The activist group GetUp is

is denying that it did anything wrong when it targetted our local federal MP. 

It didn't? I beg to differ. Our MP is a woman. She is about to quit politics at the next election. She can no longer take the abuse which has been hurled at her. She has had enough of her office being targetted. She has had enough of the way in which most women are treated in parliament.

There is a television series, "No Place for a Woman", starring Penelope Keith in which she plays the role of a female member of parliament in the United Kingdom. I have only ever seen one episode of that series but I can well imagine that the material for it was plentiful. I don't know how it was dealt with after that first episode but I think I could have written a few episodes with which our local MP would agree.

Parliament is no place for a woman but it should be. It might be a much better place if there were more women in parliament. We need more women in parliament. We need a lot more women in parliament. 

At the same time we don't need some of the women who have entered politics. They are no better than some of them who behave in such abhorrent ways. 

I have known two female Senators well enough to call them friends. Friends in the sense that I have visited their homes, "had coffee" with them and been on social outings with them. I worked with both of them on projects, jointly and separately.

They also came from opposite sides of the political divide. Both of them were hard working, caring women who - outside the political chamber - were friendly with one another. They worked together on committees and their goals were very similar. They were Ministers and they had the respect of many. 

Yes, they were strong, determined and intelligent women but they were also organised and compassionate. It is those skills which are all too often lacking in male MPs. Like it or not women often need to be very well organised. They are often bringing up families as well as working. Success depends on setting priorities and getting things done. Unlike men they, even now, can't simply walk out the door in the morning. 

We all tend to forget that. While I am not in favour of infants being breast fed in the chambers of parliament I am aware that it there are things which make it more difficult for a woman to be an MP.  That being the case it should not be made even more difficult by activist groups like GetUp. 

GetUp claimed they had the right to target our MP because of her alleged views on certain topics. No, they didn't. They had the right to criticise her views, just as they had the right to criticise the views of any other candidate. That was not the problem. They went much further than that. They didn't just target her. They targetted her supporters too. 

I was stopped and abused in the street by a member of GetUp. I could not get past him. He threatened me and used the sort of language that no man should use. If I had been my MP and that sort of thing had been occurring on a daily basis then it would have been  very hard to take. I was shaken by it and all I had done was call out the GetUp's behaviour towards her. 

GetUp has attempted to justify all of this - to justify the unjustifiable. We are going to lose a woman who has, in many ways, been an excellent MP. At one stage she was touted as Minister material. I thought of the two Senators I have known. One is now deceased. The other, from  the opposite of the political divide - the side which the supposedly apolitical GetUp actually supports, made her views clear. That sort of behaviour  is unacceptable. It is why so few women are prepared to try and enter politics.

It isn't just the behaviour inside parliament which is causing the problems.