The Victorian upper house MP Georgie Purcell has lashed Nine News in Melbourne on 30 January 2024, Monday for using an image edited to make her breasts look bigger and expose her midriff, which the network blamed on “automation by Photoshop”. It started to appear when she criticized the Victorian Government’s rejection of a duck hunting ban.
Ms. Purcell posted the original and altered images to social media, noting how her outfit had been edited.
The program’s news director, Hugh Nailon, apologized to the upper house Animal Justice Party MP on Tuesday for the “graphic error”, and blamed “automation by Photoshop”. But Adobe has cast doubt on Nine News’s claim about its software, after the network broadcast the image during Monday night’s bulletin.
Ms. Purcell is the youngest woman in the state’s parliament and has frequently called out the “constant sexualization and objectification” that women in Australian politics face that would never, ever happen to a male politician.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, who also appeared in the graphic last year said, “That’s no way to represent any woman, let alone a woman who holds a position in public office, represents a community and is in the public discourse every single day,”
Adobe’s spokesperson on the other hand told that any changes to that image would have required human intervention and approval.
In recent years, Australian politics more broadly has been grappling with what women say is a prevailing sexist culture.
A landmark report in 2021 – triggered by an alleged rape inside Australia’s Parliament House – found a third of employees in federal parliament had been sexually harassed.
