Leigh Sales: 'it is sickening to see this constant situation where powerful people and institutions exploit less powerful people', Sydney Media Club - 2021

17 March 2021, M Bar, Sydney, Australia

We are seeing women say that they have had enough. They have had enough of people in power using the system to enshrine their power and keep women as less powerful. But I also feel that that is fitting in a broader context about awareness of power generally, because I feel like every single night when I’m hosting 7.30, that I see stories in which people in power are exploiting or taking advantage of people with less power.

In many cases, people that they have been paid to care for, or have expressly said that they promise to serve and I see it all the time, every night on the show. I feel like I’m constantly asking myself this question ‘did something change in this country?’ Did something change, that the standard for behaviour now is not ‘I have to do the right thing’ or ‘I have to do what I promised I said I would do’, but instead ‘how much can I get away with?’

I think that, from what I hear people say on 7.30 Australians are sick of this kind of situation.

They’re sick of banks gouging their accounts with fees and charges while somehow missing large scale money laundering, that’s funnelling millions of dollars overseas to terrorism or child exploitation.

They’re sick of highly profitable nursing homes taking money from families, and then neglecting or abusing mum or dad.

They’re sick of financial advisors who promise to take people’s life savings and help them pay for their retirement, knowing the entire time that they’re fleecing them.

I think the unemployed, students, pensioners were pretty sick of being harassed by a powerful government department to repay debt that they never actually even owed in the first place.

People are tired of private health insurance constantly upping fees, then you go to a specialist and they go ‘oh sorry it’s not covered by private health’.

They’re sick of telecommunications companies that promised the world when you sign up for the Internet, and then when you’re having a problem with it and it won’t work, they won’t pick up their phone to answer your call in any kind of timely fashion.

They’re sick of rich multinational companies underpaying their workers and then not even having the common courtesy to ring people when those workers are killed on the job.

They’re sick of priests abusing children in their care, or scoutmasters. They’re sick of the priests who cover up for those kinds of priests.

They’re sick of 59-year-old teachers who rape 15-year-old students.

They’re sick of government after government telling people that they’ll close the gap on Indigenous life expectancy and then decade after decade it stubbornly remains at about 20 years. You have 20 years less life in Australia, apparently, if you’re Indigenous.

They’re sick of politicians acting like public money is their own private fund and giving development deals to their mates or grants to their political allies and in the worst cases are taking kickbacks to line their own pockets.

They’re sick of film producers, who have won life’s lotto and yet still treat young actors like they should be molested and manipulated.

Even the Australian Cricket team let down the ordinary Australian fan with cheating and ball-tampering. You can’t even trust as an Australian that you won’t be made a fool of by the Australian cricket team.

I mean, this is night after night on 7.30 that we have these stories and I just think it is sickening to see this constant situation where powerful people and institutions exploit less powerful people.

And I think from what the public says to me on the street, that they are sick of people coming on my show, when they get found out and saying, ‘oh, I’m so sorry, I had no idea this was happening – can’t take any more questions about it, because we’ve commissioned a report into it’. And then that report, when it comes through, sits in a bottom drawer, gathering dust and the same thing happens again and then they commission another report. It’s well past time that this kind of thing needs to change

What do a lot of these stories that I’ve mentioned have in common? Who holds the levers of power, mostly, in this country? In boardrooms? In CEO suites? In the media? In governments? In cabinet? It’s men.

And we are not doing a good enough job in this country, as you will see, any night when you watch 7.30, of looking after the least powerful members of our society.

Halsey: 'Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues', A Story Like Mine, Women's March 2018

22 January 2018, New York City, USA

This speech/poem contains graphic descriptions of rape /sexual assault.

I was in DC last year, and I came back to do a speech this time, but I don’t really know how to do a speech unless it rhymes – so I’m gonna do a little poem for you guys.

It's 2009 and I'm 14 and I'm crying

Not really sure where I am but I'm holding the hand of my best friend Sam

In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood

The air is sterile and clean, and the walls are that not gray, but green

And the lights are so bright they could burn a hole through the seam of my jeans

My phone is buzzing in the pocket

My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys 'cause she's closing the door and she needs to lock it

But I can't tell my mom where I've gone

I can't tell anyone at all

You see, my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew 'cause he worked in the after-school program

And he held her down with her textbook beside her

And he covered her mouth and he came inside her

So now I'm with Sam, at the place with a plan, waiting for the results of a medical exam

And she's praying she doesn't need an abortion, she couldn't afford it

And her parents would, like, totally kill her

It's 2002 and my family just moved and the only people I know are my mom's friends, too, and her son

He's got a case of Matchbox cars and he says that he'll teach me to play the guitar if I just keep quiet

And the stairwell beside apartment 1245 will haunt me in my sleep for as long as I am alive

And I'm too young to know why it aches in my thighs, but I must lie, I must lie

It's 2012 and I'm dating a guy and I sleep in his bed and I just learned how to drive

And he's older than me and he drinks whiskey neat and he's paying for everything

This adult thing is not cheap

We've been fighting a lot, almost 10 times a week

And he wants to have sex, and I just want to sleep

He says I can't say no to him

This much I owe to him

He buys my dinner, so I have to blow him

He's taken to forcing me down on my knees

And I'm confused 'cause he's hurting me while he says please

And he's only a man, and these things he just needs

He's my boyfriend, so why am I filled with unease?

It's 2017 and I live like a queen

And I've followed damn near every one of my dreams

I'm invincible and I'm so f***ing naive

I believe I'm protected 'cause I live on a screen

Nobody would dare act that way around me

I've earned my protection, eternally clean

Until a man that I trust gets his hands in my pants

But I don't want none of that, I just wanted to dance

And I wake up the next morning like I'm in a trance and there's blood

Is that my blood?

Hold on a minute

You see I've worked every day since I was 18

I've toured everywhere from Japan to Mar-a-Lago

I even went on stage that night in Chicago when I was having a miscarriage

I mean, I pied the piper, I put on a diaper

And sang out my spleen to a room full of teens

What do you mean this happened to me?

You can't put your hands on me

You don't know what my body has been through

I'm supposed to be safe now

I earned it

It's 2018 and I've realized nobody is safe long as she is alive

And every friend that I know has a story like mine

And the world tells me we should take it as a compliment

But then heroes like Ashley and Simone and Gabby, McKayla and Gaga, Rosario, Aly

Remind me this is the beginning, it is not the finale

And that's why we're here

And that's why we rally

It's Olympians and a medical resident and not one f***ing word from the man who is President

It's about closed doors and secrets and legs and stilettos from the Hollywood hills to the projects in ghettos

When babies are ripped from the arms of teen mothers and child brides cry globally under the covers

Who don't have a voice on the magazine covers

They tell us take cover

But we are not free until all of us are free

So love your neighbor, please treat her kindly

Ask her story and then shut up and listen

Black, Asian, poor, wealthy, trans, cis, Muslim, Christian

Listen, listen and then yell at the top of your lungs

Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues

For the people who had to grow up way too young

There is work to be done

There are songs to be sung

Lord knows there's a war to be won

Beth Fukumoto: 'Then she watched a bully win the presidency of the United States', Hawaii Women's March - 2017

21 January 2017, Women's March, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Rep Fukumoto was a member of the Republican party but was booed at the Convention for disapproving of Donald Trump. She has since left the party.

Today I'd like to talk to you about my niece. She's eight years old, and she's campaigned with me since she was two. She's come with me to all sorts of events. And, last summer when I stood up at my party's convention she watched as a ballroom full of a men and women tossed insults and booed me because instead of pledging to support my party's nominee I said I thought his remarks were racist and sexist and that they had no place in the Republican Party. 

Now, to that room full of people, I was a traitor, or a fake, or one of the many derogatory words I was called on social media afterward. To my niece, I had told the truth. Because little kids know right and wrong. 

We teach them that they're supposed to be nice and kind to everyone even when they're different. So, she didn't understand why people would be so mean to her aunt who stood on stage and said Donald Trump shouldn't say the things he says. 

We had to explain to her later, that sometimes people are angry and they don't know how to express it so they treat other people badly. We explained that sometimes people are bullies, but that you should insist that they treat people with respect. We told her that you always stand up to bullies no matter who they are. 

Then she watched a bully win the presidency of the United States. 

It doesn't matter to me who you voted for. People cast their votes for a lot of different reasons. But, no matter who your choice was, the fact remains the same. A man won the White House with anger and hate, and our kids watched it happen. Now, it's our jobs to make sure they watch us fight back. 

So what I'm going to ask you to do today is get involved. Testify at the Legislature, run for office, help on a campaign, but do it with kindness. Show our kids that everyone's voice matters, even when they believe the opposite thing you do. Teach them that everyone deserves respect. In the end, LOVE will always win!

Louis V Gutierrez: "If the new President comes for the Muslims, I will be a Muslim", speech to Congress about Donald Trump - 2017

10 January 2017, Congress, Washington D.C., USA

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you where I will not be on inauguration day.  I will not be here or outside at the inauguration ceremony.

I will be in Washington late that evening because the event I am going to is on January 21st.  It is the Women’s March on Washington.

You can get more information on Facebook which is how I heard about it.

Or I should say, how my wife Soraida heard about it.

I said to her a little after election day, I said, “You know honey, I don’t think I can go to DC and watch Donald Trump get sworn in,” and she said, “oh you’re going to Washington, just not for that” and she told me about the women’s march.

She said you and I are going together.

Now, I can already hear the phones ringing in my office with people calling to say, “Oh, you Democrats are sore losers and you just hate Republicans.”

No.  I went to two George Bush inaugurations and I work with Republicans all the time.  Just read Breitbart which seems to write an article anytime I even glance favorably at a Republican colleague.

But this is different.

I knew that George W. Bush and I would disagree on many issues from trade to health care to the war in Iraq, but I never thought George W. Bush was trying to make my own country hostile to me, my wife, my daughters and my grandson.  I never felt he was a threat to the nation I love so deeply and have served now for almost a quarter century.

The reason I am not going is that I cannot bring myself to justify morally or intellectually the immense power we are placing in that man’s hands. 

I could not look at my wife, my daughters or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended as if everything that candidate Donald Trump had said about The women, about The Latinos, or The Blacks, The Muslims or any of the other things he said in his speeches and Tweets – that any of that is OK or erased from my memory.

We all heard the tape when Donald Trump was bragging – bragging – about grabbing women by their private parts without their consent. 

It is something I can never un-hear.

Bragging to that guy on TV that he would grab women below the belt as a way of hitting on them.

Sorry.  That is never OK.

It is never just locker room talk.

It is offensive and, if he ever actually did it, it is criminal.

I hang out with Republicans - with Republican elected-officials…in an actual locker room in the Rayburn Building and if they ever started talking like that, I wouldn’t just walk away, I would tell them to their faces why they are wrong and I would not allow it to go unnoticed or be dismissed as normal or excusable.  I don’t know a Republican Member of this body who would let that type of comment just slide by as if it were OK.

So that’s why I will hold hands with my wife and march with the women on January 21st in Washington.

And that is why I am calling on all of my progressive allies to come march with the women as well.

If you care about a living wage, come join the women.  If you care about the environment, come join the march.

We know as a society, when women win, we all win, so I plan to be there

It is deeply personal and deeply patriotic to march, to make my opinions known by walking with my allies arm-in-arm.

I want to be able to look my two beautiful Latina daughters and my beautiful half-Puerto Rican/half-Mexican, 100% American grandson in the eye with a clear conscience.

When the new President denigrates Latinos or Mexicans or immigrants as drug-dealers and criminals, I want to be able to say I did not condone or allow that type of speech to go mainstream; That was not normalized on my watch.

Because the future President said the American-born children of immigrants were not capable of being American judges, I cannot sit there at his inauguration as if that is OK and I forgive him.

I am deeply honored to return to the U.S. Congress, and I want to thank the people of the Fourth District for the trust and confidence they have placed in me. 

My constituents knew when they voted for me that I would be a fighter and I cannot let them down.

If the new President comes for the Muslims, I will be a Muslim.

If they come for Planned Parenthood, I will stand with Planned Parenthood.

When they deny climate science, I will make my voice heard.

I will use whatever peaceful means available to make sure the words and actions of our new President do not become the new mainstream.

And that, Mr. Speaker, is why I will not be here for the inauguration and why I will be marching with women from across the country.