Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is my workplace, one that I am incredibly proud to have been elected to work in, and it's your workplace, Deputy Speaker Goodenough. It's the workplace of the minister and the shadow minister at the table and it's the workplace of thousands of people, both men and women. But it's also much more than a workplace. It's where school children come to learn about democracy and leadership. It's where my grade 6 niece came last week with her class, and where there are so many faces of young women just so excited and amazed that they could be here in the federal parliament. It's a place where people from all over Australia come to visit because it's the home of government. We ask those visitors to show respect for parliamentary procedures, for the artwork, for the displays and for the magnificence of this building. It's a building that is open and welcomes Australians from right across our country, young and old, and visitors from overseas, because it represents our democracy.

Our democracy is one that we are supposed to say and believe is for the people, by the people and of the people. Everything about this place, the way we behave in it and what we do in it, should represent and illuminate how precious democracy is. Yet, over the last few weeks, probably longer, people across Australia have come to see this building as a place where a young, vulnerable woman was raped and then was made to feel that she had to choose between justice and her job, where she was made to feel that the only reason her employers—the Liberal government—cared about what happened to her was because of the political implications, where she was called a 'lying cow'. They've come to see this parliament as a place where the Prime Minister of Australia can't go out the front to listen to thousands and thousands of women rallying for their voices to be heard but says they can come to him—three or four of them—because he's busy or, perhaps, as one of the Liberal members suggested on the weekend, because all of those singing women were a security threat.

But now, following a story on Channel 10 news just a few hours ago that made me feel sick and disgusted and so very, very sad and angry all at the same time, this building is now a place under this Prime Minister and this government where it is, to quote Tom—the whistleblower featured on channel 10 tonight—a 'culture of men who think they can do whatever they want, and has been so for years'. How could anyone watch a video, no matter how pixelated, of a desk at their workplace being masturbated on and hear that that video was shared around and not feel sick to their stomach, let alone hear that it was deliberately done to a female MP's desk in some disgusting act of power and defilement because, be under no illusions, that's what it was—an act of power and defilement. That is not what the Australian parliament should be known for.

I heard the Australian parliament described on our national broadcaster's news tonight as a 'workplace culture of national shame' and I was physically distressed to think that that is not just my workplace and our workplace, but the home of Australia's democracy. No Australian government, no matter whether it be Liberal or Labor, should be known as the government that tolerates a culture where that is happening within its ranks. It's a workplace. You don't have sex at a workplace unless it's a brothel. Parliament House is not a brothel yet we heard on the news tonight an allegation that that's exactly how a Liberal MP has treated it.

I expect we will hear the Prime Minister at some point, probably tomorrow, in full high dudgeon about this. He will talk about how he's revolted by it and the acts of Liberal staff and about how he's going to clean up this place, but words of disgust are not enough anymore. We need to have a government that hears and listens and truly takes responsibility for the culture that it presides over. It is a dangerously bad culture. On Channel 10 tonight, Tom proposed that it needs to start with the removal of this toxic powerful privileged boys club that does what it wants, when it wants, where it wants. A fish rots from the head down and there is a terrible stink in— (Time expired)