Vikki Campion: Why the bonk ban doesn’t protect anyone

After her relationship with Barnaby Joyce became public, the parliament initiated the ‘bonk ban’. But Vikki Campion says it doesn’t help politicians or staffers.

This dogma that ministers, usually older men, in relationships with ministerial staff, usually younger women, immediately equates to sexual harassment is detrimental to the female cause.

While no woman should be subjected to repeated ogling by their male bosses, we get nowhere victimising ourselves as prey, unable to decline an unwanted advance or handle a tough conversation, especially in a combative game like politics.

Sexual harassment should be reported as soon as it occurs.

In parliament, that means to a staff assistance officer, employee assistance program or to an advice and support director, not to a Greens Senator in a pub for her to relay your story on the national broadcaster three years later without your consent.

Your parliament reflects your society and in society, marriages fail – even Alfred Kinsey’s research of conservative America showed 50 per cent of husbands and about 26 per cent of wives cheat.

Infidelity is not illegal here or with most of our trading partners — asides from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan where it’s punishable by death to women, usually stoning.

In Australia, punishment is just a good old-fashioned public shaming.

Vikki Campion and Barnaby Joyce’s relationship instigated the ‘bonk ban’. Picture: Channel 7

In parliament, rumours whether true or not, do lasting damage to the staffer when the whisper begins and to the office holder when they are exposed to be true.

Nearly three years ago, after my relationship with Barnaby Joyce became public, the parliament was bestowed with the gloriously nicknamed “bonk ban”.

But let’s face it, it’s not really a bonk ban at all because ministers are only banned from sleeping with their own staff while they are free to sleep with the staff of 29 other ministers, no matter how junior, in their workplace.

Under the bonk ban, you can bonk your electorate staff, you can bonk other ministers’ staff, you can bonk opposition members’ staff, you can bonk the maintenance staff and you can bonk senate staff — you can bonk everyone but your own ministerial staff — because apparently that’s where the power imbalance lies.

If power imbalances were the problem, the code of conduct change should have been extended from all federal members and senators to all parliamentary employees, as well as senior advisers with anyone their junior.

But this would result in a considerable chunk of parliamentary talent losing their jobs.

You don’t have to read too many Mills and Boon novels to know that a minister is not going to resign to have an affair. Real life is messy. Love does not neatly fit on bureaucratic paperwork with a formal start date.

Alan Tudge at the 2017 Mid-Winter Ball with his Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller, who he was having an affair with.

But it’s not a woman-only problem. There are just as many men who have been frozen out of Parliament House after relations soured with their married minister bosses – although they have been responsible for many less pregnancies. I don’t agree with the narrative this week that Parliament House is only toxic and discriminatory for women who work here, it’s can be just as awful to men.

There are horrendous bullying allegations from men recently cut from the most senior offices in the country, who avoid media attention because to court it will mean they will likely never work again.

This is not acceptable either.

If you have an affair with someone more senior in any other job, you can go elsewhere and get a new job, but politics blackballs you.

Rachelle Miller shouldn’t have lost her career, Vikki Campion writes. Picture: ABC

Hearing Minister Alan Tudge’s ex-girlfriend Rachelle Miller’s story of being frozen out and dumped mirrored my own situation in which I lost the career I loved. I now consider myself lucky to have a casual role. Miller deserves her career back.

Since the exposé of my pregnancy, two other highly-skilled women have been bullied to near suicide following allegations of affairs with their ministers, all of which were untrue.

The problem is these incidences encourage more rumour mongering and hurts the women at the centre of the storm.

Would anyone in the private sector have their desk searched, and be cross-examined about antidepressants found inside? Would your iPad be confiscated and scoured? Records of your work-issued phone disseminated amongst other staff? Flight details and motel bookings shared with others? Private details leaked to media? My private sector friends tell me no.

To make the adult choice to have an affair and dealing with the consequences of that consensual relationship is one thing, but it is the bullying that follows once the secret is out is where the real injustice lies.

There are many veterans of affairs who have never been outed because of the trauma it would cause to the staffer. Make no mistake, the bullying by colleagues can be cruel and relentless and almost impossible to withstand.

And that’s why the truth of the matter is the bonk ban, as it stands, doesn’t protect anyone.

MORE OPINION:

As Barnaby’s partner I know what it’s like to take a risk for love

Be wary of the ‘patron saint of 2020 plague’