A group of giant tampons danced in front of parliament house on Wednesday. No, really.
This ‘tampon tax’ thing is quickly becoming a bleeding nightmare for Prime Minister Tony Abbott. On Monday night his treasurer promised to lobby the states to have the GST removed from sanitary items live on national television and now he’s had a group of them camped out on his lawn. Tampons that is, not treasurers.
Bloody hell. It’s not easy being the Minister for Women these days.
Despite the pressure, Tones still hasn’t budged on the issue. Instead, he’s said removing the tax on tampons was certainly “not something that this Government has a plan to do,” adding it was a matter that fell under the jurisdiction of the states.
The debate has been flowing again thanks to Sydney University student Subeta Vimalarajah, who launched an online petition three weeks ago calling on the treasury to have the tax removed.
More on this: We need to axe the “tampon tax” because a tampon is not a bloody luxury item.
And it was she, along with protest group GetUp!, who took the fight to Parliament house on Wednesday morning.
Tampons in toe and armed with placards, their message to Tony was boldly printed on an a giant (and rather excellent) billboard behind them: “Mr Abbott, stop hiding from the tampon tax.”
Earlier in the week, Subeta answered a few questions about the campaign for us. She said she was unsurprised by the PM’s response.
“He hasn’t actually addressed the fundamental question of whether sanitary products are health goods yet,” she told Mamamia. “Hopefully some more pressure around the issue can push him to a proper response instead.”
This week, Mamamia Out Loud had advertising guru Dee Madigan on the panel. She called for a National WHITE PANTS day in solidarity of axing the tax. But of course. (Post continues after audio:)
Despite Abbott’s ambivalence, she said the campaign had been far more successful than she could have imagined. She also said she was grateful to Treasurer Joe Hockey for finally taking the issue on board.
“Of course, there has been a fair amount of euphemisms and awkward silences, but that is testament to the taboo we are trying to challenge. It’s great to be having a conversation about the tax, but it’s even better that this has opened up Australia to the reality of periods.
“We still have 3 states to win over and a Prime Minister. This issue has been talked about too much over the last decade with no result, I’m not stopping until we have a solution.”
Here she is, calling for one in Canberra.
Want more on this? Try these:
“Our government still has a women problem. But women aren’t the problem.”
“Yes, I use a menstrual cup. No, I’m not a weirdo.”
It’s one of the hardest parts of being a homeless woman. But it’s rarely discussed.
Top Comments
There is a good reason tampons are taxed, because when I was younger periods were an unmentionable topic, therefore few women would be unladylike enough to raise the topic, therefore the government could put any tax they liked on it because they knew that only a few feminists (who everyone else including a lot of women would dismiss as hair legged lesbians) would be disgusting enough to mention it let alone fight for it.
I do recall my own mother mentioning to me that about this tax and how unfair it was, but as a young woman I was too embarrassed to mention this topic to even close friends.
Anyway fast forward to now and it's a brave new world and women are bringing up a lot of supposedly unladylike topics, well in fact probably the young ones have no idea that these topics are meant to be unmentionable by the establishment. So it's nice that women have evolved to the point that they are speaking out and not allowing themselves to be kept in line anymore by antiquated ideas of what is allowed to be discussed.
Abbott cannot even say the word 'tampon', fat chance getting him to stop taxing them.