In her words, humiliated by the Prime Minister over the Cartier watches saga and bullied by the Chair of Australia Post. She was "unlawfully" stood aside "under public direction of the Prime Minister".

It was from the dispatch box at Parliament House, no less, that the hounding began.

Remember it was a "shocked and appalled" Scott Morrison who raged and demanded that Ms Holgate should stand aside over her decision to purchase four $20,000 Cartier watches for employees in 2018 and "if she doesn't wish to do that, she can go."

Her actions, two years before COVID-19 emerged and to say thanks for hard work landing a hugely lucrative $220 million Bank@Post deal, were described by the Prime Minister as not passing the "pub test".

She said he was "not briefed properly", but still off he went.

"The pub test I was being judged against was handing out gold watches in the middle of a crisis, that's not what happened," Ms Holgate said.

"I was hung in Parliament, humiliated, not just hung, run over by a bus and reversed again," she told the Senate inquiry on Tuesday.

"I was depicted as a prostitute ... humiliated."

There is dispute over whether the government - through Communications Minister Paul Fletcher - formally instructed the Australia Post chair Lucio Di Bartolomeo to stand Ms Holgate aside. Mr Fletcher certainly called Mr Di Bartolomeo about Ms Holgate before the Prime Minister tore into her.

However, Ms Holgate's account of events is clear. And she has lived through what she called a "hell" and has been suicidal.

But she is not accepting her lot.

Dressed in the stark white of the suffragette movement - much as Britney Higgins had been on the lawns outside the Parliament several weeks ago - she has made her first public comments on the fiasco calling for Mr Di Bartolomeo to resign, claiming he fabricated evidence and lied in relation to conversations between the two.

"The simple truth is, I was bullied out of my job," she told the hearing.

"But I'm still here and I'm stronger for surviving it."

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Whether someone acted illegally would ultimately be for the courts to decide, but the treatment of Ms Holgate appears to have failed the greater test of 2021.

The gender benchmark question is would this happen to a man?

Christine Holgate herself says no.

She sees the difference in treatment between what has happened to her and the survival of the Cabinet ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter over allegations first raised on Four Corners last year.

"Do I believe it's partially a gender issue? You're absolutely right I do ... do I believe the real problem here is bullying and harassment and abuse of power? You're absolutely right I do."

For his part, Australia Post chair Lucio Di Bartolomeo's response was a study in contradictions.

Ms Holgate was valued and highly effective but badly treated.

She was "treated abysmally", however, "I don't believe Australia Post owes her an apology, but I do believe she has been badly treated."

Ms Holgate may not be Australia Post's CEO anymore, but she is not going anywhere. Nor is the broader issue of the unequal treatment, bullying and harassment that women face in the work, which the Morrison government has belatedly realised and is scrambling to respond to.

The Prime Minister may instinctively want to wait this one out, but voters' patience on gender politics wore out a long time ago. At the very least, Ms Holgate deserves a proper apology - but she shouldn't hold her breath for that, either.

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