Grace Tame appears to be in need of rescuing, but not from her critics, the media, or any supposed conspiracies orchestrated by political or ideological adversaries.

Whenever she ventures into topics beyond the cause that initially elevated her as a significant public figure, she tends to exacerbate already challenging situations.

What started as a platform grounded in bravery has unfortunately devolved into a series of self-inflicted controversies.

The most recent incident serves as a glaring example: Tame’s assertion on ABC Radio that allegations of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 were ‘debunked’ and mere ‘propaganda’.

This statement came despite the United Nations finding sufficient evidence to support claims of rape and gang rape during the attacks, as well as firsthand accounts from several victims.

Such comments are not acts of fearless truth-telling but rather are reckless, dismissive, and dangerously misguided.

Tame rose to national prominence because Australians saw in her someone willing to say the unsayable about sexual abuse, institutional cowardice and the failure of powerful people to protect the vulnerable. 

It gave her a reservoir of public goodwill most activists can only dream of having.

Grace Tame said in an ABC Radio interview that the reports of sexual violence committed in the October 7 terror attacks in Israel were ‘propaganda’

But goodwill is not inexhaustible. The mistake Tame keeps making is to assume that because she was brave and effective on one issue, she’s therefore entitled to lecture the country on anything else, no matter how ill-judged, inflammatory or half-baked her interventions become.

She now sounds less like a serious advocate and more like someone addicted to the applause of the most hysterical people in the room.

With public prominence comes public responsibility. 

If you choose to opine on complex and explosive international issues, especially those involving terrorism, rape and ethnic hatred, you don’t get to toss around claims of ‘propaganda’ when the subject is women brutalised in the midst of a massacre. 

The pattern of Tame’s fall from grace is now impossible to ignore. She led chants to ‘globalise the intifada’ at a Sydney rally that turned violent.

Tame then claimed a ‘smear campaign’ was behind the loss of speaking engagements, when a mirror would have better identified the culprit.

Nike had already ended its partnership with her back in June last year after reviewing her social media posts on the Israel-Gaza war. 

What corporate would want to be affiliated with all of that bile?

Tame’s use of the phrase ‘globalise the intifada’ in front of thousands of Sydneysiders at a rally earlier this year was widely criticised 

It’s always tempting for public figures in Tame’s self-inflicted position to imagine themselves as persecuted truth tellers. It’s much harder and much rarer, however, for some like her to admit that people are recoiling because the things being said are appalling.

Tame keeps acting as though every backlash is proof of her virtue. Sometimes backlash is just backlash. That’s why the best thing Grace Tame could do now is shut up for a while.

Not forever, and not because she lacks the right to speak out. And certainly not because criticism should silence her. 

She has plainly lost the ability to distinguish between bluntness and wisdom. Every new interview becomes another opportunity to alienate people who once admired her.

Its own goal after own goal. Grace needs to be saved from herself before it’s too late. She sure has nothing to smile about courtesy of her latest rhetoric mess up.

Perhaps that’s what Albo intended when he described her as ‘difficult’ during that now notorious word association game on stage in Melbourne. 

He later said he had was referring to her having had a difficult life.

The tragedy in all this is that Grace did not need to become this. The unraveling has been spectacular. She had a real cause and a meaningful voice. She could have remained a formidable advocate on the issue that made her matter in the first place.

The former Australian of the Year claimed a ‘smear campaign’ was behind her losing a string of financially lucrative speaking gigs and not her outspoken opinions

She’s now even quit as CEO of the foundation named after her. Tame remains on the board, but the foundations latest financial filings reveal $180,000 in debt built up over the past two financial years. The foundations future viability is in question.

People who once listened to Tame on child sexual abuse and institutional betrayal now see a figure who can’t keep her foot out of her mouth, and each time she says the wrong thing she blames everyone other than herself.

It’s all such a tragedy.