The Ernie Awards are a tongue-in-cheek series of awards given to men (and women!) for their sexist remarks. The winner is determined by how loud the Australian crowd boos or hisses.
This year, winner of the Ernie was pastor Danny Nulliah, who tried to cosmically link the deadly bushfires in Victoria with Australia’s apparent lapse of morals: “God’s conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.”
One of the winners of the Silver Ernie was radio host Kyle Sandilands, who, when learning on air that his fourteen year old interviewee had been raped when she was twelve, asked, “Right… is that the only experience you’ve had?”
And the winner of the Elaine award (for comments least helpful to the sisterhood) was right-wing columnist Miranda Devine: “Decades of androgynous feminism (sic) have stamped on chivalry, deriding men who opened doors or stood back for women as being sexist and patronising. It would have been better for women if feminism had appealed to men’s better natures.”
Another contender for the Elaine was Germaine Greer for her remark about Michelle Obama’s choice of fashion on election night, a dress with “an eye-burning red panel that splattered itself down the front like a geometrical haemorrhage.”
And my favourite? Ernie Ecob, the man the Ernies are named after, on women in the workforce: “Women aren’t welcome in the shearing sheds. They’re only after the sex.”
