Kate Ellis shouldn’t have had to resign

KATE ELLIS resigned from politics today, illustrating an unbearably painful truth and harsh reality about being a woman.

OPINION

IT SHOULDN’T be this hard. It cannot be allowed to remain this hard.

Just hours ago, high profile MP Kate Ellis announced her immediate resignation from Labor’s front bench. She will not recontest the seat of Adelaide, departing the federal parliament at the next election.

In true Kate Ellis form, she informed her beloved Adelaide constituency before she made the announcement in the media. “This has been a really hard decision for me,” she said in a letter arriving in voters’ letterboxes today. “In the end it is a decision that I have made for only one simple reason”.

“Whilst my son could travel with me as a baby, during the next term of parliament he will start school and have to stay in Adelaide. The simple truth is that I just cannot bear the thought of spending at least 20 weeks of every year away from him and the rest of my family.”

I worked in Kate’s ministerial office for almost four years and had a front-row seat to this brave, clever, funny and compassionate woman taking on the issues that mattered most to her.

The announcement today had me in floods of tears. As Kate’s friend, I am proud of her achievements and full of admiration for what has been a terribly difficult decision. As the fellow mother of a toddler — Kate’s son and mine were born less than two months apart — I am seething with anger.

Kate Ellis with her son Samuel at the AFL Women’s game between the Adelaide Crows and GWS Giants in February. Picture: Sam Wundke

The painful truth is that motherhood and politics don’t mix.

The parliament is still structured the way it was back in 1901 when the Australian states federated. That is, the parliament was designed for men and by men. Men who assumed parenting was the job of someone else. Modern public life remains utterly inconsistent with the realities of new motherhood and our country is the poorer for it.

Travelling to Canberra 20 weeks a year is the minimum requirement of a backbencher. To be a minister requires near-constant travel and a lifestyle that leaves politicians and their staff out-of-touch with voters, as well as their own families. One year while working in politics I took 242 flights. It’s an unimaginable travel load now that I am a mum.

I don’t mean to throw a pity party for politicians and their staff, not by any means. My point is that the realities of political life have an enormous impact on the kind of people who put their hands up for election.

Imagine how many women — and men — of great calibre and ability don’t seek a political career because of family reasons. Think how many brilliant minds and varied experiences our country’s parliament misses out on as a result.

I feel bad for Kate Ellis. It's another sign of how stacked in favour of men with wives the political system is.

— Stephanie Peatling (@srpeatling) March 9, 2017

wonderful Mum, terrific Labor MP with a wicked sense of humour, you will be missed Kate Ellis #bestwishes https://t.co/zSpB2qwvKV

— Geoffrey Payne (@geoffrey_payne) March 9, 2017

In Kate Ellis the country has had a childcare and early childhood education spokesman that actually has a child in childcare. A working mother who understood the mixture of guilt and freedom and stress and joy and financial pressures that childcare brings. What a novel idea, to have actual lived experience and understanding of the work you’re trying to do.

“But what about the men?” I hear you cry. “It’s not easy for them to leave their children behind either!” And of course, that’s true. The relentless nature of politics has taken its toll on many families but when it comes to who it impacts most, the proof is in the numbers.

In her brilliant book, The Wife Drought, Annabel Crabb revealed that in the 44th parliament, male politicians had an average of 2.1 children and females only 1.2. Crabb called it a “one-child penalty for women in federal politics”. Forty per cent of female members of the federal parliament were childless.

There is even a rough correlation between those female MPs without children and their physical proximity to Canberra. That is, if you’re a woman representing a Sydney seat, having kids is more manageable. The two most prominent Western Australian women politicians, Julie Bishop and Michaelia Cash, don’t have kids.

Many female politicians with young children make it work because they have a full time stay-at-home spouse. And while that sounds like a pretty good solution, it’s also a pretty rare one. The Australian Institute of Family Studies estimates a mere three per cent of families have a mum who works fulltime and a dad who stays at home.

Of course, it’s not just the parliament. A multitude of high-powered jobs remain utterly inconsistent with motherhood. While the past half-century has seen an enormous flow of women into workplaces, this hasn’t been matched by men taking up more caring and unpaid domestic duties.

We shouldn’t forget either that there is incredible privilege wrapped up in Kate Ellis’ ability to make this decision. For high income earning women, a period without a salary while they look for more flexible work is achievable. For women on low incomes or without a partner who also contributes financially to the household, quitting simply isn’t an option.

It’s time for Australia to radically rethink the way we value care and work. We cannot think that the stuff of gender equality is done simply because women now make up a significant proportion of the workforce. Equality requires that workplaces accept women and men as whole people, with lives, loves and responsibilities that exist outside the office.

The Australian parliament will be worse off without Kate Ellis in it; deprived of her wit, candour, commitment and policy nous. It will also be inherently less representative with one less working mother among its ranks.

It shouldn’t be this hard. It cannot be allowed to remain this hard. Otherwise women — and particularly mothers of young children — will remain a novelty and never a norm.

Something’s got to give.

Jamila Rizvi is a writer, presenter and news.com.au columnist. In a former role she worked for the Labor Party as a staffer for MP Kate Ellis. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.