When Liberal MP Julia Banks bowed out of politics last year, she lashed out at political “haters” decrying the “tribalism and toxic culture” of her former party.
A year onward, and she is back having recently accepted the role of Special Advisor in Gender and Politics with GenVic, Victoria’s peak body for gender equality. She sits on the board with Labor senator Trish Crossin. She has called her disappearance from public life as her “gap year” post-politics but she has come back with ‘unfinished business’, as she wants to expose and combat poor treatment of women, particularly in positions of leadership.
Ms Banks told the Sydney Morning Herald that she experienced gender-based abuse beginning with a negative focus on her appearance which escalated to abuse on social media. “Because I sat in a prominent position (in Parliament) behind (then prime minister) Malcolm Turnbull, literally every sitting week my staff would be fielding phone calls about what I was wearing, how I looked: too old, wore too much make-up, ‘she wore that suit last week’ or ‘she shouldn’t wear white’,” she said.
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“I said the political world was years behind, but … in many ways in terms of workplace culture it’s decades behind – almost stuck in time.”
She said that women in politics, unlike those in corporations, had no systems to adequately report and investigate gender-based workplace complaints.