Ani O'Brien: Triggered by an ACT social media post

I initially wrote about the pay equity legislation debacle from the perspective of the competing narratives at play. You can read the article here. I was pretty scathing of what I consider to be some pretty appalling politics by the unions and Labour. In particular, I took exception to the lie that “women’s pay is being cut”.

Then all hell broke loose. Andrea Vance called Nicola Willis and several senior female ministers “girl bosses” and patronised them for doing “girl math”… and she called them “c**ts”. In Question Time the following week, one of the “c**ts” Vance had maligned, Brooke Van Velden, gave a searing rebuke to the journalist and her apologists. She became the first person to use the four letter word in the House.