Leave the politics aside, get serious about fixing things

By Monday, former ministerial staff member Brittany Higgins had been joined by three other women in making allegations against a former male colleague; three of sexual assault and one of sexual harassment. Ms Higgins has decided to take a formal complaint to the police about the alleged rape in March 2019. There is also a slew of official inquiries, notably into the workplace culture in our political capital and the question of who in the Prime Minister’s office knew what and when.

Much media coverage frames this as a political scandal, and in some ways it is inescapably political. The alleged rape of Ms Higgins took place in the office of the defence industry minister at the time, Linda Reynolds, and complainant and accused were political operatives. The way in which this was handled when Senator Reynolds was informed — and how the aftermath is dealt with now — may well have political implications. But the paramount concern should be for Ms Higgins and the other complainants as individuals entitled to every consideration and justice according to law, while the accused has a right to due process.

At the same time there are public interest questions. Might the alleged incident in 2020 involving a separate Liberal staff member have been preventable had there been different decisions in the case of Ms Higgins? Might other similar complaints not have arisen if there had been different rules, procedures and norms in the parliamentary workplace and influencing social life, especially in relation to safeguarding of young female ministerial staff? It’s totally legitimate for parliament and the media to scrutinise the structure and independence of the reviews initiated by Scott Morrison to maximise the likelihood that they will achieve the right results.

But these causes — of justice for individuals, of a parliamentary workplace that is truly collegial and respectful — are only set back by reckless politicisation of these allegations. Opposition Senate leader Penny Wong’s glibly crafted line that Mr Morrison has approached a rape claim as a “political problem”, not a criminal matter, is rather rich in light of the overheated courtroom rhetoric with which she probes the political process in the hope of implicating the Prime Minister’s office. On Monday in the Senate she gave her spiel an added partisan edge by name-checking November’s politically selective ABC Four Corners program, Inside the Canberra Bubble. Throwing stones in glass houses?

Nor did Senator Wong do the complainants any favours by using their stories to gee up a flighty political generalisation, asserting: “We know that at best Mr Morrison runs a government where the culture is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ when it comes to serious criminal allegations. And at worst Mr Morrison himself is part of the cover-up.” In Guardian Australia on Monday, Labor frontbencher Clare O’Neil indulged in a lazy, hashtag-level rant, telling readers “male entitlement” was so entrenched in parliament that men “strut the hallways, loll on couches, talk loudly and laugh raucously at the cafe, and take up more space in every part of the building”. This trivialises serious, potentially criminal, matters and is not the way to enlist most decent men in helping to address a problem of behaviour, standards and example.

The opposition quickly seized on the time-honoured cliches of a political cover-up, protesting it “beggars belief” the Prime Minister didn’t know of the Higgins allegations earlier, that the government must “come clean”, and so on. It’s certainly worth going back and reflecting on how the Reynolds office responded to Ms Higgins in distress, whether her allegations became more widely known within the government, and what decisions might have been made but were not. Let the chips fall where they may.

But the transparently partisan politics of the opposition and the social media outrage this feeds on are a monumental distraction. Official reviews into workplace culture should be sharply focused on what specific, practical changes are likely to make a difference, not a vague and rambling exercise in diversity consultant platitudes. The problem is difficult and demands a pragmatic and realistic approach. Junior ministerial staff and volunteers, especially young women, are potentially vulnerable. Some arrive as bedazzled idealists and get drawn into a pressured, artificially intimate work environment that blurs into alcohol-fuelled socialising. This may place older, more senior male staff in a position where the vast majority will be naturally protective but some will abuse this trust to turn predator. Alcohol can cloud issues of consent and memory, pressing a complaint of sexual assault is never easy, and an ambitious young political staff member may well fear being seen as a liability in a world where upside and winning are everything.

There must be sensible ways to reduce the risks, but the best way to find them is to get past the big emotive gestures and start to dig into the detail of workplace rules, procedures and norms. Ms Higgins put it well in her statement on Friday: “How ministerial and parliamentary staff are treated is a bipartisan issue that impacts staff from across the political spectrum and must be treated as such.”