As we walked in and sat down, Kora was happy and content. She’s always been a friendly and relaxed child, which has helped to make both of our lives easier to manage. I’ve always felt lucky that I had a kid who could go with the flow, making it much less stressful if I had to have her by my side at meetings or take her to events.
We sat next to my fellow Greens senators Bob Brown, Christine Milne, Rachel Siewert and Scott Ludlam.
Bob had been leading the debate on the bill to ban junk food advertising. While parents and health experts backed the move, the big media moguls and sugar industry players were strongly opposed. They were putting profits before kids and it wasn’t surprising in the slightest.
My assumption had been that after casting my vote, I would quickly run Kora to the waiting car, she would head off to the airport, and I would see her in a day or two. Little did I know what a furore these four minutes would cause.
‘Lock the doors,’ the Senate president, Labor senator John Hogg, ordered. The whips got up to start the count, but the president stopped. He had noticed Kora sitting quietly on my lap.
Under the Senate standing orders, anyone not a member of the chamber is determined to be a ‘stranger’. The president demanded that she be removed.
Bob Brown jumped to his feet to protest the decision, but Senator Hogg was unrelenting. Holding Kora in my arms, I walked to the back of the chamber.
The noise grew as members from all sides started interjecting, some in support of Kora staying, and others opposed. Kora became aware something was wrong. And, as the Senate security officer went to take her from my arms, she started to scream. Instinctively, I resisted handing her over to the guard. She was clinging to me as if we were teetering on the edge of a cliff and there was no way I was giving her to a stranger when she was in a state like this.
Thankfully, a staffer from Senator Brown’s office, who had seen the incident unfolding on the internal TV stream, had bolted to the chamber. The guards opened the door, just enough for me to pass the crying child through it. The president ordered the counting of the vote to continue. As I sat back down, the chamber that is usually insulated from external noise was unable to block out the echoing sound of my baby girl howling outside.
The vote was lost. Only the five Greens senators and an Independent voted to stop junk food advertising being aimed at children, with Labor and Liberal members voting together to sink the bill. Upset, I rushed back to my office. The phones were ringing off the hook and my daughter was sitting on the couch, my staff consoling her. Before I decided what to do next, the evening TV news bulletins broke into live crosses to Parliament House, and the media circus began.
The ensuing debate over working mums, work-life balance and the expectations of child-friendly workplaces went on for days. Shock jocks were in overdrive and conservative newspaper columnists penned their outrage. The leader of the National Party in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, labelled the incident a ‘stunt’. He said I ‘used the child as a prop, and the Senate as [my] stage’, suggesting that it was a premeditated event. I was hurt, angry and offended that anyone would suggest I would use my family like this to get some pithy media attention. Call me cynical, but I reckon if I’d been a father trying to juggle my family demands, the response would have been very different: positive, in fact. Joyce, who was still a Senator at the time, hadn’t even been in the chamber when the event happened. He’d missed the vote, saying he was too busy doing other things. Attacking me, he said, ‘There are 21 million people who rely on the way the Senate votes, you’ve got to take that job seriously.’ So seriously, apparently, he couldn’t even be bothered showing up. Pathetic.
Weeks later, Joyce approached me as we walked into the Senate for morning prayers and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No hard feelings; it’s all part of the game,’ he said.
‘Yes, hard feelings,’ I shot back, swiping his hand away. ‘You’re a disgrace. You know that wasn’t a stunt and you said it anyway. You’ve accused me of being a bad mother and a bad senator.’
Joyce shrugged. ‘I’ve got four children and I’ve only spent seven days at home with them this year … I’m not complaining,’ he said.
‘Well, I reckon that makes you the crap parent, not me,’ I said and walked into the chamber. Of course, after the recent excruciating media coverage of Barnaby Joyce’s private life, it turns out I was right.
It took eight years after Kora became the youngest person to be evicted from the parliament for the Senate standing orders to be amended. But as Senator Waters sat nursing her youngest daughter, I was reminded that progress can and does happen. Attitudes can soften and change, as can their advocates.
During the right-wing media pile-on, News Limited columnist David Penberthy had disparagingly labelled me the ‘pin-up girl for the work-life balance brigade’, fuming in an opinion piece that I was wrong to have taken my daughter to parliament. He may very well have believed that back then; however, I suspect his view may have changed. Penberthy is now married to Labor MP Kate Ellis and, a proud dad, he announced live on breakfast radio his wife’s second pregnancy. Both their kids have accompanied their mum to Canberra in recent years, and now, due to changes that we have all fought for, they are more welcome than ever in Parliament House.
Yes, change can happen. And, I still believe, the more children we have around, the better the adults will behave.
‘Nasty woman’
Plenty has been written about the increase of ultra-conservative voices, and the influence they have on public debate, in the US, UK and Europe, as well as here in Australia, whether it’s the political muscle Fox News exerts in the US, the rise of UKIP in Britain, and the shock Brexit vote, or Marine Le Pen putting up a formidable, if unsuccessful, challenge in the most recent French presidential race. Of course, Donald Trump’s election to the White House exemplifies more than anything else this far-right, anti-immigration, anti-environment, anti-planet agenda, which also happens to be anti-woman.
We have our own copycat commentators and politicians, who dance on the fringes, with little credibility, but find their place in feeding the outrage machine that sustains our 24/7 media cycle and social-media newsfeeds. So lazy and uninspired are these Trump-lite politicians and Fox-frenzy commentators that they simply import biased ‘studies’, re-hashed political debates and outrage topics straight from conservative think tanks and political voices overseas. Heavens, even the marketing materials have been ripped off, with one Australian politician creating their own ‘Make Australia Great Again’ hat in a desperate effort to ride the Trump wave here in Oz.
And while I am strongly optimistic that the vast majority of Australians don’t share the extreme conservative views the Fox-ified parts of our media promote, it would be naive not to be wary of the impact that Americanisation is having on parts of our national conversation. From the issues that are elevated to national prominence, to the tone these debates take, there has undoubtedly been growth in the hyper-partisan and divisive nature of politics. As right-wing voices like One Nation and Pauline Hanson compete for their small share of the pie, they are locked in a race to the bottom to be as outrageous as possible, so as to bolster their base. Competing for airtime and attention means even members of the major parties participate in this race to out-Trump each other.
Over recent years, there has been a very noticeable slide to the right on immigration, race and even on the science of climate change. Who would have thought that in 2018, with all the available technology and abundance of cheap renewable energy, that the strength of one’s devotion to coal would become an ideological linchpin for the right of Australian politics? The outrage machine has even turned the humble shopping bag into a symbol of division as, not long ago, right-wing commentators were in a frenzy over moves to ban single-use plastic bags in supermarkets. The plastic bag was held up as an emblem for the good old days, before political correctness took over. The right to free plastic bags was equated to the right to freedom of speech. Seriously, it was c
rackpot populism in overdrive.
But the media love it, so they keep going with it, no matter how crazy it gets or what the consequences may be. In an environment where bad behaviour is rewarded with news headlines and slots on breakfast TV, as well as after-dark talk shows, the more aggressive and offensive, the better. If anyone complains, they are instantly labelled ‘snowflakes’ or ‘political-correctness Nazis’. The confected fight over freedom of speech has become a lazy, yet deliberate, excuse for ‘freedom to abuse’ without rhyme, reason or consequence. This all leads to an increasingly toxic culture, where political debate is more and more aggressive and bullying, and intimidation is all but normalised. This doesn’t just affect women, of course, men are victims of abuse too, but in the mire of political ugliness, women always cop the worst of it.
People often say that the parliament is a place of ‘rough and tumble’ debate, as though that somehow excuses hostility and conflict that wouldn’t be accepted in other workplaces. This, in and of itself, makes it harder for women to confront bad behaviour and bullying when they experience it, for fear of being dismissed or ridiculed as being weak and not up to the job. The barriers to women speaking up and calling out abuse in the broader community are amplified in an environment where strength and resilience are among the most valued commodities.
Yes, the parliament is robust and adversarial by its very nature. Question time is just one of the daily rituals that entrenches this fact. In the British House of Commons, from which we inherited our Westminster system, the distance across the floor between the government and opposition benches is 3.96 metres, the exact length of two swords. This is designed to remind the MPs that battles once fought with violence are now fought with words. ‘This may be true,’ former Victorian premier John Brumby wryly points out in his memoirs, ‘but the contests are quite gladiatorial nonetheless’.
Parliament is a tough place for anyone, but, again, for women it’s worse. However, as the intensity of the battles increases while hyper-partisan and extreme elements of the political spectrum compete for space, female members of parliament are starting to speak up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ I believe that the public will reward those who have the courage to call out bullying and demand a better standard of behaviour, because the voters’ patience with politicians behaving badly is running thin. They have figured out that if MPs are spending all their time bickering and sledging each other, there’s not much attention being given to the real issues facing the nation. While education levels drop and inequality grows, while the divide between the wealthy and everyone else gets wider, and our natural environment suffers from pollution and neglect, voters look on at the wrestling match in Canberra with dismay.
It is, increasingly, female politicians who are blowing the whistle on the unsavoury culture in parliament. As we name it and call it out, we speak for the rights of voters as well as ourselves. Populist conservatives, like One Nation and their ilk, who say they care about those who are doing it tough are frauds. Their contribution to the parliament is plain old trickery, thuggery, and a far-right agenda that benefits their self-interest and nothing more. They spend more time debating motions to cut women’s access to abortion than they do arguing for a raise in the dole, which hasn’t been increased for over twenty years. Rather than fighting to ensure every child gets access to a quality education—one of the best ways to lift families out of poverty—these Fox-fanned politicians are out calling for hand guns and tasers to be more readily available on the streets.
Along with policies and agendas that attack multiculturalism and weaken gun control, the ‘freedom of speech’ crusade is now being used to undermine gender equality, and the rights of women to live our lives freely and without intimidation and harassment.
In the past twelve months alone, there have been eight motions brought forward by conservative male senators attempting to limit women’s control over our own bodies. These have ranged from reducing access to abortions and reproductive rights, to attacking programs and organisations that work to stop domestic and sexual violence against women. All of these motions, every one of them, were listed on the parliamentary notice paper for debate and voting by men. Conservative men. The debates themselves make my skin crawl.
Have these individuals no capacity for self-reflection? It seems not.
Only a few months ago, I sat in the Senate chamber while a Nationals member was trying to move a motion condemning the decriminalisation of abortions in Queensland. As he spoke, his disdain for women who were even considering terminating their pregnancies was palpable. While he ranted, a male colleague quipped that women who abort are nothing more than ‘murderers’. It was a disgusting display.
Do they realise how out of touch they are? Of course not, and that is part of the problem. These are the death throes of a dwindling conservative male view that most of the country left behind years ago. Like mould in the bathroom, though, while you can scrub the tiles clean, the bits in the corner will always try to grow back if you don’t keep them at bay.
Women are needed in the parliament now more than ever, to ensure that the values it represents, of a fair, inclusive and equal society, are not taken for granted or relegated to the ‘job done’ category. Right now, there are members of the Australian parliament who are attacking the hard-fought-for rights of women, such as our choice whether or not to become mothers. Women from all sides of politics are needed to tackle this increasing assault on our freedoms. Without female voices combating this revolting Trumpificiation of our politics and democracy, I shudder to think where we would end up.
For female members of the parliament, dealing with the increase in aggression and the onslaught of anti-equality rhetoric in formal debates is confronting. But what is clear is that as more women stand up and call it out, our collective courage grows. It puts the men behaving badly on notice, but, more importantly, it sends a message to the rest of the community that women and girls do have a right to be heard and respected, wherever they are.
Let’s get on with it!
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