The times are blowing female, and on Friday at lunchtime I was glad to be one of 350 attending the launch of #WomenVote, an “independent non-partisan lobby group”, at the Ivy, which is pushing for more female representation across the spectrum of Australian politics, with more female friendly policies. The three lawyers who founded the movement – Vanessa Whittaker, SC; Sera Mirzabegian and Maria O’Brien – spoke lucidly and with great power. The audience included the likes of Dave Sharma, Zali Steggall, Deborah Thomas, Wendy McCarthy, Daisy Turnbull and husband James Brown who all listened with rapt attention, but most interesting was to see national president of the Liberal Party, Nick Greiner, furiously taking notes as they spoke, pointing out the lunacy of not having a single female on the all powerful Expenditure Review Committee, which oversees the federal budget. He, at least, gets it. Sharp turns ahead Just how low can “Advance Australia” go? The conservative answer to GetUp! is attempting to stop Zali Steggall knocking off Tony Abbott in the seat of Warringah. Last week trucks were trundling through the electorate bearing billboards showing a photo of Steggall superimposed standing next to Bill Shorten, with ALP branding, and the words coming from her mouth: “Over the last 20 years I have never voted Liberal.” On the back of the truck, another nasty line: "Zali has a secret.” The Advance Australia billboard being trucked through Mosman. Credit:Lachlan Moffett Gray This is disgraceful. Utterly misleading, and the group knows it. Also false are its statements that Steggall will vote with the ALP on the franking credits. At her first press conference she said she would not, and that is the end of it. Can you imagine her political destruction if she did?

As to voting Liberal, what she said was she had never voted for Abbott. “I have voted Liberal at state elections. I know James Griffin, Manly local Liberal member and will vote for him at the coming state election.” As to the campaign of slurs against her name, she treats it with more equanimity than most could master. “Absolute desperation on their part,” she laughs. “Tony Abbott’s campaign has no substance or solutions, and has only two things he’s throwing at me. First trying to paint me as an ALP and GetUp! stooge, which is simply, demonstrably not true. “And second, that he is the only one for the Spit tunnel. That is simply not true. I am for the tunnel and want it to be the best tunnel possible. I think this smear and fear they are using actually works for me.” As appalling as it is, I think she’s right, and I am not the only one. In these parts, seriously, such nasty tactics just don’t wash. Marr got it right

As ever David Marr nailed it, in his outstanding piece in The Guardian on Wednesday, covering the sentencing of George Arthur Pell. “In their rage and confusion, Pell’s supporters have declared their man a martyr to the mob, a victim of press vendettas, a great priest whose reputation has been sullied beyond repair by the left. But that’s not what his fall is about. Somewhere in the past few years, Rome lost the power to protect men like him. This secular country at the far end of the Earth stood up to Rome to hold the first national inquiry in the world into the role of faiths – particularly the Catholic faith – in a systematic, old and hidden regime of child abuse. ” Chief Judge Peter Kidd at Melbourne County Court for the sentencing of George Pell. Credit: Bravo, the Australian justice system. And yes, there are still a few hold-out Pell supporters who insist this is a miscarriage of justice. But here is the point. After Judge Kidd’s reasoned, calm, thorough sentencing, all that is left is a very small puddle. And there will be many more prosecutions to come, globally. “The great loss [for the Catholic Church],” Marr notes, “is immunity from the law. This is happening all over the world. Australia is just a frontrunner. An institution that was once all but untouchable is enduring humiliating days in court ... So many crimes have been committed, so many have been expertly hidden for so long that none of us knows how the world is about to change now the law no longer stops at the doors of the palaces of the church.” A bruising encounter You may recall the rant in this space last month about the extraordinary manner in which the NSW Premier and Treasurer treated a journalist from The Newcastle Herald, doing his job, asking hard question. It got much worse last week, with a 73-year-old journalist from BayFM forcibly ejected from the Premier’s photo opportunity at the Brunswick Heads Surf Life Saving Club while seeking to ask a hard question of his own.

I talked to Jim Beatson and the ejection was so forceful he still has ugly bruises all over his arms. For the record, here is the edited version of one of the two questions he wanted to ask: “Premier ... When you are here less than a year ago, you assured me that you did not want to go down in history as someone responsible for the reduction of koalas in NSW ... Yet in north-east NSW, your government has doubled the logging intensity allowed on public lands and zoned 140,000 hectares from Taree to Grafton for clear-felling ... This sounds like destruction of koala habitat. How does this advance your concerns for koalas and indeed your role in history?” To me that sounds like a reasonable question, and even allowing for the fact that it was not a formal press conference, to manhandle him out of the room in that manner was disgraceful. Jim Beatson shows damage to his arms caused during an incident with Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s security staff. Credit:Jim Beatson Tweet of the Week “I know a lot of survivors (esp Ballarat crew) follow me on Twitter, so want to say: my admiration for Judge Kidd's thoroughness (& [Waleed] Aly's writing) aside, I remain in awe of your ongoing righteous burning f---ing fury. I am in awe of your strength. You are goddam superheroes.” - Tim Minchin, @timminchin, who penned and sang the song Come Home Cardinal Pell, donating proceeds to a fund to send some survivors to Rome to see Pell’s testimony to the royal commission in person. Quotes of the Week

"They are us. The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not." – NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on the victims of the Christchurch massacre. “I am the elected deputy prime minister of Australia, so I’d have no guilt at all in standing.” – Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce. By that reckoning Malcolm Turnbull is still elected prime minister, and Barnaby’s leader. “I understand what it takes to have a successful marriage and to make sure that we work together to build a better Australia.” – Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack reaches for the long handle to beat back Barnaby Joyce’s posturings about resuming the Nats leadership. He was referring to the marriage of the Nats and Libs in the Coalition. I think. “Now average weekly earning are about $1100 a week. 60 per cent of that is nearly $1000 ...” – Alan Jones on Sky after dark, as part of his explanation as to why Bill Shorten’s “Living Wage is a bad idea”. “The policy amounts to racial profiling and is fraught with danger. We call on all major political parties to utterly reject this policy.” – NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive officer Vic Alhadeff condemning Mark Latham’s call to DNA test people claiming Aboriginal ancestry.