scott conducting an investigation into who made the phone call is THE VERY SAME embedded structural silencing culture that drove the call in the first place and misses the point entirely.”
The National Australia Day Council, which coordinates the awards, later said it had contacted Tame for further information.
It canvassed personnel who spoke with Tame over the past year “none of whom had interactions ... that would be considered ‘threatening’ as the 17 August conversation has been described,” the council said in a statement.
In her speech, Tame said her objectives as a public survivors’ advocate were clear. She said she wanted “an end to the darkness, an end to sexual violence” and “a better future for all of us” which would be driven by “unity and truth”.
She said some members of the media sought to project conflict on to her advocacy, in the process ignoring a record of “frank, productive meetings with politicians on all sides at both the state and federal level”.
Tame said she had entered the public arena “because I made a conscious decision to stand up to evil, and I have been calling out injustice ever since”.
“To retreat into silence now would be hypocritical.” She said she was prepared to put her reputation on the line, because “when we act with integrity, the tide rises with us”.
“I would rather go down as a disappointment to an institution than sell out as a pandering political puppet to the corrupt forces that coercively control it,” Tame said.
“If you don’t take a strong stance to condemn abuse, you enable it.”
Wednesday’s press club event followed a statement of acknowledgment in the parliament on Tuesday. Morrison, along with other political leaders, apologised for the “terrible things” that happened in parliamentary workplaces and acknowledged a culture of bullying, abuse, harassment “and in some cases even violence” had built up over decades.
The statement was the first recommendation of a landmark review by Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, into federal parliament’s culture. The review, which recommended a significant overhaul of regulations and practices, found one in three staffers interviewed had been sexually harassed.
The Jenkins inquiry was established after Higgins alleged she was raped by a colleague after hours in a ministerial office in March 2019.
Higgins said on Wednesday she chose to speak out “because the alternative was to be part of the culture of silence inside Parliament House”. She said she wanted the next generation of staffers to work in a better place.
Addressing some of the moments where Morrison faced significant criticism for his handling of the allegation, Higgins said she didn’t want the prime minister’s sympathy as a father. “I wanted him to use his power as prime minister.”
Morrison did not attend Wednesday’s press club event. The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, was in attendance. Later, in question time, Labor targeted the government over its response to Kate Jenkins’s Respect at Work report and its commitment to the national plan to end violence against women and children.
Albanese called for Morrison to adopt “firm targets” in its plan to end family violence.
In response, Morrison said that the government was committed to targets that were “set out collectively and agreed together” and pointed to $2bn in funding towards women’s safety committed since 2013.
“So we will be working continually through that cooperative … multipartisan process, and supporting that national plan in a way that no previous government has,” Morrison said. “And we will continue those investments because they are getting those results.”
The Labor MP for the seat of Lilley, Anika Wells, asked Morrison why the government had not adopted a recommendation from the Jenkins review for a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
After Morrison said that the government had implemented 42 of the 55 recommendations made in the Jenkins review, Labor again challenged the government on its decision not to accept that key recommendation.
The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, said that “no recommendations have been rejected” and work was under way on the recommendations that had not yet been implemented, including on the positive duty requirement.
Questions relating to the Gaetjens review, which was tasked with examining the government’s response internally to Higgins’s rape allegation, were met with a warning from the new Speaker, Andrew Wallace, about the potential for parliament to prejudice a criminal trial.
“It’s natural that members might take a special interest in a criminal matter that relates to the parliament or the parliamentary precincts, nevertheless, such an aspect does not relieve us of our responsibilities,” the Speaker said.
“I would therefore remind all members to exercise the rights they have as members responsibly, in order not to risk prejudicing any court proceedings.”
Additional reporting by Australian Associated Press
