Speaking on 'Set The Standard'

My wife, Jess, and I met working in this building. Shared values led to a shared life together. Overall, for both of us, a lot of good came from our time working here—although we couldn't quite bring ourselves to name our son 'Kevin'! Jess left politics for corporate Australia and her career is better for it—HR departments, performance reviews, whistleblower mechanisms, professional development opportunities, diversity metrics and reporting to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. For Jess and I, it is particularly painful to know that not everyone has had a positive experience working in this place.

Every parliamentarian should be proud to say they work in Parliament House. This legislation is one small step towards earning that pride and respect back. I want to thank the many people, especially women, who came forward and participated in the Jenkins review. The truth is that many felt they couldn't directly contribute to the review. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to feel that they can speak out to suit a particular review's timeline. There will be more stories and truths to be told over this year and over coming years. For those that are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see if we are serious and if our words match our actions, we need to win your trust back.

To those of you who have been strong enough to speak out, I say thank you. True patriotism is not waving a flag or yelling a chant until you are red in the face. Patriotism is looking at your country and knowing where and how it must be improved, sometimes at huge personal cost. Because of your efforts, because you spoke out, we have the Set the standard: Report on the independent review into Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces. This has provided a clear road map of practical and achievable reforms. Last week in this place the Prime Minister and the opposition leader said sorry, and I, too, am sorry. As leaders in this place, every single member of parliament has not just the obligation to set the standard but also an obligation to raise the standard. Even with this report and this bill, the Parliamentary Workplace Reform (Set the Standard Measures No. 1) Bill 2022, I feel that we need to do more to raise the standard.

I look at the challenges my staff face on a daily basis: dealing with hateful emails, disgusting and inappropriate content sent through social media to official channels, and an increasing sense of hate, anger, and violence in how people choose to engage with their democracy. I know that some members felt unsafe here in Canberra over the weekend, and I would just ask people: imagine for a moment that you felt unsafe and disrespected in this building every single day. That, it is clear from this report, is how some people feel about this workplace. Staff should be able to walk into this building feeling safe, respected and valued, every single day. For too long, that has not been the case. I have worked in this building as a senior staff member and served as a party secretary, and I am now in this place as a member. I know, like all of you, that not every person who works in this building is a good human being. But I've also worked in this building with some brilliant and dedicated people.

So much of the conversation that has occurred around parliamentary workplace culture is about those who choose to drag the culture down, those who assault or intimidate—those who should never be close to power. It's for that reason I also want to pause and pay tribute to those in this place who work for the public good, people who work harder in these roles than they will at any other time in their career, people who think through complex policy changes on behalf of the nation and who simply want to support good parliamentarians creating good policy in building a greater country. Because, whatever your politics, most people come here with a sense of purpose and a desire to serve. To those who do that, and to those who come here and raise the standard, I say thank you. To those who provide support in the workplace for others who may find it tough here at times, I say thank you. To those who make this a workplace that I love and that I know is an honour for so many of us to serve in, I say thank you. I also know that, over the course of this process, my own staff have felt at times that it's been tough for them to engage in this process and see things said about their workplace, as we go through this very difficult discussion, and so I also want to thank them for all of their work and support of me as a parliamentarian.

I felt I couldn't speak on this without consulting some of those people that I've worked with in this building. Indeed, I started with my wife, who gave me a fair chunk of this speech, and I thank Jess for that, in terms of her counsel. But I also spoke to a range of other people who have worked in this building over many decades. All of their comments had the same theme: implement all the recommendations, no cherry picking, act quickly. And this quote: 'What is the point of power, or even sitting in Parliament House making legislation, if we don't exercise that to effect real change?' And I think we all know that that is now the test for all of us, as we begin to legislate on this.

This bill does one piece of the work: it starts the process of lifting the culture and the workplace experience of every one of the 270 electorate offices and of Parliament House. Like many, I put in a submission to the Jenkins review recommending further steps that I believe would improve workplace culture and professionalism. There is a lot of work to do. This bill is one step in that journey. The bill addresses recommendation 17 and recommendation 24 of the Jenkins review. If passed, this legislation will introduce a requirement to give reasons for termination of a staff member under the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act. It will also offer protections for staff under the Work Health and Safety Act, the Age Discrimination Act and the Disability Discrimination Act. It's about time that we do that.

The other test on us is not how much legislation there is or how many committees there are. The test is: does the culture change? We see week on week in this place that that is a very tough piece of work for us to do. If we talk about the culture that is highlighted in this report, every time I pick the report up I am struck by how honest people were about the culture. I'm struck by some of the ways that people have felt very aggrieved by the culture that does permeate through this place, and throughout the electorate offices and ministerial offices of the country. I will quote from the report, which says that there is a culture of:

Misuse of power and sense of entitlement

…   …   …

Role segregation, with women and people from particular groups concentrated in lower status and lower paid positions and portfolios

Pervasive everyday sexism and male entitlement

…   …   …

Fear and silence around reporting or making a complaint about bullying, sexual harassment, and sexual assault

…   …   …

Inconsistent role modelling of respectful and inclusive behaviour

…   …   …

Weaponisation of information and gossip

None of this is acceptable, but all of this is true about this workplace, and it has to change. One quote from one person who submitted to the review that struck me as sadly true and appalling was this:

a real culture of gossiping about young female employees … who they're sleeping with … whether they're having an affair, whether a perfectly innocent friendship is actually an affair … I think it's really upsetting for a lot of those young female employees that they can't just be judged on their work, and that there's always this sort of subtext of who they're sleeping with.

That's for the young women employees in this place. Then, when women get older, we have this:

… environment where working parents, and specifically working mothers, are not welcomed and accepted …

That isn't good enough. We've taken some steps in the right direction in this place, steps such as those towards turning bars into childcare centres. The childcare centre is one that my children have used and that many parents in this place use, and I note the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition on this matter over a number of years.

But, as I said, the cultural problem of this building that we are seeking to address isn't just of Parliament House; it is also of the electorate offices, and they are located in every state and territory, so this is a national cultural problem. It is not one that is constrained or is simply a Canberra bubble challenge, so I would say to those who are involved in leadership positions in state and territory governments and in the parliaments of the states and the territories that they also should read this report. They should also make sure that they are taking proactive preventive steps so that a cultural problem that we know is here does not exist anywhere else, because the culture in Canberra is simply a melting pot of the cultures of the various states and territories.

I know a lot of the public would be wondering why we're spending so much time talking about the staff of politicians. The Australian people could fairly ask why we are focusing only on this. The answer is clear: if we can't protect those whom we work with most closely, how on earth can the Australian people have faith in us to legislate to protect them? Parliament must be about setting the highest standard, and then we must lift the entire nation up to that standard.

At times I've been struck by the fact that the standards in this building have been lower than the standards in other workplaces that I have worked in throughout my life. I am thinking about one of my first jobs as a student, when I was a shift manager at McDonald's. At 18 years of age, I had to write someone up and give them a written warning for sexual harassment in the workplace. They have harassed another shift member. I'd never had to do that before, but the process was so crystal clear. There was a form. There was a process to follow through. There were check-in points for the staff member who had been harassed, and it was resolved to their satisfaction. It just strikes me that, if we could have processes that you could follow when I was an 18-year-old working at Macca's, surely we could finally be on the path here in this building to improving the processes of our place.

What I want for my electorate is for people to look here and see that we are setting that high standard in how we treat one another, we're doing our best and we're lifting the entire nation up, whatever people's background, sex, gender identity or how they choose to express themselves. So we can't just tidy up our own workplace. That would be too insular, too narrow-minded. But today we are talking about legislation that does seek to protect people in this workplace. This is a good step, a step in the right direction. I commend the legislation and I look forward to working with members across the chamber to make sure we do much more work on this.