‘Spare me the condescension, old man’: Grace Tame dismisses PM’s apology

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame has dismissed an attempted apology from Anthony Albanese as condescending, after the prime minister claimed that by labelling her as “difficult” he had meant the prominent activist had had a difficult life.

“Dude’s quoting Scott [Morrison] now!!! ‘She’s had a difficult life’… Spare me the condescension, old man. We all know what you meant. A badge of honour anyway. A confession that I’ve ruffled him,” Tame said on social media.

The prime minister was forced to backtrack on the comment he made at a News Corp conference on Wednesday after Tame’s supporters rallied to her defence, calling him a “misogynist” in social media posts that she then shared on her own Instagram account.

Tame compared Albanese’s response to former prime minister Scott Morrison, who she had criticised for failing to stamp out sexual abuse in politics, while photographs of her refusing to smile next to him at a  ceremony at The Lodge went viral.

Afterwards, Morrison brushed off the encounter and said Tame had “had a terrible life ordeal”.

“Both men, when called out for their behaviour towards me, have used ‘she’s had a difficult life’ as a condescending justification. Get some new material boys,” she wrote on her Instagram page.

Albanese emerged from a visit to a Melbourne endometriosis clinic on Thursday, where he was not scheduled to make comments, to praise Tame’s advocacy work following online backlash. The prime minister said he had had a good relationship with the former Australian of the Year and that “if there was any misinterpretation, then I certainly apologise”.

“I was asked to describe people in one word, and Grace Tame you certainly can’t describe in one word,” he said.

“She has had a difficult life, and that was what I was referring to. And what Grace Tame has done is to turn that difficult experience that she had into being a strong advocate for others, which is why she received, quite rightly, the Australian of the Year award.”

The prime minister called Tame “difficult” during a word-association game on Wednesday in which he also called ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor a “grub”. He did not stick to the one-word rule for all his answers, saying he could not do so for One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, but that he was “looking forward to the Barnaby Joyce versus Pauline Hanson, you know it’s coming”.

Shadow minister for women Melissa McIntosh said she “cringed inside” when she heard the word Albanese had used to describe Tame.

“Women get told we’re difficult a lot. We’re difficult if we put ourselves forward … Women hear it when they are experiencing domestic violence issues, they get told that,” she said on ABC TV.

McIntosh added that the “prime minister shouldn’t have used that word” and that if Tame did not accept the apology, “he should sort it out with her”.

Deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi said Albanese’s backtrack was not a proper apology.

“The PM should stop appeasing the Murdoch media, have the guts to admit what he said was just wrong and genuinely apologise, instead of issuing a wishy-washy, condescending non-apology,” the senator said.

“For the prime minister to call Grace Tame ‘difficult’ is disgraceful.”

Former leader of the Democrats and senator, Natasha Stott Despoja, shared an image of herself and Tame on Instagram with the caption: “Here’s to difficult women”.

Tame had shared a series of posts on Thursday morning that attacked Albanese for his comment.

“‘Difficult’ is the misogynist’s code for a woman who won’t comply. History tends to call her courageous,” abuse survivor Harrison James wrote.

Tame was awarded Australian of the Year in 2021 for fighting to overturn Tasmania’s laws that gagged abuse victims after she was groomed and abused from the age of 15 by her 58-year-old maths teacher.

Tame has since drawn criticism for her pro-Palestinian advocacy, and earlier this month, she led chants at a protest to “globalise the intifada”, a phrase the NSW Labor government is planning to ban.

Joyce called for her to be stripped of her Australian of the Year title, and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor called on the prime minister to condemn the remarks.

While the prime minister praised Tame’s activism on Thursday, he added that he “disagreed” with the language she used at the demonstration against Israel President Isaac Herzog’s visit.

“So that’s why it’s impossible to describe people in one word, and that wasn’t meant to be taken that way,” he said.

Tame did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2024, the prime minister refused to apologise to an advocate who organised a protest against domestic violence over a dispute about whether he lied about being allowed to speak.

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