Malcolm Turnbull has done something far more profound than decreeing no sex between ministers and their staff, and throwing Australia’s besieged deputy prime minister under the bus – although both of these things actually happened in clear public view.



The prime minister, with one late afternoon statement in his courtyard, has created a yardstick that has not previously existed in Australia’s “live and let live”, “she’ll be right mate” politics.

What Turnbull said about Joyce and the code of conduct changes – full transcript Read more

Turnbull has made it OK to make visceral judgments about our elected representatives, at least the occupants of the executive, on moral or “character” grounds.

When you stand up as a public figure, the prime minister no less, and excoriate your colleague for failing the character test of authority and public leadership – which is precisely what Turnbull did to Barnaby Joyce on Thursday afternoon – then moral judgments of political figures become sanctioned activity.

We did have an implicit debate in this country about the morality or character of a political figure when Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, occupied the Lodge – one led by Tony Abbott, who was prone to sharing passive aggressive asides about Gillard’s intrinsic unfitness, including but not limited to inviting her semi-regularly to make “an honest woman” of herself.

But now, courtesy of Turnbull’s abrupt altering of the rules of engagement for Australian public life, we are going to have an explicit one.

Play Video 0:57 Malcolm Turnbull announces ban on ministers having sex with their staffers – video

Unless ministers abide by the terms that the prime minister has just laid out, we are going to have a caterwauling free-for-all. Open season on political office affairs, on transgressions, on uncouplings – conscious or otherwise. Telephoto lenses trained on private moments and tabloid reckonings. Because character is now a legitimate question.

Why? Because the prime minister said so. The prime minister has sanctioned federal parliament’s sex round.

Turnbull is to be applauded for taking on gender, and calling out the structural power imbalances in testosterone-fuelled bro-zones like professional politics, and for having the desire to drag Canberra’s crass, smug and self-satisfied “one rule for us club” into some kind of equivalence with workplace standards that exist elsewhere, correctly, in the age of #MeToo.

God knows women have been waiting long enough for that kind of signal. It’s about time it was sent, in clarion terms, and by a political leader, given the American president says it is OK for powerful men to grab women by the pussy. How could any feminist think otherwise?

But it’s a signal that will bring with it a whole lot of noise.

It’s a consequential redrawing of the boundaries, sitting in judgment of other people’s relationships, which sometimes look a whole lot different to the people inside them than they do to people sitting outside; and henceforth, Turnbull won’t be the only person making the judgments.

The bottom line is you can start this conversation, but you can’t control where it goes.

Also somewhat out of control is the relationship between the two men who run the country.

I can’t see how the relationship between Joyce and Turnbull survives the acid reflections the prime minister made on Thursday afternoon.

Australia bans ministers from having sex with staff after Barnaby Joyce scandal Read more

I can’t see how you can stand up and accuse your deputy of manifestly failing the character test, of being deficient, then go calmly back about the business of governing in a coalition.

This is a profound rupture.

Turnbull has as good as said he wants Joyce to resign, not on an abstract public interest technicality, but on a question of fitness.

This isn’t just meddling in the affairs of the National party, it is publicly dictating terms in a manner I haven’t seen before in 20 years in this building.

Turnbull has thrown petrol on a bonfire. It will be fascinating to see how Joyce and his colleagues respond.