Former foreign affairs minister says she has witnessed behaviour that wouldn’t be ‘tolerated in any other workplace’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Julie Bishop has weighed into the debate about bullying in federal parliament, saying she has witnessed behaviour in Canberra that wouldn't be “tolerated in any other workplace across Australia”.

The former foreign minister has also criticised the Liberal party’s paucity of female representation, saying it is unacceptable that less than 25% of its MPs are women.

Speaking at a Women's Weekly event in Sydney, Bishop castigated the “embarrassing circus” in the nation's capital, saying the constant change in leaders was “confounding” to Australians.

“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.

Kelly O'Dwyer says MPs were bullied during spill, as senator vows to name names Read more

“[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.’”

The Liberal MP Julia Banks and the Liberal senator Lucy Gichuhi both claim they were subjected to bullying and intimidation from male colleagues during last month's leadership spill. The behaviour prompted Banks to quit parliament.

Bishop questioned why her party had trouble attracting and attaining women.

“It’s not acceptable for our party to contribute to the fall in Australia's ratings from 15th in the world in terms of female parliamentary representation in 1999 to 50th today,” she said. “There's a lot to be done.

“Our party, in fact all parties, recognise they have a problem in attracting and maintaining women, diversity in general.”

Ousted prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's daughter weighed in on Bishop's speech, saying it would be “very hard to raise daughters and tell them to look to the Liberal party for strong female role models”.

“I have never been a fan of quotas but they may be the Lib's only hope to win back female supporters,” Daisy Turnbull Brown wrote on Twitter.

She also said Canberra was "fundamentally kid/family unfriendly", but that wasn't the only reason more women aren't in the Liberal party.

On Thursday the treasurer and deputy Liberal leader, Josh Frydenberg, said he agreed with Bishop that the Liberal party had to get more women into safe seats and around the cabinet table.

He said Scott Morrison had increased the number of women in cabinet to six, which is better than in 2013 – under the former prime minister Tony Abbott – when Bishop was the only female cabinet member.

He also acknowledged that the atmosphere inside Parliament House was often too confrontational, stretching relationships and creating tensions.

“It's not good enough, is it?” he said. “That is something we all need to be very conscious of and to mitigate against.”

Earlier this week the former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard said Labor had done a far better job in the last two decades boosting the number of women in its ranks because it had set gender targets, unlike the Liberal party.

She said Labor’s efforts were worth emulating.

“In 1994 the ALP and the Liberal party had around about the same percentage of women in their federal caucuses,” Gillard said in a public lecture on women and leadership at the University of Adelaide. “For Labor, it was 14.5% and for the Liberal party, it was 13.9%.

“Today, women are 46% of federal Labor, a jump of over 30 percentage points. In contrast, the Liberal party has inched forward to 23%, a jump of just over nine percentage points.

“In the years in between, it has been argued by Liberal party figures that mentoring and networking for women are the most effective strategies and that there is no need for targets or quotas.

“I think the easiest answer to that is ‘scoreboard’. Or maybe I could simply steal from Gough Whitlam the words: ‘It’s time.’”

Gillard, in her speech, also expressed sympathy for the way Bishop had been treated by her colleagues in last month’s leadership spill, where she was conspired against in the first round of voting.



