How to clean up Canberra: gender parity is no quick fix

Politics attracts boorish people, but to suggest the problem is all male misses a crucial point.

You have likely heard some headline points about the Jenkins report into the workplace culture in our federal parliament. One in three people have experienced sexual harassment working in parliament. It’s a boy’s club, as vile as a teenage summer camp where naughty schoolboys think everyone is fair game. It’s about male power. We need gender equality to fix this toxic culture.

Without detracting from any of the dreadful findings about sexual harassment, the cultural failings in federal parliamentary workplaces are more complicated. Here is another layer of ­detail, from page 17 of the report, that has not been widely reported: “Men were more likely to perpetrate sexual harassment, while women were more likely to bully. People who bully or sexually harass people in (parliamentary workplaces) were likely to perpetrate these behaviours with multiple victims. For example, 66 per cent of people who have experienced bullying and 28 per cent of people who have ­experienced sexual harassment said the individual who bullied or harassed them had done the same thing to someone else.”

Bullying is also more prevalent than sexual harassment, with 37 per cent of those who responded claiming they had been bullied and 33 per cent of respondents claiming they had experienced sexual harassment.

In other words, it’s not just a wicked boy’s club. Some women are dreadful too, running bullying rackets. Even short of bullying, women can behave atrociously, including towards other women. Witness Greens senator Lidia Thorpe making this revolting slur against Liberal senator Hollie Hughes: “At least I keep my legs shut.” Hughes interpreted the comments as a slur against her autistic son, which Thorpe denied. The Greens senator was forced to apologise on Thursday.

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Applying some logic to the fact that both men and women behave badly, it is clear that ­gender parity won’t fix the horrible culture in Canberra.

The wish for more accurate reporting about the data collected in the Jenkins report is not to excuse the appalling behaviour by men in federal parliament. What has been swept under the carpet as “Canberra culture” and “politics” in recent years, and I mean very recent, is far worse than most of the behaviour that happened in other workplaces in the 1980s. There are boorish, entitled, deluded men who still play the old law of averages: flirt with and proposition enough women, and surely one will say yes. That dirty, rotten work culture needs a clean-out and a clean-up.

After the Jenkins report was handed down, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese called Peter Dutton a “boofhead” in the house, and Liberal senator David Van made growling sounds when Jacqui Lambie spoke in the Senate. No workplace should be like this.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner was always going to treat gender equality as the simplest solution to fixing Canberra’s workplace problems. She leads an industry that touts gender ­parity as its central message, ­regardless of whether it reflects women’s individual choices.

What federal parliament really needs more of is not more women but normal people, more decent people. More people who don’t sexually harass or bully or insult other people at work. This sounds delightfully simple, too.

Except for these monumental hurdles. The career path to parliament has become so narrow, the gene pool so shallow – university politics, work as a staffer or with a union – that it knocks normal people out of the running.

The nature of politics attracts a larger than healthy cohort of blowhards, people with an unnaturally thick hide, people who have spent years corralling, bossing and bullying people to get ahead. Too many have astounding levels of self-belief unmatched by their skint skill set.

In fact, only narcissistic politicians could possibly believe that they are more special than the rest of us when longitudinal evidence points to our lingering ­distrust and dislike of politicians and politics.

Am I breaking news by pointing out that most normal people would rather earn a living by stringing a thread through bookmarks than head to Canberra to work in politics? It’s a stinker of a career that demands you spend weeks on end away from family in a workplace full of uninspiring people, overflowing with factional stupidity, where people must toe a party line that is often more about cheap politics than good policy.

Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins. Picture: Getty

Jenkins set out 28 recommendations to clean up the culture in federal parliament. Some make eminent sense. First and foremost, leadership matters. Holding MPs to account, having clear standards, clear reporting systems, and clear reporting lines, where complaints can be made securely and safely, are all within the remit of our leaders right now.

The problem has been a dismal lack of leadership. When the Prime Minister said he had not read the detailed allegations of rape made against his senior minister Christian Porter, it signalled that the country’s el capo would rather have plausible deniability than confront allegations head on. That is part of the dead rot of politics. Most run a country mile from trouble or scandal for fear of having to show leadership and accountability.

Morrison has been a master of reactive, defensive politics. Calling for this report was not an act of forward leadership. It was forced on him after Brittany Higgins made allegations of sexual assault in a minister’s office. And after – as the PM admitted to us – his wife Jen had explained to him why an alleged rape in a minister’s office is a very grave issue.

That said, hundreds of other MPs, including previous prime ministers, have allowed this rotten culture to continue for far too many years. The danger is that having done so little for too long, the sentiment in parliament will swing like a pendulum in the other direction. The best of intentions can lead to lousy outcomes.

It would be rare for a bureaucrat conducting a review into an issue not to recommend more ­bureaucracy as the answer to the problem. Maybe an independent complaints body, as recommended by Jenkins, will help clean up the culture.

But like other runaway ­bureaucracies, we ought to be cognisant of how easily these bodies suffer from ideological bias, megalomaniac power urges and mission creep. A code of ­conduct (another Jenkins recommendation) – which is invariably drafted in vague language – can be arbitrary and unjust in its application. The enforcers of the code, keen to “do something” after a hiatus of parliament doing nothing, may fail to recognise the messy and contested nature of many claims of harassment and bullying and even rape.

As if to prove this real and present danger, there was something unsettling about some of the language in parliament this week. Understandably, many MPs rose to mention Higgins as the impetus for the Jenkins review. Mark Dreyfus, Labor’s opposition legal affairs spokesman, commended her “courageous revelations”. Zali Steggall praised her “incredible bravery to pull back the curtain on this sordid episode”. Tanya Plibersek mentioned Higgins’ “bravery and courage”. Kate Thwaites talked about what “we owe” to Higgins.

Yes, it takes tremendous courage for a junior staffer to make public allegations of rape in a minister’s office after a boozy night. But all MPs should make clear that these are just that – allegations. Higgins’ version will be contested by the man she has ­accused of rape, Bruce Lehrmann. And only a court of law can establish guilt or innocence of the accused.

Just as we should expect higher standards of behaviour from our MPs, we should also expect high standards of care and propriety around the language they use so that justice can take its rightful course when allegations are raised. As one astute reader wrote to me this week, “Let the cards fall where they may. None of us have a tolerance for what (Lehrmann) is accused of. Time will tell if he is guilty or not. But that is not the point. To celebrate Higgins’ truth prior to a conviction by a properly constituted court of law appears to be a travesty of justice that will do his case no good when he is called to ­explain his side of the story.”

The Jenkins report does not address the fact that there are often two sides to allegations of rape, sexual harassment and bullying. On Thursday, Rachelle Miller, the former staffer to Alan Tudge, entered the media spotlight again, keen to disclose more details of her past consensual sexual relationship with the minister. She accused him of being unkind, and “kicking” her while they lay naked in bed, as she spoke to a media producer about an interview request.

Rachelle Miller holds a press conference to accuse Alan Tudge of abuse during their affair, a claim he denies. Picture : NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Tudge, she claims, told her to “get the f..k out of his bed.” Tudge denies Miller’s latest claims. Could it have been a nudge by Tudge to get to work? Only they know the truth. Yet, weirdly, the PM has called an investigation. Is he hoping there was a witness in the hotel room to verify one account over another?

If we are to be deluged with contested minutiae of sexual relationships that ended badly, we need to recall how the law of physics propels a pendulum. Given the need to clean up the appalling workplace culture in Canberra politics, there is a need to ensure the pendulum comes to rest somewhere sensible. Right now, it shows signs of swinging towards a different form of injustice, one that fails to recognise the complexity of serious issues raised by the Jenkins report.