IN February last year, federal parliamentary staffer Brittany Higgins went public with a rape allegation that led to a national debate on an increasingly apparent culture of bullying and sexual harassment in Canberra politics.
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In the wake of this controversy, the premier at the time, Gladys Berejiklian, commissioned an investigation at a state level from former Liberal state MP Pru Goward - a federal sex discrimination commissioner before entering politics.
In April 2021, Ms Berejiklian accepted Ms Goward's report, and promised to do everything she could to ensure a "supportive, respectful and fair" workplace in Macquarie Street.
Three months later, the parliamentary executive commissioned Ms Goward's successor as sex discrimination commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, to conduct a more broad-reaching investigation.
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Now, with Ms Berejiklian gone in a cloud of controversy, and her successor, Dominic Perrottet struggling to retain control of an increasingly undisciplined government, Ms Broderick's report has landed with a thud on the premier's desk, its metaphorical finger pointed at both sides of politics.
Ms Broderick, a high-profile lawyer who was sex discrimination commissioner from 2007 to 2015, has already conducted more than a dozen such investigations and has been the UN's special rapporteur for discrimination against women and girls since 2017.
Her word carries weight, and as Mr Perrottet acknowledged when he released her "confronting" report, it has revealed an atmosphere in Macquarie Street that deserves the epithet "toxic".
On one hand, the report accepts that a majority of state parliament workers find their workplace to be safe and respectful.
At the same time, however, Macquarie Street's genteel facade hides a culture of sexual harassment and bullying that has its genesis in the "power imbalances" that are characteristic of political offices, with the easy availability of alcohol in parliament a contributory factor.
Australian society - indeed Western society in general - is in the midst of a social revolution that upends the old top-down, male-first ethos
. Many younger Australians take this for granted. It is based on a respect for all - for female independence, and for cultural difference - that our politicians and their win-at-all-costs staffers need to remember across the political spectrum.
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