Ex-politician Kate Ellis reflects on the treatment of women in parliament

In an exclusive interview, former politician Kate Ellis reveals she was sent rape and death threats as she reflects on the unfair treatment of women in parliament.

On the day I pick up the phone to talk to Kate Ellis, parliament is exploding. The Federal Government is aflame with not one but two rape scandals.

Attorney-General Christian Porter has just chokingly denied historical sexual-assault allegations and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has just been caught referring to a staffer who made a separate rape claim as a “lying cow”.

A more cynical politician would be quietly thrilled to be releasing a tell-all tale about sexism into such a perfect storm, but the former member for Adelaide instead feels guilty. How could she be whingeing about her treatment as an MP, she wonders out loud, when staffers and others have it so much worse?

“One Friday night I got an email from a bloke basically telling me I should go and kill myself.” (Picture: Nick Clayton)

Such self-effacement isn’t just rare in politics, it’s virtually unheard of. And it immediately makes you want to hear what Ellis has to say.

For what it’s worth, Ellis is no whinger. During her 13 years in parliament, including becoming the youngest-ever minister of the crown in 2007, she stoically – even cheerfully – endured everything from rape and death threats to being constantly told she was in the wrong place or that even if she was in the right one, it was only because she’d slept her way to get there.

It was only after she left politics at the last election that she thought: hang on, is that really normal?

“Once I got a little bit of distance and I guess saw how the real world operates, it just became increasingly apparent to me how out of step our parliament is – and the culture of our parliament is – with modern workplaces,” she tells Stellar.

“And once I’d had a chance to reflect on some of my experiences, I was curious to know whether that was just something that happened to me or whether all women in politics believe that they’re treated differently.”

“Once I got a little bit of distance and I guess saw how the real world operates, it just became increasingly apparent to me how out of step our parliament is.” (Picture: AAP/Lukas Coch)

The result of that curiosity is her irresistibly titled book Sex, Lies And Question Time, which – again, self-effacingly – is not as much about her as a swathe of female MPs from Pauline Hanson to Sarah Hanson-Young, and the experiences they had in Canberra. And they are both eye-opening and eye-watering.

Thanks to Ellis’s down-to-earth sensibility – she is a public-school girl and former checkout chick – the book is no indignant academic treatise. Instead, it simply seems to say: this is bullsh*t.

The insanity of it all came home, quite literally, when she was having a lovely evening with her husband, veteran newspaperman David Penberthy.

“One Friday night I got an email from a bloke basically telling me I should go and kill myself,” she says matter-of-factly.

“And I made the mistake of showing it to Dave, who went into a rage. I was kind of calming, saying, ‘We’re having a fun Friday night. We’re clearly in a better place than this bloke.’ He just couldn’t believe that was something we dealt with.”

“I think she’s a very tough person.” (Picture: Nick Clayton)

As a result, her default position became to not show him the nasty stuff. She was used to it; he was not. For Penberthy, it was something of a reversal of his combative skills. A brilliant and often biting journalist in his heyday, he now found himself the protective partner.

“There were times when Kate would be on the receiving end of rumours or sometimes abuse from constituents or random idiots on social media, and I’d get fired up about it,” he tells Stellar.

“As a journo, my default position is if you’re a public figure you have to accept the slings and arrows that come with public life. But I also think that everyone has to have an off switch. I think she’s a very tough person and I often felt there were things that happened and things that were said that were beyond the pale.”

Nor were such threats restricted to the online world: “I had a death threat once that was personally delivered to my doorstep when I was a single 30-something woman living on my own.”

And nor does she spare her own side of politics. While she thinks Labor is ahead of where the Liberals are now – largely because of greater female representation – when she first entered the political fray it was a very different story.

“I remember the first protest, the first rally that I went to as a uni student, was a union rally. And I walked in wanting to show my solidarity and immediately got squeezed on the arse.”

“I had a death threat once that was personally delivered to my doorstep when I was a single 30-something woman living on my own.” (Picture: Supplied)

With more amazement than malice, Ellis also explores the full political and media spectrum for other examples, including the experience of a certain One Nation leader and certain images published many years ago.

Meanwhile, far on the other side of politics, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young told her that the infamous barb about her sex life from David Leyonhjelm – for which the Federal Court recently awarded her $120,000 in damages – was in fact only one in a laundry list of shots in the Senate chamber itself.

“I didn’t understand that this was something she was dealing with on a prolonged basis; that every time she stood up in the parliament, men were just calling out the names of men that she was alleged to have slept with, or calling out what she was alleged to have done with them,” Ellis tells Stellar.

“You know, just gossip, rumours, smear. But it got to the point where she didn’t want to stand up in the parliament. She didn’t want to stand up and ask a question, even if it was in her portfolio. And she actually stopped going to Question Time sometimes because it was affecting her so greatly.”

And then there were the little things that, when they add up, aren’t so little anymore. Ellis had just turned 27 when she was elected as the MP for Adelaide at the 2004 election. There were countless rumours that she recalls – and I myself have heard – that she slept her way to get there.

Kate Ellis features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

In fact, she got there by beating an incumbent Liberal MP to win the seat in an election that the rest of Labor lost – and she held the seat with a greater margin right up until her retirement in 2019.

But when she came to claim her seat, well-meaning security guards told her she was in the wrong place. “I used to arrive at Parliament House and go through the MPs’ entrance, and they would constantly say: No, no, the staff go in over there,” she says.

“I think that contributed to a massive impostor syndrome. Like I started believing ‘What am I doing here? Should I really be here?’ You start questioning yourself when it’s constantly reinforced to you from everyone else that you’re different.”

The irony is that Ellis is different. The other irony is that there should be more like her.

Sex, Lies And Question Time by Kate Ellis (Hardie Grant Books, $32.99) is out tomorrow.

Originally published as Ex-politician Kate Ellis reflects on the treatment of women in parliament