Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday coalition MPs voted to keep the member for Bowman in the parliamentary roles that he had promised to stand down from. The fact that Mr Laming has gone back on his commitment to stand down is yet a further indictment of him, but it says something about the character of the Morrison government that he was supported in his endeavours by so many of his colleagues. The stories about Mr Laming's conduct that have been reported are disturbing. They show a pattern of behaviour that ordinary Australians would consider unacceptable and would find uncomfortable. Indeed, that is exactly the word that the women who have been subjected to his conduct have used. An academic who was contacted by him, ostensibly about her work, said, 'I began to feel very uncomfortable.' She's not alone. A woman who sat next to him on a flight said:

I was deeply uncomfortable. I felt like I was trapped next to someone who was just being completely inappropriate, irrespective of their job, being completely inappropriate.

A woman who was on an official trip with him said:

When we when we met a new group or went to a new location, it was only the young women he asked for phone numbers … not the men.

It was humiliating, I found it extremely embarrassing and stressful. To see it again and again and again and again.

A teenager who was approached by him in a Taco Bell said:

If it was any other person, I would have thought that was a bit weird for a middle-aged man to ask a 19-year-old to add them on Facebook.

It wasn't a very comfortable situation. It just felt very forced and I sort of had to engage with it.

I felt very creeped out.

These stories came out after it was revealed that Mr Laming had engaged in a campaign of inappropriate online behaviour against two of his constituents. The Prime Minister claimed he found the comments Mr Laming had made to the two women 'disgraceful', and at that time said that they were unacceptable to him. The Prime Minister may have claimed that he found the comments unacceptable, but he can hardly claim that he found them surprising. The former chair of the local branch has said publicly that he tried to warn a senior member of the Queensland state executive about Dr Laming long before the preselection. Mr Edwards said:

We took a two-page document in and said we have a major problem with this bloke. He popped it in the safe and said leave it with me. I never followed it up and we never heard anything more about it.

Why was that? Mr Edwards suggests:

I guess because there was only a one-seat majority at the time, and in Canberra they were worried about the repercussions.

Well, that decision was years ago. It's part of the reason that Mr Laming is still in the parliament.

The problem is that the political protection of Mr Laming continues to this day. When the parliament was last sitting and the public pressure was on, the media pressure was on, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's office said:

At the Prime Minister's request the Member for Bowman issued an unreserved public apology.

Since then, Mr Laming has basically retracted most of that apology, and the parts that remain are very far from being 'unreserved'. Mr Laming used the first day back in parliament to claim he had been misrepresented. What about the online behaviour that the Prime Minister said was disgraceful? Mr Laming now says it is 'work that I've done on Facebook in responding to comments of others'. It's reported today that Mr Laming has gone even further in an email to constituents. Unbelievably, he has again attacked the two women that he apologised for harassing over Facebook and apparently accused them of trolling. What about the photograph that he took of a young woman bending over at work? According to Mr Laming, that was 'an utterly, utterly entirely appropriate workplace photo'. It is, sadly, unsurprising that Mr Laming has acted in this way. It is entirely consistent with years of conduct and it suggests that his empathy training has not made an ounce of difference.

What we should be angry about is that there have been absolutely no consequences for him. If anything, he has been rewarded, because, after all of that, yesterday coalition MPs in the other place voted to keep him as chair of a parliamentary committee that he promised to stand down from. Mr Morrison has put coalition MPs in a terrible position by asking this of them. Dr Katie Allen has said, 'What Mr Laming has been doing is completely outrageous.' Meanwhile her colleagues were asked by Mr Morrison yesterday to keep him as Chair of the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training. Senator Henderson has said: 'It's a matter for him as to whether he wants to leave the Liberal Party. I am uncomfortable'—there's that word again—'about him sitting in the party room.' That's where he is sitting, and he is sitting there because Mr Morrison has decided to support Mr Laming rather than supporting the female members of his own party. It may be necessary for those decent female members and, perhaps, some of their male colleagues to do more than make a few remarks in the media, because Mr Laming is clearly waging a war to stay and he, apparently, has very senior support. Faced with the choice between Dr Allen, Senator Henderson and Mr Laming, it is very clear who Mr Morrison has chosen.

They're not the only women that Mr Morrison has abandoned. I met Sheena Hewlett, one of the women who Mr Laming was harassing on Facebook. Ms Hewlett told me that she is scared that the harassment will continue. At the rally last weekend, Mr Laming was apparently there, watching—watching a rally about his own conduct. Ms Hewlett said, 'I'm scared about what he will do after this.' As I said, today it's reported that Mr Laming has already acted. He's already attacked Ms Hewlett and another of his victims, Ms Russo, in an email to his constituents. What has been the response from the PM? Absolute silence. Under media pressure, he's happy to say, 'This is disgraceful; this is unacceptable.' Words are cheap, aren't they? The Prime Minister's actual decisions and his actual instructions to members of the Liberal Party and the National Party show what conduct he is willing to accept. This is what he thinks is appropriate. There are real-life consequences of allowing this man to continue in his position of power and to continue to offer him political support and political cover. Mr Morrison, our Prime Minister, has a responsibility to protect women like Alix Russo and Sheena Hewlett from continued harassment. This is a test for him. This is a real test, because, as long as Scott Morrison continues to accept Mr Laming's vote, this government cannot be taken seriously when it comes to the treatment of women.