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- No, he didn’t apologise.
No, he didn’t apologise.
Grace Tame confirms Albanese has not apologised to her.
Crystal Andrews
March 01, 2026
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the most powerful man in the country, was asked to describe activist Grace Tame in one word he chose “difficult”. By now you have read and heard a lot of very good takes about the long history of world-changing women who have been branded as “difficult” by men in an effort to limit their impact. I want to focus on two elements that are not getting talked about as much.
Update: Albanese did not apologise to Grace Tame
After the immediate backlash, on Thursday morning Albanese was asked about the incident and gave his response: “Grace Tame you certainly can’t describe in one word. She has had a difficult life, and that was what I was referring to. And what Grace Tame has done is turn that difficult experience that she had into being a strong advocate for others. [Reporter: And you have a good relationship with her now?] I certainly have had. If there was any misinterpretation then I certainly apologise.”
Tame confirmed to Zee Feed that Albanese has not apologised directly to her. “He has my number!”
Look, the “difficult life” explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense anyway, but the fact that Albanese did not contact Tame to make a personal apology makes the excuse ring even more hollow.
He made a general, public apology to address the many women hurt by the public broadcast of his comment. That’s appropriate and makes sense, even if the apology itself leaves a lot to be desired.
But the "misinterpretation" resulted in a dig at one, specific person. By not apologising to her personally, we can only assume that Anthony Albanese doesn’t really care if he hurt Tame or not.
And if he doesn’t care that he hurt Tame, does he actually care that he hurt any of the women – young and old – that elected his government in a landslide last year? Or is our support now taken for granted (given that there is no major party alternative for women, and votes to the Greens typically flow to Labor anyway)?
PM participated in News Corp’s harassment of Tame
A significant detail has slid under the radar in this story. Where was Albanese playing this word association game? It was at the Future Victoria conference, co-hosted by the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and the Herald Sun, one of Rupert Murdoch’s worst Australian tabloids. Albanese was being interviewed on stage by Herald Sun editor Sam Weir, and the entire talk was broadcast on Sky News Australia (now, confusingly, called News24).
This was a News Corp Australia event.
Why was Grace Tame even mentioned in the “rapid fire” game? She is not Victorian, and she doesn’t live in Victoria. She wasn’t involved in any major news stories earlier this week. Her controversial “globalise the intifada” protest statement was already two weeks old and took place in Sydney.
But this is the same giant media organisation that has been harassing, undermining and vilifying Tame since the very beginning in its earliest reporting on her abuser, teacher pedophile Nicolaas Ockert Bester.
In 2023 Tame wrote an essay for Crikey about the experience of being targeted by the Murdoch media: ’The older I get, the younger I was’: What’s it like to be the subject of News Corp coverage?. It’s well worth the read, but this stands out in particular:
“If cover-up is part of the crime, then so was The Mercury’s coverage. It betrayed me, and by extension every survivor of child sexual abuse. It betrayed the whole community.
I became a pariah in my own hometown at just 16. At 18, I left the county. The life I led overseas for the better part of six years was less a quest to prove myself and more a relentless hustle to disprove the lasting shame that engulfed me. I am lucky to be here today. My life since 2021 starkly contrasts the gritty years following the abuse. There is a reason survivors of sexual abuse are so called; too many victims don’t make it.
To put it plainly, News Corp regularly engages in perpetrator tactics. It creates chaos and then positions itself as the saviour. Cosmetically, the context had changed from The Mercury front pages in 2011 to 2019, but I was still and always will be exploitation material in the eyes of the Murdoch press.”
News Corp is one of the biggest weapons of patriarchy, white supremacy and elite control in the country (and the world). After Tame won Australian of the Year, its efforts to undermine her voice have only intensified, as it does any and all critics of the patriarchy, white supremacy and elite control that it aims to normalise. All of this, despite ironically running the very campaign – #LetHerSpeak, led by journalist Nina Funnell – that ultimately launched Tame onto the national stage in the first place.
By smirking as he took a dig at Tame on stage, the Prime Minister was also participating in News Corp’s harassment of a survivor of child sexual abuse. He’s laughing along with the bullies as they attack a victim. It’s a billion-dollar international media company and the Prime Minister ganging up on one 31-year-old woman.
This is the so-called ‘leader’ that says he wants to improve the country for vulnerable people of all kinds. He tells us that debate and discourse should be respectful.
If he’s this quick to abandon his own principles just to get a cheap laugh at the expense of a young Autistic woman who survived horrific abuse, without so much as an apology to her… why the fuck should anyone in this country believe he’d stick to his principles for their benefit?