Australian opposition leader Tony Abbott is facing a campaign setback today after he struggled to name even one of the country’s approximately 11 million women in a Wednesday morning interview with Sky News.
Abbott had appeared on the AM Agenda programme in an attempt to explain yesterday’s embarrassing gaffe, in which he told gathered media that Liberal Party candidate Fiona Scott had “sex appeal.”
Critics have characterized Mr. Abbott’s gaffe as misogynistic in nature, but the opposition leader dismisses those accusations, and said this morning that he personally knows “a woman.”
Asked if that woman was Liberal Party deputy leader Julie Bishop, Abbott remarked “Oh, yeah, her too.”
He was later forced to concede that the woman he was originally thinking of was a man.
But host Kieran Gilbert didn’t leave the interview there.
“So, other than Julie Bishop, can you name any women, Tony?” he asked.
“Oh, sure, plenty of women,” said Abbott
“Like who?”
“Uhh, Shelley.”
“Shelley who?” pressed Gilbert.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said a frustrated Abbott. “Look, Kieran, this is a stupid question. If you want to get hung up on these trivial little issues you can, but the Australian people deserve better than this nonsense. They’ve had a guts-full of the last six years under Kevin Rudd and, uhm, the one before him, and what we really want to talk about is putting an end to that and looking forward to the future.”
This week’s string of gaffes highlights a major liability for Abbott, one that he has been grappling with for some time. Abbott has repeatedly come under fire for comments he made while he served as a minister under the government of John Howard, when he questioned whether women had the “temperament” to lead because they spend “too much time playing with their Barbies and doing their hair.”
At the time, Mr. Abbott noted that he “never” does his hair.
Abbott’s party has also faced wider accusations of sexism, with Liberal MP Christopher Pyne having to explain that his campaign office’s seven-foot penis mascot was “not intended to look that way,” and “just something we had lying around.”