The Arrival of #MeToo Breaks the Silence

Abstract

International standard-setting bodies began drawing attention to the problem of bullying and sexual harassment in the parliamentary workplace even before the arrival of the #MeToo movement led to more and more women politicians and staffers speaking out. Australia was unique in what followed—large protest events around the issue of women’s safety in parliament, which helped make it an election issue. More generally, as scandal mounted, parliaments commissioned surveys to ascertain the extent of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment. The surveys confirmed the prevalence of misconduct and the need for an intersectional approach to analysis and solutions. Precedents from the way financial scandals had been handled (path dependence) became important in the way Westminster parliaments responded, as did policy transfer.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, international bodies such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) had begun identifying the reforms needed in the parliamentary workplace to make it ‘gender-sensitive’. In the same way as the diffusion of global norms around gender mainstreaming had taken place in the 1990s, international organisations were now disseminating gender-sensitive parliamentary norms, including the norm of the family-friendly parliament discussed in Chap. 2. The attention of the IPU and other international standard-setting bodies was also turning to the issue of sexual harassment in the parliamentary workplace.

The plan of action for a gender-sensitive parliament adopted by the IPU Assembly in 2012 called on all parliaments to adopt a code of conduct to ensure parliamentarians and parliamentary staff worked in an environment free from bullying and sexual harassment. Following on from this, in 2016 the IPU published the first of a series of issue briefs on sexism, harassment and violence against women in parliaments. These agenda-setting briefs reported on interview-based surveys of parliamentarians and staff. The IPU in partnership with the Council of Europe urged national parliaments to undertake their own studies and to adopt effective codes of conduct and complaints mechanisms.¹

The way in which the IPU began putting the issue of harassment and violence against women in parliament on the agenda is an example of the norm work of feminists working through transnational institutions. This norm work produces guidelines, toolkits and benchmarking for putting international gender equality frameworks into practice.² Another multilateral body engaging in such norm work is UN Women, which has also been producing guidance on harassment in parliament.

However, while feminists have exercised increasing influence in transnational institutions, parliamentary traditions pose significant obstacles to the reform at the national level. As we saw in the last chapter, such traditions include parliamentary privilege and the norms of partisan adversarialism. Parliamentary privilege justifies reliance on the ballot box as the best form of accountability for parliamentarians’ conduct, while those who experience bullying or harassment are unwilling to raise the issue, for fear that complaints will be weaponised against their party. For women parliamentarians, to complain often runs across the desire to be accepted as a good team player and for the focus to be on policy contributions, not gendered experience.³

The Arrival of the #MeToo Movement

Sporadic sexual harassment scandals had begun to occur by 2014, including the ‘Palace of Sexminster’ program in the UK and women MPs speaking out in Canada. However, in general it was the arrival of the #MeToo movement in October 2017 that was a critical juncture, providing the impetus for change. #MeToo spread quickly around the world via Twitter in October 2017, with digital technology helping women share their lived experience and make connections. The consciousness-raising of fifty years earlier was taking a new digital form: it lowered the threshold for tolerance of inappropriate behaviour and led to increased reporting of experience of sexual harassment in every industry and location, including the parliamentary workplace. The ‘Silence Breakers’ became Time Magazine’s 2017 ‘Person of the Year’.

The exogenous shock provided by the #MeToo movement, in combination with the agenda-setting already being undertaken by transnational institutions, helped create the possibility of reform despite institutional resistance to change within national parliaments. The role of these different international factors is depicted in Fig. 4.1 (noting that the trajectory of Canada is slightly different).

Fig. 4.1

Vectors of parliamentary reform

#MeToo led to many women politicians speaking out for the first time about their own experiences of sexual harassment, breaking the silence over misconduct in the parliamentary workplace. Already in October 2017, during a plenary debate in the European Parliament on sexual harassment, politicians held up #MeToo signs in various languages, such as ‘#MoiAussi’ and ‘#yotambien’.⁴ Separate from the politicians, staffers in the European Parliament also mobilised. They created a network called MeTooEP and launched a blog with moving accounts of harassment experienced both by staff and interns. Their demands included more accountability from the European Parliament’s Anti-Harassment Committee, which had failed to deal with a single case.⁵

By October 2017, #MeToo had also reached the UK, and the ‘Pestminster’ story was breaking.⁶ A list of alleged misbehaviour by Tory MPs was drawn up by staffers and began circulating on WhatsApp. It soon featured across the front pages of UK print media, with headlines about the ‘Westminster sex pest dossier’ and the 36 Tory MPs accused of inappropriate sexual conduct. A network called #LabourToo was also collecting testimonies and published 43 stories of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination in the Labor Party. The hashtags #TorySleaze36 and #LabourToo went viral, illustrating the role of social media in driving the scandal.⁷

Speaking out became increasingly common across parliaments from 2017 and soon resulted in the resignation or dismissal of parliamentarians and Cabinet ministers in France and Canada as well as in the UK. In Finland the Vice-President was fined 80 days salary for sexual harassment of an MP at a Christmas party. In Canada, such speaking out had already begun in 2014, when two female MPs made allegations of sexual harassment against MPs from another party. The harassers were suspended and ultimately expelled from their parliamentary party but the speaking out triggered early recognition of the need for sexual harassment to be covered in codes of conduct and complaints mechanisms.

The Hanson-Young Case

In Australia, the silence was also breaking. In 2018, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young sued another Senator (David Leyonhjelm) for defamation despite a defence involving parliamentary privilege. Leyonhjelm had repeated in media interviews outside parliament a comment he had made in the chamber implying she had numerous sexual relationships with men. He had interjected ‘You should stop shagging men, Sarah’ believing she had accused all men of being rapists and therefore was being a hypocrite. He refused to withdraw the comment and apologise, as requested by the President of the Senate, and justified his interjection in a media interview by saying ‘Sarah is known for liking men. The rumours about her in Parliament House are well known’.⁸ While the standing orders of the two houses of the Australian Parliament forbid the use of ‘offensive’ language against members, at the time of the Hanson-Young case there was no explicit reference to sexist, racist, homophobic or otherwise exclusionary language as being unparliamentary.

Senator Hanson-Young eventually won her case, the legal argument of which was not based on the sexual innuendo but on the fact she had been falsely and wrongly portrayed by Senator Leyonhjelm as a hypocrite and man-hater. Leyonhjelm’s lawyers objected on the ground of parliamentary privilege to the court taking evidence from Senators sitting near to Hanson-Young as to what she had said. However, the Federal Court disagreed, including on appeal, on the ground that while parliamentarians could not be compelled by a court to disclose what had occurred in a debate in the House, they had the right to give evidence if they chose to.⁹

Senator Hanson-Young said her determination to pursue the issue through the Federal Court was because she had ‘had enough of men in that place using sexism and sexist slurs, sexual innuendo as part of their intimidation and bullying on the floor of the Parliament’.¹⁰ When she raised the issue of slut-shaming in Parliament one conservative Senator responded:

Gender should be blind in this chamber, yet Senator Hanson-Young wants to make it a perpetual grievance…gender is used all the time as a means of cowing others into silence and trying to stifle the freedoms we’re meant to have in this chamber. Freedom of speech and parliamentary privilege, which we should be respecting, are even being silenced through this.¹¹

A Culture of Gossip

The sexual gossip deployed against Hanson-Young was of a kind regularly weaponised not just against women parliamentarians but also against younger women staffers, in particular. In 2018 such gossip about both single women politicians and staffers was rife in the Australian Parliament driven by partisan and factional dynamics. For example, a woman government minister was under pressure from the Opposition. In retaliation she threatened to name young women staffers in the Opposition Leader’s office ‘about which rumours in this place abound’. In another notable example, rumours circulated that a single woman MP had sex with a Senator in a disabled toilet during the Press Gallery’s annual mid-winter ball, one of many sexualised slurs that led to her leaving parliament.

This culture of gossip has been noted in a number of recent reports. In the New Zealand online survey of current and former parliamentary staff, 56 per cent reported experiencing destructive gossip: ‘In this intensely pressured environment, gossip tends to become the lifeblood of the culture’.¹² It can create a hostile environment for young women, particularly when it is seized upon for political purposes, and undermines their authority as political players or advisers.

The determination of politicians such as Senator Hanson-Young to put the issue of sexual harassment on the political agenda was echoed in other developments in 2018. These included allegations by Liberal women of being bullied by male colleagues supporting a change of leadership.¹³ In response, the federal political parties began adopting sexual harassment policies, beginning with the Australian Greens in 2018, the Liberal Party in 2019 and the Labor Party in 2021. The IPU had stressed the importance of having codes of conduct and internal procedures within parties, so that complaints could be dealt with effectively without becoming partisan ammunition.¹⁴

Nonetheless, allegations being made by women politicians of sexism and bullying still did not achieve much resonance in the community. The federal election of 2019 returned a government disinclined to take action on issues of the parliamentary workplace until a build-up of scandal and protest over the treatment of staffers rather than of MPs made it inevitable.

Taking to the Streets

Stories of sexual harassment in other professions were continuing to break in Australia, including the finding in 2020 that a former judge of the High Court had sexually harassed six of his young female associates. The build-up of scandal relating directly to the parliamentary workplace began with the airing in November 2020 of a program on the public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), called ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble’. A former ministerial staffer, Rachelle Miller, made allegations of bullying and abuse of power following the breakdown of her sexual relationship with her employing minister. The program also indicated predatory behaviour by another senior minister and in general ‘lifted the lid’ on the private behaviour of senior government politicians. This was a bombshell, as press gallery norms had largely protected politicians from reporting on such conduct.¹⁵

The government responded with fury to this exposure of currently serving cabinet ministers. The Communications Minister wrote a public letter to the chair of the ABC demanding to know why the personal lives of politicians were considered newsworthy and how the intrusion on their privacy could be justified. He accused the ABC of bias against the Liberal Party, for failing to investigate the conduct of Labor, Green or Independent politicians.¹⁶ The executive producer of the ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble’ program revealed that ‘extreme and unrelenting’ political pressure had been applied to prevent the screening, and government members called for the ABC to be defunded.

It might be noted here that although there was no code of conduct for federal parliamentarians, Australian Prime Ministers had issued a code of conduct for ministers since 1996. While the ministerial code dealt primarily with conflict of interest rather than employment issues, in 2018 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had inserted a prohibition on ministers having sexual relations with their staff, the so-called ‘bonk ban’. The ban was announced after revelations that the Deputy Prime Minister had been having an extramarital affair with a staffer now expecting a baby. The relationship between the minister and staffer revealed in the Canberra Bubble program took place before the ‘bonk ban’ was introduced.

In another development, at the beginning of 2021 Grace Tame took up her role as ‘Australian of the Year’. She was a charismatic young activist who had successfully advocated with others for reform of Tasmania’s Evidence Act. In order to protect the identity of survivors of sexual assault, the Act had inadvertently prevented them from telling their own stories. Tame’s legal case became the catalyst for a #LetHerSpeak campaign that won international support and resulted in change to the law in 2020. Tame made her experience of being groomed and sexually assaulted by a teacher when she was a teenager central to her public advocacy.

In turn, Tame’s public testimony inspired a former Liberal Party staffer, Brittany Higgins to relate in a tearful interview on television her own experience two years before. She alleged she had been raped by another staffer in the Defence Minister’s office out of hours. The alleged rape had occurred in the run up to a federal election and she claimed it was treated as a political problem to be managed by senior staff, Cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister’s office.¹⁷ The revelations of these two young women ignited anger across the country over lack of concern for women’s safety.

In March 2021 this anger came to a head in demonstrations by over 100,000 women and supporters around Australia including some 10,000 outside Parliament House in Canberra, now labelled a ‘crime scene’. Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to come out to address the March4Justice gathered outside Parliament House in March 2021 and the Minister for Women was also absent. The size of the demonstrations seemed to confirm international findings—that because the political opportunity structure for social movements is more ‘closed’ under right-of-centre governments, social movements are more likely to engage in protest action than under left-of-centre governments more open to consultation (Fig. 4.2).¹⁸

Fig. 4.2

March4Justice, Canberra, 15 March 2021. (Photo: Angelika Heurich)

Morrison’s subsequent statement that the demonstration was a triumph of democracy because ‘not far from here such marches, even now, are being met with bullets’ reverberated around the country. Revelations continued relentlessly. Only a week after the March4Justice events, government staffers were found to be sharing a video of a male staffer masturbating on a female MP’s desk. The incident illustrated the social science finding that women in positions of power are not immune from forms of sexual harassment and that subordinates or colleagues may resort to harassment as a ‘power equaliser’.¹⁹

As we saw in relation to ‘Pestminster’, such scandals do help drive reform despite the weight of institutional inertia. Women from across the political spectrum felt it was now time to break the silence and in 2021 no fewer than four books appeared by current and former members of the Australian Parliament telling of their and others’ experiences of sexism and racism. They also spoke out in a four-part television documentary, Ms Represented, that appeared mid-year and is discussed below.

The Morrison Government came under increasing pressure and commissioned a number of reviews relating to the Brittany Higgins allegations. However, its initial response failed to convince, and surveys showed a steep rise in women’s disenchantment.²⁰ Women’s anger helped fuel the unprecedented success of ‘Teal’ Independents in the 2022 federal election, women candidates campaigning in previously conservative seats on the issues of climate change, integrity and women’s safety. Few voters know what goes on inside parliamentary workplaces, and it is rare for this to become an electoral issue as it did in Australia. In the lead up to the 2020 New Zealand election, the Francis Review uncovered systemic issues of bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff but this did not become an electoral issue in the same way as in Australia.²¹

The Role of the Media

Evidence of change in Australia came with increased preparedness of the media to treat allegations of sexist misconduct in parliament as serious political issues. This was particularly true of a number of senior women in the press gallery now prepared to break the tradition of silence over the sexual behaviour of politicians. Conventions of parliamentary reporting and ‘objectivity’ had previously inhibited the application of gender analysis to parliamentary culture. As we saw in the previous chapter, the co-location of media organisations within the Australian parliament tended to encourage a common frame of reference or groupthink in media coverage. This changed after the arrival of #MeToo.

The four-part documentary Ms Represented that appeared mid-2021 was written and presented by prominent political journalist Annabel Crabb. It featured powerful footage of women politicians from ‘both sides of the aisle’ talking about their experiences of sexism in the Australian parliament. Only two, both from the Liberal Party, were dismissive of the issue, speaking of the need to avoid presenting as a victim or to ‘whinge’. In contrast, another former Liberal woman MP, Julia Banks, said that the Australian Parliament had ‘the most unsafe workplace culture in the country’.

Labor Leader in the Senate, Senator Penny Wong, regretted that she and other women ministers had not called out the treatment of Prime Minister Julia Gillard earlier than they did. Wong had not realised the extent of the sexism and misogyny and the way it would be weaponised politically. However, she understood why Gillard had made the decision not to respond; it would have meant people heard about her response to sexism rather than, for example, her education policy.²²

Not just Crabb but other senior women journalists played key roles in 2021 in putting issues of sexual harassment on the political agenda for the forthcoming election and keeping them there. Samantha Maiden won two Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism for breaking the story about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in parliament house and pursuing it for weeks. Laura Tingle, in her role as President of the National Press Club, made sure the story stayed alive by chairing a powerful joint address by Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame in February 2022. Issues relating to gender remained salient in the ensuing election campaign, more so than in any federal election campaign since 1972.

The role of feminist journalists in pursuing the issue of sexism in politics has been celebrated in a ‘Fight Like a Girl’ tea towel that went on sale at the Museum of Australian Democracy. Journalists Laura Tingle, Katharine Murphy, Samantha Maiden, Louise Milligan and Annabel Crabb are depicted on the tea towel, along with advocates Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins and women politicians. It is probably the first time that female political journalists have been celebrated on a tea towel in a democracy museum.

Nonetheless, the Murdoch media continued with its anti-feminist campaigning. The Australian newspaper employed a number of anti-feminist columnists and cartoonists and this dismissive attitude spilled over into its news coverage. After the mass mobilisations of early 2021, the Editor-at-Large wrote of the Opposition Leader, ‘Albanese knows he cannot rely on the 2021 zeitgeist—the emotional demand by women to reset the norms of respect and justice—to deliver victory’.²³

Online Abuse of Women Politicians

2017 was not only the year that #MeToo went global but also a year of revelations about online sexist and racist abuse directed at women in politics. Digital technology was not only enabling new forms of feminist consciousness-raising but also the spread of vitriolic reaction to women’s empowerment. This online abuse or ‘cyberhate’ has been described as a form of violence against women that challenges their very participation in public discourse. It frequently includes threats of rape and references to women’s genitals or menstruation rather than engaging with their political ideas. It may result in decisions not to stand for re-election and is now recognised as a major barrier to women’s participation in politics as well as a threat to democracy.

Women in politics are subjected to more online abuse than their male colleagues and abuse of a more sexualised nature. For example, in Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard received twice as many tweets containing insults and offensive comments as her predecessor, Kevin Rudd.²⁴ As well as women receiving more online abuse, it is important to bring an intersectional approach to bear. An influential analysis by Amnesty International in the UK found that Black and Asian women politicians and journalists were disproportionately targeted for abuse, including death and rape threats.²⁵ In Canada, after Iqra Khalid MP tabled a motion condemning Islamophobia, her office received around 50,000 messages, including death threats and hate speech.²⁶

Subsequent analysis of parliamentary candidates in UK elections 2017–2019 confirmed that Black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates experienced disproportionate and increasing levels of abuse. The combined effects of gender and ethnicity meant that minority women candidates were most likely to report abuse (63 per cent). LGBT+ women candidates were also significantly more likely to report abuse than other women candidates or male LGBT+ candidates. Heterosexual white male candidates were least likely to experience abuse.²⁷

Such findings were reported in a UK House of Commons debate in 2021 on online abuse of elected women. The debate led by the Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women in Parliament, Maria Miller MP, called for a legislative response to online abuse designed to bully, intimidate and silence elected representatives, particularly female representatives.²⁸ Another speaker in the debate, the Chair of the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, spoke of the online abuse of female parliamentarians as part of the culture underpinning male violence against women: ‘none of us either in this debate today or in Parliament more widely knows which of our online trolls might turn into a stalker…This week’s troll could be next week’s attacker’.²⁹

Those participating in the House of Commons debate highlighted the particular targeting of female MPs from racial or ethnic minority backgrounds, those with disabilities and those from the LGBT+ community. Civil society groups such as the National Council of Women in Ireland also called for action: ‘Women from minority and marginalised backgrounds are often subject to not only sexist and misogynistic abuse online, but racism and homophobia too’.³⁰ Such findings, of the disproportionate sexist and racist abuse of women candidates from minority backgrounds were replicated in New Zealand.³¹ According to the author of the review of the New Zealand parliamentary workplace, ‘Women MPs showed me sexist and racist threats that shocked me’.³²

Disturbingly, a significant minority of men, particularly in Australia, have been found to think that online abuse of this kind is always or sometimes acceptable. On International Women’s Day in 2022, IPSOS released the findings of a survey on attitudes to gender equality carried out in collaboration with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership in London. As shown in Table 4.1 this survey of 32 countries found that Australia had a particularly large gap between men and women’s attitudes on the acceptability of homophobic/transphobic, sexist/misogynistic or racist comments.

Table 4.1 Acceptability of online abuse

Revelations of the extent of online abuse of women politicians and staffers have generated calls for online abuse to be treated as workplace harassment, a safety hazard not only for MPs but for their staff. Recommendations include training in online safety but also appropriate support for staff who have to deal with particularly distressing abuse on a daily basis when managing social media accounts.³³

Validating the Testimony of Women Politicians and Staffers

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many women politicians and staffers had begun to speak out for the first time about their experience of sexist misconduct in the parliamentary workplace. However, such accounts were characteristically met with complete denial on the part of alleged perpetrators. This cognitive dissonance led to parliaments commissioning reviews to ascertain the prevalence of the problem, reviews usually conducted by women with impeccable legal or similar backgrounds, including statutory office holders. The IPU led the way with its own interview-based surveys of women parliamentarians and staffers. It found, for example, that 58 per cent in European parliaments had been subjected to sexist attacks on social media and around 40 per cent had experienced sexual harassment.³⁴

In the UK, in the midst of the ‘Pestminster’ scandals of 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May called on the Speaker to establish a complaints procedure and a number of inquiries were established. A cross-party and bicameral working group, including union and employee association representatives, was chaired by the Leader of the House of Commons, the Right Hon. Andrea Leadsom. It collected evidence through interviews and a short survey with 1377 responses. Of the respondents, 39 per cent reported experiencing harassment or bullying and 19 per cent reported experience of sexual harassment including witnessing sexually inappropriate behaviour.³⁵

Meanwhile, in March 2018, a BBC Newsnight documentary Bullying, Harassment and Intimidation in the House of Commons revealed sexual harassment and bullying of the group of staff known as ‘clerks’—employed by the House of Commons to serve on committee secretariats and inquiries. Dame Laura Cox, a former judge on the UK High Court, was appointed to ascertain the nature and extent of the problem. She heard information from over 200 people as well as from workplace equality networks in the parliament and trade unions, finding a bleak picture of alleged misconduct by both MPs and senior managers within a context of organisational hierarchy and power imbalances, a lack of support for those affected, and inadequate procedures.³⁶

Such was the extent of ongoing scandals that even before Cox reported, the House of Commons had moved on the recommendations of the Working Group. By 2018 a new behaviour code and independent complaint-handling scheme had been adopted, to deal with bullying, harassment and sexual harassment.³⁷ It included a separate Sexual Misconduct Policy and Procedure, the first time sexual harassment had been granted separate status.

The Cox inquiry had not covered MPs’ parliamentary staff, so a second independent inquiry was established, this one headed by Gemma White QC. She heard from over 220 people, most of whom worked or had worked for MPs in different roles, including as interns. Her terms of reference included the bullying and harassment of MPs themselves but because few MPs contributed such experiences, she focused exclusively on staff, emphasising their uniquely vulnerable position: ‘Their collective testimony provides a solid foundation for concluding that a minority of Members of Parliament have bullied and/or harassed staff in the past and continue to do so, despite the introduction of the new Parliamentary Behaviour Code’.³⁸

The surveys of the parliamentary workplace commissioned in Westminster democracies at this time repeatedly found a significant number of respondents reporting experience of bullying or harassment. By 2021 there were seven international reports into harassment in parliamentary environments that were drawn on in Australian parliamentary inquiries. For example, a large survey of workers in the Scottish Parliament, including constituency and regional offices, found that 30 per cent of female respondents and 6 per cent of male respondents reported having experienced sexual harassment or sexist behaviour, with perpetrators overwhelmingly male.³⁹

In New Zealand, scandals relating to alleged bullying by MPs led to the Speaker of the House of Representatives commissioning a review from Debbie Francis, HR consultant and previously ‘Chief People Officer’ in the New Zealand Defence Force. She conducted an online survey of current and former staffers, which had more than 1000 respondents. Of these 29 per cent reported experiencing some form of bullying or harassment from either an MP or manager, 30 per cent from peers and 24 per cent from a member of the public. Her terms of reference did not cover bullying and harassment of MPs, although she did receive reports of such bullying and intimidation. She conducted 200 interviews and ran 42 focus groups.⁴⁰

In Australia, the Brittany Higgins scandal led to Prime Minister Morrison commissioning a series of internal reviews. However, this attempt at political management of the issue was insufficient. Mounting pressure resulted in his commissioning an independent review of Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces from the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins. This was the largest review to date, collecting evidence from 1700 individuals concerning experience of the Australian parliament as a workplace. Because of its significance in initiating comprehensive parliamentary reform, its genesis and conduct is discussed in detail in Chap. 6. Meanwhile, in brief, it found that 33 per cent of those currently working in the parliamentary workplace had experienced some form of sexual harassment and 51 per cent had experiences of at least one incident of bullying, sexual harassment and attempted or actual sexual assault.⁴¹

At the sub-national level, there were similar findings in the South Australian Parliament. Of 219 respondents who completed the survey, 27 per cent reported they had experienced sexual harassment in the parliamentary workplace and 32 per cent reported ‘discriminatory harassment’ on the basis of an attribute covered by the Equal Opportunity Act.⁴² In the Tasmanian Parliament, half of whose elected members are women, a lower percentage of the 318 respondents reported experience of sexual harassment (15 per cent). However, two thirds of respondents had witnessed discrimination, sexual harassment or bullying, with discrimination mostly linked to sexism and family responsibilities. While policies were in place, in practice there were negative repercussions for those seeking flexible work.⁴³

As well as finding similar patterns of bullying and harassment in the parliamentary workplace the surveys also found similar weaknesses in handling complaints relating to such misconduct. Respondents believed that, in general, politics was prioritised over their welfare and there was a lack of procedures through which complaints could be made without the fear of retribution. Such weaknesses meant that parliamentarians were effectively unaccountable for their behaviour as employers.

The Role of Scandals in Promoting Parliamentary Reform

All of the Westminster parliaments show the importance of scandals in promoting reform and instigating more independent oversight of misconduct. While the Privileges Committee of the Australian House of Representative noted the advantages of initiating a code of conduct in an environment of reform rather than misconduct,⁴⁴ in the absence of scandal, reform went nowhere. Initially the scandals that triggered reform were all to do with financial misconduct and conflict of interest. While other Westminster parliaments continued to appeal to parliamentary privilege to fend off oversight, it was the UK parliament that led the way in creating independent oversight bodies. The cash for questions scandal of 1994 led to a code of conduct and the establishment of the independent (but non-statutory) Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. In 2009 there was a parliamentary expenses scandal that included items such as the ‘£1,600 duck house’ and the cost of cleaning out a moat on an MP’s country estate. It quickly led to the creation of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, this time a statutory body, to take responsibility for managing parliamentary entitlements.

In institutional terms, path dependence had been created in the UK parliament—precedents of responding to misconduct not by appeals to parliamentary privilege but by creating independent oversight bodies. This did not mean that incidents of sexual and sexist misconduct would automatically lead to such an oversight mechanism. In 2012 an effort to give the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards scope to deal with issues of sexual as well as financial misconduct had been blocked by all three major parties.⁴⁵ However, the Pestminster scandal of 2017 was a critical juncture and the precedent was at hand to enable a rapid response. The new Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme boasted on its website that it was ‘the first of its kind in any Parliament in the world’.

While path dependence enabled the UK to be a first responder in establishing independent oversight bodies, policy transfer benefited Westminster parliaments that had been slower to respond. For example, the UK Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority became the gold standard for responding to misuse of parliamentary allowances. It enabled an Australian Prime Minister to respond quickly to a scandal over a minister charging for a trip to the Gold Coast where she purchased an investment property. He established an Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA), modelled on the UK precedent—an example of what is called ‘institutional isomorphism’. Similarly, in 2021, the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner was able to move quickly to prepare recommendations for parliamentary reform, in part through drawing on the experience of the UK Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards. The next chapter examines in more detail how parliaments responded both to scandals and to the mounting evidence of misconduct and inadequate complaints procedures in the parliamentary workplace.