Yesterday, Jane Prentice joined a growing list of Liberal women calling out their own side.
“Impatient ambition, treachery and lies are now, more than ever, part of our political fabric. Increasingly we are seeing candidates and elected members whose primary focus is not a desire to serve their communities, but to serve themselves. Personal ambition seems to be replacing an ambition for our nation,” Ms Prentice warned in her farewell speech having lost preselection despite having been a sitting member since 2010.
Julia Banks made similar comments when she chose to leave the party.
She said she had always put Australia’s national interest “before internal political games, factional party figures, self-proclaimed power-brokers and certain media personalities who bear vindictive, mean-spirited grudges intent on settling their personal scores … Last week’s events were the last straw”.
Banks took aim at members of “the reactionary right wing … aided by many MPs trading their vote for a leadership change in exchange for their individual promotion, preselection endorsement or silence. The Liberal party has changed, largely due to the actions of the reactionary and regressive right wing who talk about and to themselves, rather than listening to the people.”
Lucy Gichui spoke of the intimidation she and others were subjected to, saying the deterioration in political culture had reached crisis point.
“I don’t think anybody would want to be in that kind of an environment where your friends are no longer friends and the colleagues you sit next to they are no longer looking at you with the same eyes – that we are parliamentarians together. It is also the betrayal. You can imagine that people who have been your mentors, all of a sudden you don’t know who they are. You can imagine that people who have been your friends, then you are deemed to be in different camps, and even what is the worst thing is to have to choose when you don’t think you have to choose.”
“The minute you have to toe a certain line, you are being intimidated, you are no longer using your free will. Politics can be a decent career for all. Even in politics I should be able … to make free will decisions. Any time somebody is overpowering you … that’s not political. We should be able to work in a professional environment.”
Linda Reynolds said, at the time, that she did not recognise “the bullying and intimidation that has gone on”.
“Whatever happens tomorrow, this is a sad day for my party and for our nation. I just hope … whatever happens tomorrow that the behaviours that we have seen and the bullying and intimidation that I do not recognise as Liberal in any shape, way or form be brought to account.”
Outgoing Minister for Women, Kelly O’Dwyer, said she’d had a number of conversations with male and female MPs and it was clear that people were subject to “threats, intimidation and bullying” and that she had been “a little bit disgusted” by some of the commentary in recent days directed at women in the Liberal party to toughen up, or implications that women were being snowflakes or princesses.
Julie Bishop echoed those remarks.
“I have seen and witnessed and experienced some appalling behaviour in parliament, the kind of behaviour that 20 years ago when I was managing partner of a law firm of 200 employees I would never have accepted,” she said.
“Politics is robust, the very nature of it, it’s not for the faint-hearted. But when a feisty, amazing woman like Julia Banks says this environment is not for me, don’t say: ‘Toughen up, princess.’ Say: ‘Enough is enough.’”
Ann Sudmalis also complained of “bullying, betrayal and backstabbing” by members of the Liberal party.
“Politics is a place where if you do not have great resilience, the actions of others can impact on your mental health,” Ms Sudmalis told Parliament. “I have decided enough is enough. Who was this about? Certainly not the people who elected me. It was about ego-driven ambition, bullying and betrayal and my local position is completely untenable.”
Veteran former senator Judith Troeth, who represented Victoria from 1993 to 2011, said the party’s administrators “set the tone” and needed to take responsibility for systematically failing women.
“Why would you leave a good career to risk a short-term venture into politics only to see one’s career aspirations cut short by random cruelty and anarchy and brutality?” she asked. “Sometimes what you put up with at work is just not feasible and it’s just not worth doing anymore.”
Julie, Kelly and Julia all decided to leave, Jane, Lucy and Ann were kicked out, and Linda’s silence was bought with a big promotion.
Meanwhile, the main protagonists, the bullies they spoke of, remain protected as Ministers and influential members of the Morrison government.
It is up to we voters to heed the warnings given by these Liberal women and say “Enough is enough”.
The standards you walk past are the standards you accept.
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