“I had my 80-year-old mother ringing my daughters saying ‘is your mother going to lose her job’ because I’m being attacked,” Ms Landry said.
She said she would not be bullied out of Parliament but found the abusive comments,which were posted by Facebook users on community groups and state Labor MPs’ pages,“soul-destroying”.
Ms Landry’s office captured some comments,which ranged from calls for her to be fired to a suggestion she would have liked someone to masturbate on her desk. The comments were then re-posted on her own page to call them out and attack what she said was hypocrisy in Labor.
The posts relate to an interview on Tuesday morning when Ms Landry was asked by reporters about her reaction to a video of aCoalition staffer masturbating on the desk of a female MP and his subsequent sacking after Channel Ten made it public.
In her comments,Ms Landry said she abhorred the man’s actions but added she felt bad for him,which she clarified later was because she did not want to join the attack on someone in a “dark place” who was at risk of mental anguish or self-harm.
There is anger in Labor too. Following the decision last week by several federal Labor MPs including Ged Kearney and Anne Aly to recount the gendered abuse they had received,Queensland state Labor MPs this week called for an end to social media trolling in a parliamentary motion.
“Why would women come forward and tell their stories when the harassment online is so appalling?,” Labor health minister Yvette D’Ath said.