Posted by Blogger Name. Category:
"I'm sorry for being a man"
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Apology
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Comments of the Day
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David Cunliffe
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Labour Party
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Political management
David Cunliffe's apology "for being a man" has stolen the media limelight this afternoon. TV, radio and news websites are all reporting the apology, putting it in context. Here's Stuff's view on it:
Labour leader David Cunliffe has apologised at a Women's Refuge symposium for being a man and pledged to a invest an extra $60 million in family violence services.
Speaking to a room of mostly women in Auckland today, Cunliffe spoke of the "bullshit, deep-seated sexism" still prevalent in New Zealand.
"It needs to stop," he said .
"I don't often say it - I'm sorry for being a man," Cunliffe said, "because family and sexual violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men."
The symposium was held in response to the Government's newly announced initiatives aiming to curb family violence in New Zealand.
The Stuff story has generated plenty of activity in its comments section, and to be fair, not much of it will please the apologetic Labour leader. But this comment stood out, from the 164 comments left so far:
Peter S is dead right; this is a dreadful blunder for a man who has been in politics for 15 years now, and ought to know better.
And then there's this string of consecutive comments:
We wholly expected the start of Labour's election-year congress today to be overshadowed by some kind on negative story. What we didn't expect would be the leader of the Labour Party becoming the negative story himself. This is appallingly bad political management by David Cunliffe.
