MP reveals the frustrations that drove her to the crossbench, and the desperate reactions after she dropped the bombshell

Julia Banks has a lucky suit. She wore it for her preselection, on the night she won the marginal seat of Chisholm in 2015, when she delivered her first speech to parliament, and when she rose in parliament on Tuesday to announce she was parting ways with the Liberal party.

The bombshell the Victorian MP delivered this week was at least six weeks in the making, and she confided in no one apart from her family, close friends and the women on the crossbench she’d resolved to join. She also told David Elder, the clerk of the House, to facilitate the statement, which was delivered at the same time Scott Morrison was attempting to reset the government by telegraphing the likely date of the 2019 election, and promising a surplus budget.

Play Video 2:26 Julia Banks quits Liberal party to serve as independent – video

The timing was a complete coincidence, Banks insists in a wide-ranging interview with Guardian Australia. As she left the office to walk to the chamber, she’d seen Morrison at a press conference with the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, on the television, but wasn’t across the detail. As she walked down the corridor, accompanied by her office manager, the staffer was rueful. “Why do you always make your timing so excruciating?”

Banks had telegraphed her profound objections about the removal of Malcolm Turnbull from the prime ministership and the callous treatment of her friend Julie Bishop shortly after the eruption in late August. She said publicly she would not be recontesting her seat, and, speaking for several female colleagues reluctant to call out bad behaviour, she blasted the “cultural and gender bias, bullying and intimidation of women in politics”.

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After that statement, intermediaries were deployed to try to neutralise her fury, and persuade her not to cause trouble. Banks says she was offered a prized parliamentary secondment to the United Nations, which she declined, and also a “pair” for leave during sitting weeks.

There was continuing pressure from Morrison and Frydenberg to campaign with them and project a message of business-as-usual – a fiction she wasn’t interested in propagating to mollify the new leadership team. Banks says she telegraphed that she was prepared to go to the crossbench in September if people did not back off and give her some breathing room.

I am not going down to the headmaster’s office. Everyone just needs to calm down Julia Banks

The MP reached the point of no return because of mounting frustration on multiple fronts. She was furious when WhatsApp messages of private conversations during the leadership fracas were leaked to the ABC. Over a long conversation she describes a poisonous internal atmosphere of pressure, sniping and backgrounding, and alleges persistent poor behaviour from organisational figures in her home state, which was always alienating, but over time, became unbearable.

After she delivered her extraordinary statement on Tuesday, finally parting ways with the government, Banks returned to her parliamentary office and locked the door. Then, all hell broke loose.

The first phone call was from her friend, the minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer, advising that the prime minister wanted to see her. There was banging on the door. It turned out the visitor was Frydenberg, who left after the door wasn’t opened. O’Dwyer phoned again, wondering whether Banks would meet Morrison in her office. Banks declined, not wanting to run the gauntlet of the ministerial wing.

Frydenberg returned to the office and was admitted by staff. Banks says the treasurer wanted to talk about a stability agreement along the lines the government had negotiated with Bob Katter. The treasurer also pressed the importance of seeing the attorney general, Christian Porter, about religious freedom, an explosive internal issue that was coming up in the final sitting week.

Banks says she rebuffed a Katter-style deal. “I was amazed how calm I was,” she says. “I had played this decision through my head so many times.” She says Frydenberg took a call from Morrison in her office kitchenette, and the treasurer asked her whether she would come to the prime minister’s office. “He’s the prime minister,” Frydenberg said. “You’ve got to go down there.”

Banks says she was firm. “I am not going down to the headmaster’s office. Everyone just needs to calm down.”

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The newly independent MP then went to question time, and learned from fellow crossbencher Kerryn Phelps that she had an appointment to see Porter at 3pm to talk about the potential referral of the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, to the high court, and about religious freedom. Banks decided to join her, and texted Porter en route.

She said she and Phelps conveyed substantially similar positions regarding Dutton and religious freedom to Porter during the meeting. Banks believed Dutton should be sent to the high court, and said: “Why doesn’t he do the right thing?” She told Porter she would not support any piece of legislation that gave religious organisations “permission to discriminate”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest (L-R) Crossbenchers Kerryn Phelps, Julia Banks, Rebekha Sharkie and Cathy McGowan in the House of Representatives on Thursday. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Banks says Porter was furious that she had “stormed” into the Phelps meeting with little or no notice. She pointed out that Frydenberg had actually asked her to speak to him. She told Porter: “I won’t be coming to the meetings with ministers without one of my ‘small l liberal’ colleagues” – a declaration that made him ropable, she says.

Banks says Frydenberg stuck his head around the door towards the end of the discussion to again urge her to see Morrison. She says the treasurer told her again: “Scott is the prime minister, you have to come and see him.” Banks told him she would take a call from Morrison.

She says that during a short conversation, the prime minister implied that she had been unprofessional, and wanted a clear roadmap for how she would operate in parliament. Banks told Morrison he should not have been surprised at her actions, given that her profound frustrations were well known inside the government. “I told him I can’t sit with the Liberal party any more, but I don’t want to tear the government down.”

She says Morrison asked her whether she had any unresolved issues with him. She told him she had made her feelings known in the statement she issued after the leadership implosion in late August, and says he was anxious to know her position on religious freedom.

Asked how she intends to respond to critics now keen to characterise her as difficult, unyielding and a Liberal party rat, Banks is calm and clear: “I wasn’t elected in Chisholm under the Liberal party brand,” she says, pointing out that she got only cursory institutional support during the 2015 campaign. “I was elected under Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop’s brand. I was a total unknown. I used Malcolm’s face everywhere.”

She says her moderate views were well known then, and they remain consistent now. “People knew that I was a strong moderate and a Turnbull ally.”

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Banks says the first question she was asked after her arrival in Canberra was which side of the factional divide she was on – an aspect of political life that she has no interest in.

She predicts the Liberal party will double down on subjecting her to pressure following her move to the crossbench, in the hope she will quit parliament before the next election. Asked whether that campaign is likely to succeed, she replies “No.”

Banks says the culture of the Liberal party is hostile to women, and she feels that culture is impossible to change from the inside. She says moderate voices “have been drowned out by the right wing”.

She is not yet sure whether she’ll contest the next federal election as an independent. “I need time. I need Christmas. I need summer. I’ll decide after all that.”

While her assessment of the Liberal party culture is bleak, she says she has taken a risk to try to change things from the outside. “If all this instigates change or movement inside the Liberal party to help make it a better place for women, then I’ve achieved something.”

She says the continuity of the suit – her battle armour at key moments – is an important public gesture of her own continuity during a torrid period in Australian politics.