The trials and tribulations of Emma Husar, the Labor member for Lindsay in western Sydney, raise many issues about our political system. She is just a small cog in a large machine but her case, partially resolved by her decision not to stand again at the next election, illustrates not just the narrow workings of parliament but the wider environment of party factions, inter-party competition, the demands of the media and other social developments like family breakdown.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Parliament is a workplace, populated by employers and employees, but there are more gradations than that: senior and junior employers and staff, full-timers and part-timers, electorate office staff and political and media advisers based in Parliament House in Canberra. There is also the complication of just who exactly is the employer-the individual MP, the broader party, the parliament or the government.
My first reaction to the allegations against Husar was wariness that she was being accused of such a wide range of faults (bullying of staff, sexual harassment, misuse of entitlements and, eventually, lewd behaviour) that she was either a self-serving ogre or a victim of some sort of conspiracy.
The combination of the behind-closed-doors party investigation and some genuine respect for her privacy meant that, despite the furious leaking, there was always ambiguity and generalisation about the situation of this otherwise little-known MP.
What facts were known were that she was an inexperienced, first-term MP in a hotly-contested marginal seat. She could easily have been a one-term MP anyway. She was also a single woman with children, and one of the children has special needs. These facts alone made for a combustible mix, but other MPs have probably survived similar circumstances. There was nothing about her age (38), qualifications or previous occupation (fundraising and events manager and, briefly, political advisor).
The case fuelled several widespread beliefs about party politics. The first was that factional political warfare is so widespread and toxic that the idea that one faction would deliberately undermine an MP from another faction within the same party was credible. That fact in itself reflects badly on all political parties.
The second accepted belief was that for a party based on workers rights the Labor Party was no better than its rivals in protecting the rights of its own employees. This apparent hypocrisy delighted its critics.
However it would be a mistake to believe that such workplace issues are restricted to political workplaces because they are in some way special. There are enough examples of widespread bullying and misuse of entitlements in other private and public sector workplaces for this to be untrue.
But the fact that this occurred in a political workplace had two undeniable consequences.
One is that the general public is unwilling to be sympathetic towards the troubles faced by seemingly privileged members of the political class. If politicians are seen to have a sense of entitlement then the public, encouraged by the media, are keen to think the worst of them and to cut them down to size.
Secondly, the other side of politics, in this case the government, will also have no sympathy at all, despite the dangers of the pot calling the kettle black. Labor has also shown no sympathy in the past to allegations of misuse of entitlements by Liberals, including the former speaker Bronwyn Bishop, and the Liberals are happy to reciprocate. They did so with their erstwhile colleague, Peter Slipper, another former speaker Peter Slipper.
The desire to reciprocate is even greater in an election environment. A seat is a seat. The Liberals want to win back Lindsay and they also want to defeat Bill Shorten’s Labor at the general election. The Husar case ran during the Super Saturday by-elections campaigns to her detriment. It increased the chances of the government intervening enthusiastically for election purposes.
The Husar case once again has thrown light on the demanding work and life of parliamentarians. It is an all-consuming occupation, yet that fact receives little sympathy from the wider community, which compare the demands to their own real and imaginary problems. Politicians such as Gai Brodtmann retire for family reasons and some, such as Tim Hammond, the former member for Perth, become so desperate that they resign early during their first term, causing a byelection.
Another aspect is the well-known hot-house environment of Parliament House. Together with the Barnaby Joyce case this one has turned attention once again to the old metaphor of the Parliament as an isolated school boarding-house (now reworked as a prison), in which stress, exhaustion and extreme competitiveness prevail.
The processes of dealing with wrong-doing and poor performance need improvement whether the correct image of the parliamentary work-place is one large corporation or the equivalent of a collection of small-businesses co-located in a shopping mall. Like the citizenship controversies both the political parties and the parliament itself need far greater awareness of the circumstances of their MPs. In this case Labor failed and deserves censure, at the very least for being inattentive and careless with an asset. But in other equivalent cases the Liberals and the Nationals also failed to keep tabs on their MPs.
Each MPs’ office has its own dynamics. At their best, like any small business or family, the relations between MPs and their staff are commonly characterised by close friendships and mutual loyalty well beyond the bounds of any rules and regulations. This is the good news story.
When some of those relationships break down flawed personalities contribute, but others are more likely to be the consequence of the untoward demands of political life conducted in the glare of publicity.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University
