Do Labor, and the left, have a women problem of their own?

Remember when Labor was the party that stood for taking women and their complaints about bad behaviour in the workplace seriously, asks JAMES MORROW

• Marles’ chief of staff launches legal action

Remember when Labor was the party that stood for taking women and their complaints about bad behaviour in the workplace seriously?

When it was the Liberals, under the government of Scott Morrison and in the era of the Brittany Higgins case, who were portrayed as unfeeling, uncaring oafs who had to have their wives set them straight?

Well, that was then, this is now.

Labor is, for the moment, in power, and it seems they have some workplace issues of their own.

The allegations by Jo Tarnawsky, deputy prime minister Richard Marles’ ex-chief of staff, that she was bullied in the office (though not, it must be made clear, by Marles himself) and denied fair process have left Labor exposed to charges that they are fair weather champions of change.

Richard Marles’ former chief of staff Jo Tarnawsky at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / David Beach

Bringing her case before the media again on Monday, Tarnawsky laid the boot into Labor and the prime minister.

“As far as I know, there has been no investigation into the behaviours I reported, nor regarding the actions taken by the Deputy Prime Minister against me,” she said.

Richard Marles (left), Anthony Albanese (second left) with Senator Kristina Keneally and Senator Penny Wong (right) outside Parliament House on March 15, 2021 at a march against gendered violence. Picture: Getty Images

“Not a single member of the government has reached out to check on my wellbeing.”

“Three weeks ago I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to intervene and to hold the Deputy Prime Minister to account for the way that I had been treated.

“The Prime Minister has not responded.”

Oof.

Again, let’s go back to what the prime minister said when, amid the rush to blow up Scott Morrison’s premiership, the review into parliamentary workplaces was handed down.

The then-opposition leader Albanese said that everyone had to “walk the talk.”

“No-one deserves to feel unsafe or disrespected in any workplace, let alone our national parliament. Let us be the example for Australia that the national parliament ought to be,” he said.

Richard Marles was right there every step of the way.

“I think there is movement in relation to behaviour within the parliament here, and that’s really important,” he told a media scrum.

“This is a place which should set the standard, as the Jenkins report says.”

This double standard, by the way, is nothing new on the left.

For all the panic over Donald Trump, Republican bro culture, and the right’s allegedly Neanderthal treatment of American women, the left is very forgiving of its own side.

These are the people who went to the wall defending Bill Clinton for a relationship with a White House intern (talk about a power imbalance!) and treated the late Ted Kennedy as a secular saint despite a lifetime spent casually and drunkenly abusing young women.

But because in the left’s political calculus they seem themselves as being on the side of the angels, when it happens on their side the alleged or proven mistreatment of women can be forgiven because they believe there is something bigger at stake.