Scott Morrison out of his depth in this X-rated Animal House

If Scott Morrison truly believes that quotas will deliver lasting cultural change, he should stand aside for a Liberal woman.

It’s true that women might be less likely to pleasure themselves on a desk or slink off to a prayer room for gay sex. But quotas cement a different problem. Picture: Getty

If Scott Morrison truly believes that quotas for women will deliver lasting cultural change in the ­Liberal Party and in Parliament House, he should stand aside for a Liberal woman.

Imagine that. A male Liberal prime minister so committed to cultural change in the wake of shocking rape and sex allegations that he is willing to step down to elevate a woman to be the Liberal Party’s first female PM. Yes, imagine. If genuinely committed to quotas, Morrison could be the political force to bring Gladys ­Berejiklian to Canberra. The best performing premier is the model candidate for promotion to prime minister. And, if we must talk ­gender, she’s a woman too.

Quite frankly, anything less than this is cost-free, political sweet talk aimed at settling us down. Because Karen Andrews is 99 per cent right. We have had a gutful. A gutful of how poorly some men treat some women. A gutful of the entitlement pervading Parliament House that led a group of men to thinking that masturbating on a female MP’s desk is amusing. A gutful of a Prime Minister who, instead of answering legitimate questions about accountability and leadership, obfuscates and then tries to distract us with emotion and boneheaded attacks.

Andrews, the Industry, Science and Technology Minister, deserves particular praise for speaking out this week about the boozy, entitled, clubby male culture that pervades politics, where women are on the outer of serious policy-making if they don’t partake in office piss-ups. Andrews has ­chosen not to be a part of that culture.

And she is standing apart again because her female Liberal colleagues in Canberra are in hiding. Even the Minister for Women is invisible. If they speak out, they will be marked down. But their ­silence means running a protection racket for disgusting men, timid men, and incompetent men in their party at the centre of this rotting, outdated system.

No other workplace allows individual offices to be run as small fiefdoms, where there are no basic rules about proper conduct, no clear reporting lines, no accountability, where the man at the very top — the Prime Minister — surrounds himself with people who ensure that he has plausible deniability. In what other workplace in Australia would the boss not be immediately informed of an ­alleged rape in an office?

That’s why Parliament House has turned into an X-rated Animal House; men filming solo sex acts on desks, sharing it with ­others, having sex in prayer rooms, bringing prostitutes into the parliament.

Karen Andrews, the Industry, Science and Technology Minister, deserves particular praise for speaking out this week about the boozy, entitled, clubby male culture that pervades politicsPicture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Andrews is right. We have had a gutful. But she is wrong to imagine that quotas will fix the source of our disgust with politics and politicians. And Scott Morrison, and his Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, would be wrong, and lazy, to think that leadership or cultural change comes from aping Labor Party policies about gender quotas.

It is a low-rent distraction. First and foremost, the Prime Minister should deal with what he labelled “the crap” that women endure. This sort of behaviour should not happen in any workplace, regardless of the gender split. It is simply not normal. Workers in Parliament House will get a fast and sharp message about all kinds of misbehaviour if the Prime Minister holds his own people to account — ministers, MPs and staffers. Standards will rise when a prime minister has an open-door so that ministers feel able to report to him an alleged rape of one staff member by another.

If a senior minister cannot report something of that magnitude without his minders putting up protective barriers, what on earth can they speak to him about? The footy?

No doubt Morrison is genuinely shocked, appalled and disgusted by rape and sex allegations in parliament. But, even if subconsciously, Morrison is making it all about him. What he’s learning from his wife, what he’s hearing from other women. His outrage. Tears for his girls.

When he said it had been a “disturbing month”, he can’t have been talking about it being a disturbing month for women. Because, for longer than a month, we have had to deal with “crap” from men who imagine that their different testosterone levels entitle them to wolf whistle, grab, harass, objectify, assault and rape.

Morrison’s leadership credentials are being truly tested, perhaps for the first time, in his most awkward arena — culture. He has long steered clear of saying anything or doing anything in this arena. John Howard contended with the gun culture barely six weeks into his prime ministership. He fronted critics, cementing himself as a man of convictions able to make difficult, nation-changing decisions. Howard also never shied from dealing with questions of the wider culture.

Member for Lilley Anika Wells, with twin sons Ossian and Dashiell, on March 22. Picture: Getty

More than two years in office, Morrison has had three sources of good fortune. First, and best, he is not Malcolm Turnbull, a man loathed within Liberal Party circles as a traitor. Outside the snooty, insular studios of the ABC, Turnbull is hardly a crowd favourite either. While Turnbull is trying to set himself up as prime minister in exile, a wannabe ­Napoleon on the island of Elba, his almost daily sledging at his ­former colleagues is downright embarrassing to him, confirming why the party turned to Morrison. No wonder Morrison isn’t opening the international border. Turnbull’s forced presence here is the gift that keeps on giving.

The Prime Minister has also had the good fortune to have Anthony Albanese as Labor Opposition leader. “Albo” may be a very nice bloke, but he is not a serious contender for prime minister.

Lastly, Morrison’s lacklustre leadership has enjoyed the cover of COVID-19. It was easy to stop the spread of a virus by slamming shut the country’s border, banning citizens from leaving their country, and making it difficult for Australians to return. Morrison has outsourced hard health decisions to bureaucrats, and economic matters have been ably handled by Frydenberg. Under Morrison, and the inconsequential national cabinet, our federation has never been so fractured.

Confronted by truly difficult, complex cultural issues, Morrison is proving to be out of his depth. His frequently flat-footed and defensive responses to simple questions create a slew of entirely avoidable problems for him and his government.

Asked a simple question in parliament last week about the progress of the internal review into who knew what in his office and when about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, Morrison deliberately obfuscated. It was a blundering attempt to politically manage question time. All he needed to do was tell the truth: that he had been advised of a temporary pause due to concerns by the Australian Federal Police.

This week, Morrison chose emotion and aggression instead of setting out immediate, practical measures that the country is crying out for to improve the putrid culture in parliament.

No one doubts Morrison’s love for his wife, daughters and widowed mother. We all love our families. They are the centre of our lives too. But saying so is no indicator that a leader is capable of making the parliamentary workplace safer for women.

Morrison then chose kneejerk aggression when asked a simple question: should a boss’s job be in jeopardy if an alleged rape and sex acts in the workplace happen under his watch? Chief executives have been forced out for much less, after all. Morrison hounded out former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate over some watches.

Instead of saying the buck stopped with him, Morrison chose to spread some false gossip about News Corp which he said he was told about on Monday night, presumably while brainstorming responses for Tuesday’s press conference. Morrison later apologised. But his ­tawdry, defensive reaction to a serious question adds to a growing list of his leadership shortcomings.

Supporting quotas might be fast and furious politics, but it won’t lift the standards of our politicians. It’s true that women might be less likely to pleasure themselves on a desk or slink off to a prayer room for gay sex. But quotas cement a different problem — mediocrity.

It is no answer to the swarms of mediocre men in parliament that there should be equal numbers of mediocre women. We should aim higher, try harder and bring in the best and brightest into parliament rather than men coasting on chummy old factional quotas or women sliding into seats with a patronising gender quota.

Quotas are also unjust. Casting aside high-calibre men by design in favour of women cements a different type of discrimination. And notice the widespread hypocrisy afoot with quotas in the corporate world. How many older men who brag about being “Male Champions of Change” have agreed to give up even one of their many board seats for a woman? Yet they expect other men starting a career on boards to miss out in favour of a quota woman.

As for the self-described quota queens who sit on multiple boards, how many of them have relinquished a board seat to make sure that the pool of female directors deepens? The truth is that they love quotas because it lifts their own market value in a shallow pool.

When it costs you nothing, it’s frightfully easy to be a quota queen or Male Champion of Change. Especially when it comes to politics. Coming full circle, if the Labor leader truly believes in quotas and cultural change, why not step aside for Tanya Plibersek?