No culture more destructive than a culture of self

We don’t want to live in a society where our Parliament House is no better than an 1980s frat house. Picture: Getty

There’s something to be said for stopping to watch and wait, for considered, focused observation, especially when there is so much bedlam, so much chaos that all you hear is noise. The Kipling approach, perhaps. Case in point, the past few weeks.

This has been a month like few others in recent political history. I say recent because if we are going to be honest (and we must be) what we have seen unearthed — namely allegations of sexual assault, revelations of terrible and, frankly, plain off behaviour by some political staff — none of this is new. This behaviour is not unique to the current government. This government just happens to have had the boil lanced on its watch.

Earlier this month, when thousands of women protested at the March 4 Justice, much was said about it being a tipping point, a moment of reckoning for every woman in Australia. That we are all enraged, exhausted and “sick of this shit”.

No doubt many are. Many, but not all. Oh, don’t get me wrong. None of it is OK but as a woman do I see what’s going on solely through a paradigm of gender? Not a chance. To do so is to miss the underlying truth.

This is not a day of reckoning just for women. It is a moment of reckoning for all of us who vote and who trust that governments will get on with the business of governing. The reason is simple. Somewhere along the road, we have lost our way. Somewhere along the road, being in parliament as an elected member or a member of staff has gone from being about the betterment of others to the advancement of self.

Federal Minister Alan Tudge at the Mid-Winter Ball in the company of Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller, with whom he was having an affair with.

I’m convinced that everything we are seeing and have seen come out in recent weeks and months is the fruit of this slow shift across time. An environment in which sexual harassment and worse apparently have become entrenched, one that has become so disconnected from any kind of reality, an environment that is so obscenely obsessed with itself and with party politics can flourish only when the people in the joint lose sight of why they’re there.

There is no culture more destructive than a culture of self. No focus more distorted. Anything and anyone that get in the way are inevitably collateral damage.

That’s why this isn’t just about how women are or aren’t treated in Parliament House and politics more broadly. That is just one symptom of a deeper, more embedded culture that must change.

I don’t say this as a political observation. I say it as a business owner, as an employer, someone who has been in business for close to two decades. As someone with a mortgage. Someone who, like many of you, has had their share of life’s knocks and pulled herself back up from them. Someone who I suspect is no orphan in being fed up with hearing politicians talk about other politicians. Fed up with the constant leaking, one against the other, inter and intra party. The time wasting. The arrogant navel gazing that presumes we mere mortals care about such things.

Here’s the tip. We don’t. And here’s the reminder. You lot work for us. The fact it bears reminding? That makes me rage. I’ve had enough of reading with demoralising regularity how the people who I expect to formulate policy, to work on my behalf for the betterment of all Australians, are pissing about on my dime. You work for me. You work for us. For my neighbours. For the people with whom I agree with and those whose politics I oppose.

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming - in strife this week for trolling two women online - chugs a beer while doing a hand stand.

This mess, like a toddler’s dinner strewn across the kitchen floor, is years, decades in the making. Scott Morrison is the one with the unenviable task of cleaning it up. He must decide if he’s going to be the lion or the lamb. But is he personally responsible for behaviours that have been allowed to take hold like mould? Only a partisan fool would say so and boy are there plenty.

To those on the other side right now, breathlessly trying to score points, careful what you wish for. The hubris of those trying to make this about politics, as if where we are today hasn’t been decades in gestation.

There is always a reckoning and it feels to me like we’re in the middle of one. And despite my anger, I’m hopeful and expectant. I don’t want to live in a society where our Parliament House is no better than an 1980s frat house, where what’s done in the dark is swept under the carpet. I am hopeful, though, because nothing disinfects like sunlight, and the temperature has started to rise.

Gemma Tognini is executive director of GT Communications.