Abuse of power is not new, not right and not easy to fix

Brittany Higgins has now made a formal complaint of rape to the AFP.

Picture this scene. A television newsroom in the late 90s. A much younger me was excited to have just started my dream job. I was convinced I was about to change the world, one local crime yarn at a time. In truth, I was the bottom of the food-chain but I didn’t care. I was in the arena. One morning, en route from the fax machine (yes, I’m that old) to my desk I was stopped by a senior colleague. He stood inches from my face and looked me straight in the eye, before his eyes travelled down to my chest, and back up again. He inquired, with elaborate language as to the authenticity of my assets. This is a G-rated paper so feel free to use your imagination.

I stared back, somewhat in shock but confirmed, coldly, that all my assets were factory originals. I held my ground, hissing at him … “If you ever speak to me like that again, I will rip off your f..king head and shove it down your vile neck.” Apologies for the language, but accuracy is important. I remember the dress I was wearing was navy blue linen and had an asymmetric neckline. I remember shaking, just a little, as I walked back to my desk after the exchange. I remember wondering had anyone heard, because the newsroom wasn’t empty.

In truth, over the past 30 years I’d only ever think about that day when allegations, such as those that have been made by political staffer Brittany Higgins, prompt a justifiable outcry and subsequent search for answers. Higgins has now made a formal complaint to the AFP. The minister she was working for at the time Linda Reynolds is on medical leave.

To be clear, I do not consider myself a victim in any sense of that word. But with the wisdom of age and passing of time I look back and wish I’d have known what to do. Like Higgins, I was a young woman at the start of a career I had worked very hard to get a toehold in. While ambitious, in my own way, I was terribly naive. I was on the bottom rung of a cutthroat ladder and didn’t want to say anything lest my career take a hit before it even got started, so I stayed mum and got on with it. Never breathed a word.

Mine is not a painful memory, but it is a telling one because looking back over a near 30-year career, it feels like we are in somewhat of a conversational revolving door when it comes to issues of this nature. How can we still be so one dimensional?

I want to put Higgins’s case to one side, and unpick this thread some more.

This isn’t a party-political problem. It is not just a workplace safety problem. Neither is it only about gender imbalance. And it most certainly is not only an issue faced by the political world.

It is all of them, for different reasons in different measure.

It is complex, nuanced and it is also fraught with the added complication of individual behaviours and individual circumstances. Ours is a culture that seeks simple, swift answers and in this sphere, there are none.

Broadly, this issue is about character. And process. And structure. Tangibles and intangibles.

To say this is an issue of male privilege or toxic masculinity is, frankly, an insult to every good man who finds this behaviour abhorrent and those men are in the majority. It ignores the truth that, in many cases, men get away with terrible behaviour because senior women who know what’s going on keep their mouths shut. They look the other way. In some cases, they are part of the cover-up.

Those who’ve sought to make this about the Coalition government, seeking to politicise and gain leverage should be ashamed and have rightly been called out this week.

Abuse of power can and does happen everywhere. It matters not if the kind of behaviour that we’re talking about happens in parliament, a newsroom, a classroom, a boardroom or the back storeroom.

Power is still power, whether it’s running the country or running the company shift roster.

Every workplace has a power dynamic. From the smallest to the largest and, in these sorts of things, as a colleague observed to me this week, it rarely works out well for the woman.

I’m not trying to explain things away, quite the contrary. I’m trying to bring truth to bear. I’m cautioning against falling shards from a shattering glass house as stones get flung about in blame.

The truth is simple but the answers, sadly, are not. If we don’t have an open enough mind to accept there are multiple factors at play, answers will remain elusive and the ineffective cycle of blame will continue.

Gemma Tognini is executive director of GT Communications.