Morrison’s plea to Banks: stay until election

Scott Morrison has encouraged retiring Liberal MP Julia Banks to hold firm despite increasing pressure upon her.

Outgoing Liberal MP for Chisholm Julia Banks. Picture: AAP

The Morrison government’s most senior members have been privately encouraging retiring first-term Liberal MP Julia Banks to stand by the Coalition rather than force an early by-election or refuse to vote with the administration.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have been talking with Ms Banks, telling her to hold firm under increasing pressure after she decided not to recontest the next election following the overthrow of Malcolm Turnbull. The Weekend Australian understands that senior members of the government were involved in frenetic discussions this week amid concerns she would quit before the next election.

The Victorian Liberal Party was thrown into chaos yesterday when The Australian reported Ms Banks was embroiled in claims she mistreated workers, detailed in a confidential report to party headquarters after the 2016 election.

Senior party and government figures were fully aware that an adverse report had been filed against Ms Banks with party headquarters but she has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. The Australian is not suggesting the allegations made against Ms Banks are accurate, only that they have been made.

Campaigning in Melbourne yesterday, the Prime Minister faced questions on his attitude towards bullying. Ms Banks, who did not return calls yesterday, had cited a culture of bullying in politics as a reason for quitting parliament after less than a term. Mr Morrison said the party could not afford to get lost in the fog of internal battles and needed to focus on voters.

“I have got no truck with bullying,” he said. “I’m setting the standards for the future of my party and people know what to expect.

“And that’s what I’ll demand from them. The Australian public is not interested in us, in terms of what we’re dealing with, as a result of the weeks past. They’re interested in what we’re going to be doing for them, and that’s where my focus is.’’

The confidential internal report was written by a Liberal political adviser, as a formal post-campaign briefing to party headquarters about Ms Banks’s seat of Chisholm in Melbourne’s east. It was sent to the then Victorian Liberal director, Simon Frost, under a formal review process to help improve campaigning at future elections.

The existence of the report, which sources said had been circulated locally, emerged after Ms Banks announced she would quit.

Incumbent Victorian Liberal director Nick Demiris, who took office more than a year ago, asserted the party did not have a record of the report and claimed it was not commissioned by the party.

Ms Banks has been keeping a low profile in recent days and the government has feared it may struggle to get her vote when parliament returns, some questioning whether she will return to Canberra.

However, Mr Morrison expects to get her vote and for her to remain the member for Chisholm until whenever the election is held. Several Liberals have told The Weekend Australian that Ms Banks, a Malcolm Turnbull supporter, had been on the brink of quitting sooner.

Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy said he had not heard of any allegations about Ms Banks’s treatment of staff and volunteers in 2016. “There’s 14,000 members of the Victorian Liberal Party … do I know everything that every single one of them do? No. Is it reasonable that I would know the behaviour of every one of the 14,000? No.”