Margo Kingston
Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’ steel-eyed testimony around rape allegations saw spiders crawl from under rocks and spread in all directions last week.
As women from both sides of politics unfurled their fury at the profoundly, deliberately unsafe workplace for women in ‘our House’, the Prime Minister, whether you believe him or not, defined his leadership failure.
He said he found out about an alleged rape in a Cabinet Minister’s office, not from the several ministers and personal staff who already knew, but by reading Samantha Maiden’s story.
There would be no consequences for anyone who kept him in a dark on the alleged crime down the hall from his office.
In the early 1990s, a daring women’s recruitment campaign, led by moderate NSW Liberal Chris McDiven, asked interested women to give her a call.
It saw female Liberal MP numbers treble at the 1996 election.
I wrote at the time, ‘The new government could for the first time, put more than one token woman in Cabinet’.
Howard chose two, and his women’s minister, Jocelyn Newman, predicted the influx would raise the tone.
People on the outside badly wanted a better behaved parliament.
But when Tony Abbott returned the Coalition to power 17 years later, he appointed one woman to Cabinet, and called himself women’s minister.
Howard and Abbott presided over the near collapse of the Party’s liberal wing, which was the outcome of hard right hegemony. Women now comprise 23 per cent of federal Liberal MPs, compared to 47 per cent of Labor.
It was no surprise then that several female Liberal ministers and backbenchers decried bullying and intimidation from the boys when they supported Malcolm Turnbull in the 2018 leadership spill.
The big parties are now tiny tribes run by nasty, ugly numbers men, as the recent Sixty Minutes report in Victoria revealed.
Loyalty is to the tribe, not the voters. Parliament doesn’t debate and finesse policy, because decisions have been made in backrooms. Politics is performance, spin, donor service.
The public interest, the pledge to govern for all of us, has collapsed. Morrison seems bored pretending sports rorts was a fair process, based on need.
No wonder the talent pool is narrow, insular and overstocked with the self-serving, corrupt narcissists and sociopaths. Can anyone seriously imagine women of substance answering a Liberal Party ad for candidates in 2021?
When Turnbull fell for the second time, trying to enact a solid climate change policy, his exit saw Wentworth independent Kerryn Phelps take his seat with a 19 per cent swing.
I was in the public gallery to see Morrison lead a Coalition MP walkout when she stood to give her maiden speech. It was a contemptuous trashing of the civilised Parliamentary full house tradition.
At the last election, Phelps nearly held on, despite Labor being favourite to win the election, and Warringah, the blue ribbon seat the other side of Sydney Harbour, tossed Abbott for Zali Steggall, with another 19 per cent swing, again through a vibrant community alliance of blue, red and green voters.
In 2013, the only bright spot for Labor was Cathy McGowan, a rural feminist, and founder of Women in Agriculture.
She beat Sophie Mirabella in the safe Liberal seat of Indi on the back of a wildly innovative community campaign.
When I spoke to Cathy the day after the 2013 election, she eschewed any suggestion her win had national implications. ‘It’s all local, I have to stick to my knitting’, she insisted.
Things changed after she helped her successor, Helen Haines, become the first independent to succeed as an independent in Indi (1,800 local volunteers!).
She wrote a folksy how-to-win-and-serve book called Cathy goes to Canberra, and last weekend hosted the first #gettingelected conference for community independents. It attracted ‘Voices for’ groups, which are now popping up in safe Liberal city seats, and several regional and rural seats.
Women dominated the event – organisers, facilitators, speakers, participants. Many knew nothing about the practicalities of politics.
It was, as Cathy said, a gathering, a wide-eyed, excited, naive, supremely hopeful launch of a movement, full of ‘be your best self’ and ‘never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world’.
Community before candidate, values before votes, principles before policies, that sort of thing.
It has to be, because for an independent woman to win, she must come second on first preferences and harvest the preferences of the other candidates. That means some Liberal, Labor and Greens voters must vote 1 for her, and that means she must find enough common ground to embody the electorate.
The 300 people at Cathy’s conference last weekend want to seriously, positively disrupt our politics.
They want to attract a class act to represent them, someone they trust to serve their needs, and act in what they believe to be the public interest. Someone who will always vote for her conscience and be accountable to them, directly. No middle man.
My take is that an emerging community independents movement is, in essence, a response to the collapse of the Liberal wing of the Liberal Party.
It was once progressive – Andrew Peacock as leader took Australia’s first emissions trading scheme to the electorate at the 1990 election.
Yet it’s getting organised, folks. Independents CAN is a new political party that will endorse ‘Voices for’ independents to give them the benefits of a party without having to join it. Things like tax deductible donations, access to the electoral roll, and insurance.
Founder Oliver Yates, a former Liberal Party member who stood against Josh Frydenberg as a climate change independent last election, told me ‘we’re trying to create an Uber service to help independents get to Parliament, to remove their competitive disadvantage against the Parties’.
PS: To follow the ‘Voices’ groups popping up around Australia, follow @VoicesforAU on Twitter.
Bad behavior by men and women Is not acceptable under any circumstances!!This is a matter for our law enforcement To investigate, and let due process take its place .. fortunately in this country we have Democratic laws .. you are innocent until proven guilty true ?? Should every person be believed ? No .. . this trial by Media is unacceptable. Respect the rule of law ! Heed the advice media ..
Great words Barrow.
and you’ll get more traction Margo without bias headlines, hu-man behaviour needs to improve across all spectrums on this issue.
I don’t write the headlines 🙂
Wow, ok so you write and put your name on articles, under headlines written by uncredited others!
Good to know…now.
Thank you for clarifying.
Trial by Media? Hardly. What is happening is brave women survivors speaking out. This is what your mentor ScamMO himself publicly encouraged not long ago – that victims should tell their stories and that they should be believed. But now ScamMO avoids, distracts and diverts away from what he himself called for when one of his own is in the firing line. And The Liberals take down of one of their own, the brave Brittany Higgins, is a disgrace.
Thanks Margo – great to be able to read your fair and reasonable take on things here in the Echo. All delivered with clarity, insight and experience. A real treat.
honoured to get the odd gig in Mungo’s space
Yes Margo – you got it right.
The ‘feminists of old’ back in the early 1970s sweated out the abusers. We did it by rallies & women’s
publishing. Kate Jennings edited an anthology of women poets titled Mother I’m Rooted in 1974 with
Outback Press that became a best seller & women’s home-grown magazines became ‘the lore’ popping
up like mushrooms.’
Kate heard my story that ‘women writers were liable to be looked on with
prejudice in many ways’ so she dropped it in the intro that reads ‘Sometimes just being a woman is
enough. Recently a woman sent some poems to a well known quarterly. They were rejected. She sent
the same poems back under a male pseudonym. They were accepted. Whether we like it or not, women
are stuck with childbirth, babies, menstruation, housework, feminism conditioning & female perceptions.’
The beat goes on. And to quote Kate yet again “A Woman Writer Has To Be Ten Times Better & So Much
Stronger Than Any Male With Equivalent Talent To Overcome The Usual Obstacle To Reach Publication.”
Politics & rape are part of the same old problems.
Great article .. Embarrasing headline
Yes Doug the bias is overwhelming
can’t seem to recall the the ABC or
The Much respected Echo disapprove
Of the treatment of the conservative
Women Nicole Flint who was absolutely
Abused , spat on , death threats .. human
Waste thrown on he offices all under the
Nose of the ABC & labor !! Did they call this
Out ? Well of course not . Why ? Because
She is or was a conservative female..
Only when it Suits ABC , Feminists
ME-TO and all you other righteous
Hypocrites..