Gender equality requires men, given their natural advantage, to give women a better chance to represent themselves – even if that means walking out on a ‘lady’ during a discussion.
At least that’s the view of Alex Douglas, leader of the Queensland Palmer United Party, who says that his boss was simply being polite when he walked out on an interview with 7:30‘s Sarah Ferguson last week.
Douglas, a Queensland MP, told the Courier Mail that in Australia you can be “marked severely for being rude to any woman,” and that “you have to be able to give them [women] a better chance to represent themselves than you would for a man because a lady does not have the same capacity.”
The Courier Mail also quoted Douglas as saying that it’s a “very blokey world. Women do not have an equal chance”. He added that men have a “natural advantage” when it comes to hostile confrontations with women.
“They have to be given greater capacity. You can’t bully them and you can’t swear at them.”
So, all Palmer was doing was giving Ferguson a better chance.
This was despite that fact a look at the interview appears to show Palmer on the backfoot, when he told Ferguson to not “talk to me about allegations and bullshit” when the ABC Walkley-award winning journalist questioned the Federal MP over allegations of misused funds.
Palmer ended the interview abruptly, telling Ferguson: “I’m not answering any more for you so goodbye. We’ll see you later.”
Was Palmer merely being “polite” in allowing Ferguson to win the argument? Watch the walkout for yourself.