Triple J breakfast show host, comedian, and all round stand up guy, Matt Okine last night used his moment in the spotlight to shine a little light on gender inequality at the ARIA Awards. During his acceptance speech for Best Comedy Album, Okine made sure to point out a glaring omission he noticed in the list of nominees in his category:
“I’d feel bad if I didn’t make a point of something that’s sort of a little bit weird – I feel a little bit weird about it..I don’t think there were any women nominated at all in the comedy category…I didn’t feel great reading that list of people.”
Okine went on to point out the lack of female talent featured across the evening as a whole, and commented that he didn’t care if it got him trouble with the ABC or meant he was dropped off of next years guest list for Australian music’s night of nights. Fellow ABC host and female artist KLP took to Twitter with support, with plenty of others following suit today:
https://twitter.com/klpmusic/status/669770420942303232
Channel Ten has come under fire for omitting the speech from the television broadcast, with the broadcaster commenting that the comedy category was never going to be included in the show for the sake of brevity. Regardless, the speech has received widespread media coverage today.
After the speech Okine told media:
“Now I feel silly and judged about it … but I feel like, what am I supposed to do? Be passive about it? I think a lot of guys my age, you think you’re doing enough by not doing anything bad. I don’t hit women, I don’t discriminate.”
November 25th marked White Ribbon Day which is dedicated to raising awareness around domestic violence and made the comedian wonder if he was doing enough to further women’s issues. “David Pocock chains himself to a tree,” he said, “What am I doing? I’ve got to start doing something.”
That was certainly something. You can check out the full speech below.