Beneath his notice
Today we learn that women’s safety is a niche issue that the bosses can’t be bothered to notice.
Premier Peter Malinauskas is resisting pressure to ban transgender women from female prisons in South Australia, labelling it a “niche issue” behind reducing reoffending and indigenous incarceration rates.
In an interview with The Advertiser, Mr Malinauskas said he had “not turned my mind to our policy pertaining to trans prisoners”. Mr Malinauskas repeated his early 2023 definition of a woman as “an adult female”, adding he would not characterise as “the number one priority” the issue of transgender women in female prisons.
Dude. It doesn’t need to be the number one priority. Saying it’s not the number one priority is not a reason to ignore it. I think it’s pretty much baked into your job that you have to deal with a lot of things, and that you don’t get to shelve everything that’s not The One Most Important Priority.
Also, it’s not cute to treat the tiny trivial matter of women’s safety as the equivalent of saving a half-eaten piece of toast when the house is on fire. Women’s safety is not in fact a trivial matter.
The Northern Territory this week became the first Australian jurisdiction to prevent transgender women being detained in female prisons and Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has challenged others to follow.
But Mr Malinauskas said: “When it comes to corrections, the government’s policy focuses on reducing recidivism. We’ve also got an interest in trying to tackle the overrepresentation of indigenous people in incarceration. As Premier of this state, I can honestly say I have not turned my mind to our policy pertaining to trans prisoners.”
In other words you can honestly say you don’t give a shit about women’s safety.
It’s not as if he has to do anything but make the decision to do it. But he doesn’t want to be seen to be making the decision.
Malinauskas is in fact, my state Premier, so this feels personal, even though I’ve never been to jail.
I take issue with this: “ adding he would not characterise as “the number one priority” the issue of transgender women in female prisons”.
The persistent magical take on priorities. It is apparently simultaneously so low a priority that it need not be given any thought, while also such a high and urgent priority that they must turn prison policy upside down over it.
Let’s be honest, shall we? It is not a high priority to record on official documents what convicted prisoners think of their gender. It is not a high priority to transfer male prisoners to female prisons based on the requests of those same male prisoners. It is not a high priority to ensure that male prisoners have easy, unimpeded access to female prisoners.
However, from his actions, we can conclude that things not on his priority list are: the safety of female prisoners, the safety of female prison staff, or the risk of being sued by either of the former for exposing them completely unnecessarily to unacceptable and avoidable risks.
[…] a comment by Arcadia on Beneath his […]
Arcadia, I lived in Adelaide for three years, and although I made some good friends there, I must admit that it didn’t seem a place where women were really regarded as equal to men. I got the impression that women were tolerated rather than welcome in many of the places I worked (agency postie).