The Liberal party’s belief that it was a good idea to spend a week in federal parliament on the Brittany Higgins matter defies morality and logic. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads That they were in mid-flight trying to reveal some complex political conspiracy where Labor was the villain when they suffered a mid-air collision with one of their own senators did not surprise me either. Then one day a young woman named Brittany went public and the music abruptly stopped with Scott Morrison caught holding the parcel.Īs a female former Liberal MP the party’s continuing groupthink around sexual harassment dismays but does not surprise me. This is the reason we had to have the Jenkins review, because of the way in which they were able to deflect community standards – a game of pass the parcel that avoided the issue for decades. Instead, MPs must self-regulate via the committee process, which can take years andstill yield no result. It is law in Australia that every workplace has rules and complaints processes dealing with sexual harassment allegations – except MPs in parliament who are not subject to those laws.

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