Tom Minear: Higgins’ story highlights a system doomed to fail

When a young woman is raped in a dark street, politicians are immediately tough on crime. So why is it different when it happens in their workplace?

Brittany Higgins.

Parliament House looks like it should be the safest workplace in the country.

The home of our democracy is a fortress surrounded by steel fences and bollards, with metal detectors at the entrances, and guards and police officers around almost every corner.

Late one night in 2019, government staffer Brittany Higgins passed through all these layers of security on her way into the ministerial wing, the most secure part of the building where the Prime Minister works. That’s where she was allegedly raped by her colleague.

Higgins’ story, which she courageously told this week, has distressed and horrified those who work at the scene of the alleged crime. The uncomfortable truth is that, for many, it was not entirely surprising.

Parliament House is unlike any other workplace. It is a sprawling series of fiefdoms, with thousands of staff divided into private offices controlled by powerful politicians, advisers and bureaucrats.

Working behind parliament’s many closed doors can be both exhilarating and frightening. Politics is an intense, relentless business, and while some people treat their colleagues with respect and care, others are notoriously rude, insensitive and unkind.

Women are particularly victimised. Female MPs, staffers and journalists all have stories of inappropriate comments, leering, sexualised jokes, unwelcome contact and unwanted invitations.

Brittany Higgins.

What happened to Higgins may be an extreme, but it is the endpoint of a broken workplace culture. To understand how this has festered for so long — and how to fix it — you need to understand how instances of harassment and misconduct are dealt with in parliament.

In most businesses, a victim lodges a complaint with HR. In an MP’s office, a victim has essentially two options: talk to that MP, their boss, or contact the Department of Finance. Both are flawed.

In Higgins’s case, the incident was dealt with by her employer at the time, defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, because her after-hours office access was flagged as a security issue.

Higgins says she felt like a “political problem” for the minister and her chief of staff, who were just “ticking a box” when they said she could go to the police.

Compounding her trauma, this conversation happened in the office where the alleged rape occurred.

In apologising to Higgins this week, Reynolds said she “truly believed” she was doing everything she could to support her staffer, and that her only intention was to “empower Brittany and let her determine the course of her own situation”.

That may be true. But it is no wonder Higgins felt mistreated, because the process itself was doomed to fail.

Being a parliamentarian doesn’t require specific qualifications. MPs with no management or HR experience are responsible for hiring, caring for and firing their staff.

It is naive to expect them – even if they are willing to put the wellbeing of their staff above their own political fortunes – to properly handle a situation like the alleged rape of Higgins.

Indeed, stories abound of other women who were demoted, shifted or forced to leave after workplace incidents, because the perpetrator was the MP who employed them.

The other option for victims, contacting the Department of Finance, is seen as a waste of time because it rarely leads to action. If parliamentarians are to blame, the department is powerless.

Linda Reynolds apologises to former staffer Brittany Higgins in the Senate chamber.

Scott Morrison has been under intense pressure this week to explain what he and his office knew of what happened to Higgins.

These are important questions – some critics suspect a cover-up, while others are stunned that the Prime Minister says he was not told.

The truth matters, particularly for Higgins. But it is hard not to wonder whether involving yet another politician — and the nation’s most powerful one at that — in the direct response to an individual case would actually improve the outcome for the victim.

The mechanism for handling complaints must be overhauled, and as Higgins says, it requires an independent office properly equipped with support services, along with clear accountability processes in political parties.

Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese seem open to that. It is about time they stepped up.

For too long, too many politicians have been all talk and no action. Indeed, many senior figures knew about the alleged rape of Higgins, and instead of supporting her and fixing the system that failed her it was left to the traumatised staffer to go public and demand change.

Of course, fixing the system will mean little without a cultural shift.

Morrison has been chastised for only apologising to Higgins and ordering a review after speaking to his wife, who told him: “You have to think about this as a father first. What would you want to happen if it were our girls?”

This is a natural way many of us seek to comprehend such trauma. But it should not have taken that “clarifying” discussion to snap the PM into action.

When a young woman is raped in a dark street, politicians are immediately tough on crime, talking about bail laws and CCTV cameras and misogynistic attitudes.

Why is it different when it happens in their workplace?

Tom Minear is Herald Sun national politics editor