Andrew Laming: why empathy training is unlikely to work

Andrew Laming (second from right) with colleagues in the Coalition party room.
Andrew Taylor/AAP

Sue Williamson, UNSWAs federal parliament continues to erupt with allegations of harassment and abuse, one of the responses from our most senior leaders has been empathy training.

These are programs that help people to see the world from other people’s perspectives.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered disgraced Coalition MP Andrew Laming to do a private course on empathy. As Morrison told reporters

I would hope […] that would see a very significant change in his behaviour.

This follows Laming’s apology for harassing two women online and then confessing he didn’t know what the apology was for. Soon after Morrison’s announcement, Nationals leader Michael McCormack said he would get his party to do empathy training as well.

If we can […] actually learn a few tips on how to not only be better ourselves, but how to call out others for it, then I think that’s a good thing.

Many people — including opposition MPs, women’s advocates and psychologists — were immediately and instinctively sceptical. After all, if someone needs to take a course on how to be empathetic, surely something fundamental is missing, which no amount of training can fix?

The problem with empathy training

People are right to be dubious about empathy training — it has all the hallmarks of a human resources fad.

A parallel can be drawn with the introduction of unconscious bias training a few years ago. Neither are likely to be a silver bullet — or even a significant help — when it comes to discrimination and harassment.

Researchers have found requiring employees to undertake mandatory training, such as diversity training or sexual harassment training, can backfire. When people are “force fed”, they rebel and pre-existing beliefs are reinforced.

On top of this, training programs aimed to increase awareness about gender equality and discrimination are often seen by employers as remedial at best. At worst, they are punishment, which can also lead to a backlash from participants. The empathy training being given to Laming firmly sits in this camp — he has been found to have harassed women, so now he must be punished by attending a course.

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Similarly, one-off sexual harassment training has been found to be not only ineffective, but can make matters worse. American researchers found men forced to undertake sexual harassment training become defensive, and resistant to learning. But worse than this, male resistance can result in men blaming the victim, and thinking women are making false claims of sexual harassment.

So, the research findings are clear. One-off, mandatory diversity training and sexual harassment training do not work. While there is little data so far on the success of empathy programs, previous research gives no indication they would work either.

What does work?

It is not all bad news for empathy course conveners, however. Voluntary training is more successful, as volunteers are already primed for learning and concerned about gender equality and eliminating sexual harassment. Research also shows empathy can be taught, but the subject has to be willing to change.

But if mandatory training has limited effectiveness, what will work to eliminate sexual harassment? We certainly don’t need any more indications our federal parliament and our broader society needs to change.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Australians took to the streets, calling for change at parliament house and beyond.
James Ross/AAP

As Dr Meraiah Foley and I have previously argued, for training to be effective, it needs to do several things.

Firstly, it needs to be complemented by affirmative action measures, such as setting targets to increase the numbers of women in leadership. This is why the renewed debate about quotas in the Liberal Party is so important.

Secondly, the training needs to lead to new structures and new accountability for behaviour. This can be achieved by course participants identifying desirable behaviours that can progress equality at work. For example, small actions such as ensuring women participate equally in meetings sends a signal their opinions are valued.

Participants then log when they enacted those behaviours, and discuss progress with trained facilitators. Participants continue to reflect, and act, and later, share experiences and identify successful strategies.

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Thirdly, for workplace gender equality to progress, the ongoing process of behaviour change needs to be complemented with systemic organisational change. As I have written elsewhere, researchers recommend organisations adopt short and long-term agendas, to achieve small, immediate wins, while deeper transformations occur.

Structural change starts with an examination of human resource processes and policies to uncover gender bias and discrimination. No doubt Kate Jenkins will be undertaking such a task in her review of workplace culture at parliament house.

The bigger change we need

Examining process and policies, however, is not enough. Changing the language, and other symbolic expressions in organisations are also an important part of culture change to embed gender equality. For example, making sure meeting rooms are named after women and portraits of women — as well as men — adorn the walls sends a subtle yet powerful message the space also belongs to women.

Changing the ways of working, the rituals and artefacts of parliament house will help to change the culture.

Structural and systemic change to achieve gender equality is slow. While sending recalcitrant politicians to training courses may seem like an unavoidable first step, it is not where we need to focus attention.

Sue Williamson, Senior Lecturer, Human Resource Management, UNSW Canberra, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Morrison’s ratings take a hit in Newspoll as Coalition notionally loses a seat in redistribution

AAP/James Gourley

Adrian Beaumont, The University of MelbourneThis week’s Newspoll, conducted March 24-27 from a sample of 1,517, gave Labor a 52-48 two party lead, unchanged from last fortnight’s Newspoll. Primary votes were 40% Coalition (up one), 38% Labor (down one), 11% Greens (up one) and 2% One Nation (down one).

While voting intentions moved slightly towards the Coalition, Scott Morrison’s ratings fell to their lowest point since the COVID crisis began. 55% were satisfied with his performance (down seven) and 40% were dissatisfied (up six), for a net approval of +15, down 13 points.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval was up one point to +2, and Morrison led as better PM by 52-32 (56-30 last fortnight). Figures are from The Poll Bludger.

The last Newspoll was taken during the final few days of the WA election campaign. It’s plausible, given Morrison’s ratings slump without any impact on voting intentions, that Labor’s federal WA vote in the last Newspoll was inflated by the state election.

While Morrison’s ratings are his worst since the pandemic began, they are still strong by historical standards. So far, Morrison has only lost people who were likely to switch to disapproving at the first major scandal. Voting intentions imply that many who approved of Morrison were not voting Coalition anyway.

This poll would not have reflected the latest scandals about LNP Bowman MP Andrew Laming, who was revealed on Saturday night to have taken an upskirting picture in 2019. But are sexual misbehaviour scandals getting as much voter opprobrium as they used to?

In last fortnight’s article I cited two recent US examples of alleged sexual misconduct. Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016 despite the release of the Access Hollywood tape a month earlier. And New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, is still in office despite multiple sexual harassment allegations against his female employees.

According to Morning Consult polling of New York state, Cuomo’s ratings have stabilised recently after a large drop, and he still has a +10 net approval. That’s because he has a 75% approval rating from Democratic voters.

In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of 2016 US national polls, Hillary Clinton gained only about a point in the week after the October 7 Access Hollywood tape was released, to have a six-point lead, up from five. Trump won that election in the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1%.

Draft federal redistributions for Victoria and WA

As a result of population growth trends, Victoria will gain an additional House of Representatives seat before the next election, while WA loses one. On March 19, the Electoral Commission published draft boundaries for both states.

In WA, the Liberal seat of Stirling was axed, while in Victoria the seat of Hawke was created in Melbourne’s northwestern growth area. The Poll Bludger estimated Hawke will have a Labor margin of 9.8%.

There are no major knock-on effects that would shift any other seat into another party’s column based on 2019 election results. So the impact is Labor gaining a Victorian seat as the Coalition loses a WA seat. Christian Porter’s margin in Pearce has been reduced slightly from 6.7% to 5.5%.

Ignoring the defection of Craig Kelly from the Liberals, the Coalition will start the next federal election with a notional 76 of the 151 seats, down one from the 2019 results. Labor will notionally have 69 seats, up one.

Early Tasmanian election announced for May 1

On March 26, Tasmanian Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein announced the Tasmanian election would be held on May 1, about ten months before the four-year anniversary of the March 2018 election.

The Liberals expect to capitalise on a COVID boost that could fade if the election were held as expected in early 2022. The last Tasmanian poll, conducted by EMRS in February, gave the Liberals 52%, Labor 27% and the Greens 14%. Tasmania uses the Hare-Clark method of proportional representation with five electorates that each return five members.

WA election final lower house results

At the March 13 Western Australian election, Labor won 53 of the 59 lower house seats, gaining 12 seats from what was already a thumping victory in 2017. The Liberals won just two seats (down 11) and the Nationals four (down one). Labor will have almost 90% of lower house seats.

Primary votes were 59.9% Labor (up 17.7% since 2017), 21.3% Liberals (down 9.9%), 4.0% Nationals (down 1.4%), 6.9% Greens (down 2.0%) and just 1.3% One Nation (down 3.7%).

Labor’s primary vote was higher than the 59.0% the combined Nationals and Liberals won at the 1974 Queensland election. The 1941 Tasmanian election, when Labor won 62.6%, is likely the only prior occasion in Australia of a single party winning a higher vote share than WA Labor.

The Poll Bludger estimates the two party vote as 69.2-30.8 to Labor, a 13.7% swing since 2017. The upper house has yet to be finalised, but Labor will win at least 22 of the 36 seats.

Israeli, UK local, German and Dutch elections

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on March 21 about the March 23 Israeli election and the May 6 UK local elections that also include Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections. Israel’s right-wing PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed to win a majority for a right coalition, with that coalition winning 59 of the 120 Knesset seats. UK Labour is struggling in the polls.

I wrote for my personal website on March 19 about two German state elections that the combined left parties nearly won outright. The German federal election is expected on September 26, and the incumbent conservative CDU has slumped from its COVID heights, so the combined left could win the next German election. However, the left performed dismally at the March 17 Dutch election.

Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Morrison takes big personal hit in Newspoll after missteps on women’s issue

Michelle Grattan, University of CanberraScott Morrison’s approval has taken a sizeable hit in a Newspoll showing Labor maintaining its 52-48% two-party lead.

As Morrison prepares to unveil his cabinet reshuffle the poll, published in Monday’s Australian, found his satisfaction rating fell from 62% to 55% in two weeks.

The fortnight was dominated by shocking revelations of lewd behaviour among staffers on the Coalition side, a botched attempted “reset” on gender issues when Morrison lashed out at a news conference, and a scandal around a Liberal backbencher.

In the poll, taken March 24-27, Morrison’s dissatisfaction rating jumped from 34% to 40%.

The “better PM” gap also narrowed – Morrison now leads Anthony Albanese 52% (down 4 points) to 32% (up 2 points). This the narrowest margin since March last year. In February Morrison had a 35-point margin.

The Coalition’s primary vote rose a point to 40% while Labor’s fell a point to 38%.

The Australian reports that it is the first time in more than a year that Morrison’s approval ratings haven’t been in the 60s. His net satisfaction is plus 15.

Albanese’s satisfaction increased one point. He has a net satisfaction of plus 2.

The reshuffle is set to move Christian Porter out of the attorney-general’s portfolio and Linda Reynolds out of defence, but keep both in cabinet.

The government is now confronting a major row over Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming who trolled two local women on Facebook and took an inappropriate photo of another woman.

Laming announced at the weekend he would not seek to run at the next election but he remains in the Liberal National Party. He is now on leave but has indicated he aims to be back for the budget session, after he has had counselling on “empathy and appropriate communications”.

Albanese said Laming was not a fit and proper person to be in parliament and should go. He said there were various measures available to the Labor Party to take against him when parliament resumed.

Morrison will be anxious to see a woman preselected for Laming’s seat of Bowman.

As the government’s crisis continues Liberal women are increasingly speaking out, with Victorian federal backbenchers Sarah Henderson and Katie Allen suggesting on the ABC’s Insiders that parliamentarians should be subject to drug and alcohol testing.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Morrison says Coalition staffer sacked after ‘disgusting’ allegation

Michelle Grattan, University of CanberraThe government has immediately sacked a staffer after Network Ten reported on Monday that a Coalition whistleblower had provided photographs and videos recorded inside Parliament House “of men engaged in blatant sex acts”.

The Coalition staffers filmed themselves and shared the videos, the report said.

Ten aired (distorted) images. It said one showed a man pointing to the desk of a female Liberal MP and then performing a “solo sex act on it”.

“One of the government staffers featured in the videos we have seen says publicly that he works closely with the prime minister’s office and the leader of the house’s office,” the report said. The leader of the house is Christian Porter.

The whistleblower, “Tom,” (not his real name) claimed staffers had procured “rent boys” to come to Parliament House for Coalition MPs.

He also said “a lot” of sex occurred in Parliament House’s meditation room.

Morrison said in a statement on Monday night the reports aired by Ten “are disgusting and sickening”.

“It’s not good enough, and is totally unacceptable,” he said.

“The actions of these individuals show a staggering disrespect for the people who work in parliament, and for the ideals the parliament is supposed to represent.

“My government has identified the staff member at the centre of these allegations and has terminated his employment immediately.” This is the man who committed the sex act on the MP’s desk.

Morrison said: “I urge anybody with further information to come forward”.

He said he’d have “more to say on this and the cultural issues we confront as a parliament in coming days”.

This is the second federal government staffer in under a week who has been sacked for gross sexist behaviour. Last week Andrew Hudgson, media adviser to the Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar, was dismissed immediately after Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor told the state parliament he had called her a “meth-head c***” in 2019 when he worked for the then Tasmanian premier Will Hodgman.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, is currently conducting an inquiry into the Parliament House workplace.

Meanwhile a parliamentary security guard on Monday night challenged Morrison’s claim a security breach was committed when Brittany Higgins and the colleague she alleged raped her entered minister Linda Reynolds office in the early hours in March 2019.

Morrison has said the man, who was dismissed within days, had been sacked “because of a security breach. That was the reason for it. As I understand it, it related to the entry into those premises.”

But Nikola Anderson, the security guard who opened the door of the office for the pair, said on the ABC’s 4 Corners, “What was the security breach? Because the night that we were on shift, there was no security breach. Because these two people worked for minister Reynolds, they were allowed access in there, which is why we granted it.”

She was at the security check-in point where they entered the building, before she took them to Reynolds office. Both had active passes although they were not carrying them, so they were given temporary ones (the normal practice in Parliament House when a passholder does not have their pass with them).

Asked why Morrison would have said this was a security breach and that was why the man was sacked, Anderson said, “Because he’s been given false information”. She said she was one of the only people who knew what happened and nobody had asked her anything.

Anderson said after the man left the building hastily by himself she went to check on the woman’s welfare.

She opened the door to the minister’s personal office to find Higgins lying on her back on the couch, completely naked. Higgins had opened her eyes, then rolled over onto her side.

“So therefore my take on it was, she’s conscious, she’s breathing, she doesn’t look like she’s in distress.”

Higgins has said she was drunk and fell asleep on the couch, to awake “mid-rape.”

Anderson said she told her team leader what she had found and asked him whether she should wake Higgins “because it’s a no-no to sleep in parliament house”.

“But given the nature of the situation and the fact that she was completely naked, I think his call on it was just let her sleep it off, leave her there.”

Anderson said she was told to be discreet about the incident. “We were told to keep it under wraps and not to make it common knowledge.”

There is now a police investigation into Higgins’ allegation she was raped, after she recently laid a complaint.

Anderson was contacted by ACT police a week ago.

Asked why she was speaking out publicly, Anderson said it was because “I’m fearful for my job, and I don’t want to be used as DPS’s [Department of Parliamentary Services] scapegoat. And the truth does have to come out. I mean, I’m sick of seeing all of these news reports with inaccurate information because it is wrong.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bad times call for bold measures: 3 ways to fix the appalling treatment of women in our national parliament

Louise Chappell, UNSWIn the wake of yet another week of disgusting behaviour and inadequate responses rolling out of federal parliament, it is abundantly clear Prime Minister Scott Morrison is clueless about how to fix it.

He is not the only one, judging by the equally superficial responses of many politicians confronted with evidence of systemic violence against women at the heart of Australian politics.

So what is the problem? And how might we address it?

I suggest Australia’s political class need to recognise three problems.

1) They must understand this is not just a problem about men behaving badly or about women being victims of this behaviour. Rather, it is a problem arising from the operation of what I call a “gendered logic of appropriateness”. By this I mean there are deeply embedded norms of behaviour – in this case masculine norms – that become the accepted ways of acting within an organisation.

We see a gendered logic of appropriateness in the Australian parliament reflected in its bullying culture, its adversarial debates and name calling. This is disguised as “politics as usual” and, unlike in other workplaces, it is protected by parliamentary privilege.

Given the revelations of the past month, it is now undeniable that this logic also includes norms of behaviour that support the mistreatment of women and, no doubt, some men. Such behaviour exists on a continuum from catcalls to verbal abuse to sexual harassment and abuse.

Men who perform such behaviour do so with impunity. As this is about gender norms, women can be perpetrators too – belittling other women or giving cover to men who are abusive.

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2) They must acknowledge the steep, deeply entrenched and gendered asymmetric power relations that structure the parliamentary arena. It is a deeply hierachical place, and men dominate the upper echelons.

These asymmetries exist at every level – within cabinet, and between it and backbenches, between government members and opposition, among ministerial offices and between them and bureaucratic agencies, between ministerial and parliamentary operational staff, and parliamentarians and the media.

3) They must recognise the narrow cohort from which these men are drawn. They are primarily white, university-educated and from private schools, middle-class men. Aside from their political differences, they share most other things in common.

One key problem is that these men have worked their way through relatively similar political party structures – which have foundations in immature, winner-takes-all, university politics. It is in these political parties that women and other marginalised groups first struggle to fit to the gendered status quo that dominates our political party system. Very often, they flee from it.

British feminist scholar Joni Lovenduski has noted in the UK political parties have been the “main distributors” of traditional masculinity in politics. In Australia, we appear to have perfectly mimicked this practice.

So now for the big question: what is to be done?

The prime minister’s announcement of a range of “training” initiatives in response to recent allegations of sexual abuse within Parliament House demonstrates his lack of understanding of the deep structural changes that are required to address it. Training programs will be nowhere near enough.

To achieve change will require action to disrupt the gender status quo on three levels.

1) New rules are required to outlaw derogatory speech, verbal and physical acts of bullying and sexual harassment and abuse. Standard human resources policies must also apply to all parliamentary workers. Independent complaint-based mechanisms, compensation and reparation measures must be made available for those experiencing sexual abuse.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s investigation has the scope to set these new rules. But it is up to political leaders to ensure these rules are enforced, through sanctions, and applied consistently. Unless and until impunity is addressed, the existing parliamentary gender logic will remain in place.

2) Power is a feature of politics. It is impossible to rid parliament of its power dimensions, but we need new systems to report its abuse. These systems should build on human rights principles that acknowledge the rights of all people to privacy, to fully and equally participate in political life and to be free from violence.

Practically, this means developing strong policies and accountability practices not only within parliament itself, but within political parties, which distribute masculine gender norms. Recognition of gender, race and other forms of equality is essential within these parties, including within the junior ranks, where our future political leaders are incubated.

The ALP has started this process with its recent policy on sexual harassment but it needs to go much further to address more serious forms of abuse. The Liberal Party has developed a national code of conduct, but with vague enforcement mechanisms and sanctions left up to state branches.

3) There is an urgent need to increase diversity within parliament to better represent the wider Australian community and disrupt the status quo. The ALP has shown the value of gender quotas for diversifying its ranks.

Given recent events, Liberal and National members’ application of a “merit” argument to defend against quotas has been well and truly debunked.

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Perhaps the most rational path forward is to introduce a system of parliamentary quotas. A good place to start is to follow the now accepted practice in many law firms that have 40:40:20 recruitment practices appointing 40% women, 40% men and leaving 20% for either sex and non-binary employees.

We could transform the composition of parliament within one election by designing a system focused not on fixing the under-representation of women, but on fixing the over-representation of men by limiting the number of seats available to them.

After all, bad times call for bold measures.

Louise Chappell, Scientia Professor, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

No finding by Nationals in Barnaby Joyce sexual harassment case

The Nationals have been unable to make a finding on a sexual harassment allegation against Barnaby Joyce.
AAP/Mick Tsikas

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The Nationals have been unable to make a finding on the claim by a woman that former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce sexually harassed her.

Catherine Marriott, former West Australian Rural Woman of the Year, made the allegation at the height of the controversy over Joyce’s affair with his former staffer (and now partner), Vikki Campion. He claimed at the time it was the tipping point that led him to quit the Nationals’ leadership, although he has said subsequently when Campion became pregnant, he always knew he would have to go.

Marriott, who made the complaint in confidence, was highly upset when her name was quickly leaked.

She said in a Friday statement expressing her frustration at the inconclusive result of the eight months investigation that “this outcome simply isn’t good enough”.

She had been told by email on Thursday that the NSW National Party “has been unable to make a determination … due to insufficient evidence”.

“This is despite the investigation finding I was ‘forthright, believable, open and genuinely upset’ by the incident.

“The result of this investigation has underpinned what is wrong with the process and the absolute dire need for change”, she said.

Joyce on Friday had no comment beyond standing by what he had said initially, when he described the accusation as “spurious and defamatory”.

Marriott said she was “extremely disappointed that after eight months of waiting, three trips to the east coast at my own expense to meet with the party, my name and confidential complaint being leaked to the national media, and my personal and professional life being upended, the National Party have reached a ‘no conclusion’ verdict.”

But she said she wasn’t surprised because the party hadn’t had an external process in place to deal with such a complaint “My complaint was handled internally by the NSW National Party executive with no professional external expert brought in at any stage.”

She said the only positive outcome from a “harrowing experience” had been “the development of much improved policy by the party”, which she had encouraged. She was heartened that people who found themselves in similar situations in future “will have a robust policy in place to assist them”.

The outcome of the investigation comes as the Liberal party has been rocked by allegations of bullying during the leadership battle. Several Liberal women have spoken out strongly against the bad behaviour, and MPs are waiting to see whether individuals are named in parliament next week.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Joyce hits back over sexual harassment claim as Nationals prepare to discuss leadership

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is under intense new pressure following a call from backbencher Andrew Broad for him to stand down and an allegation that he sexually harassed a woman.

Broad said he would raise the leadership issue at Monday’s party meeting, saying that Joyce’s going to the backbench would be in the best interests of Joyce, the party and the government.

Meanwhile, a woman has made a complaint to Nationals federal president Larry Anthony accusing Joyce of sexual harassment.

Joyce strongly denied the allegation, saying it was “spurious” and “defamatory”, and went back to something 18 months ago.

“I ask the person to refer it to the police because I deserve my opportunity of defending myself,” he said.

After Broad’s salvo, the party’s Senate leader, Nigel Scullion, locked in behind Joyce. Its deputy leader Bridget McKenzie said: “There is no stronger advocate for regional Australia than Barnaby Joyce”.

But while Joyce earlier seemed to have shored up his position, there is now once again great doubt that he can survive. A self-justifying interview he gave to Fairfax defending himself appears to have backfired.

Eyes will now be on whether junior minister Michael McCormack signals he is willing to challenge Joyce. McCormack is considered the only viable alternative. He trailed his coat in a Sky interview earlier in the week, refusing to back Joyce multiple times before finally doing so.

Broad, who is the member for the Victorian seat of Mallee, on Thursday said in an interview on ABC Radio Statewide Drive Victoria: “It’s about having your mind clear to do the job”.

He said that at this point, Joyce’s “judgement is erred, he’s not thinking in a place where he can be put up as the acting prime minister of Australia. Some time out and hopefully some time to regroup and he may come back to make a further contribution.”

Broad, who spoke to Joyce before making his call, said he would be taking a resolution to the meeting from the local party members in his electorate saying Joyce should stand down.

He criticised Joyce for the high media profile he has adopted this week when he is supposedly on leave.

“He’s meant to be taking a break and he’s clearly playing to the media. You know, this is an issue that we should have let quietly die, and let’s get on with the core job but he’s not prepared to do that.”

Earlier – after the death of evangelist Billy Graham – Broad tweeted:

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Scullion said: “If I was a betting man I’d think that Barnaby Joyce will still be deputy prime minister through the end of Monday”.

Scullion told the ABC he disagreed completely with Broad. “I’ve worked closely with Barnaby and I can tell you that right up to when he took leave … he had his mind completely on the job.”

“So we’ll get back on Monday and I hope and I trust that the National Party will return Barnaby to the leader[ship],” Scullion said.

“I have to say to Broado … he didn’t actually have to do that. I’m quite sure when Barnaby would have come in, let me tell you Barnaby is not a man who is afraid of democracy, so I suspect he would have come in and said by the way I’m going to spill my position just so you can all have a clear run at it,” Scullion said.

McKenzie said all Nationals MPs were welcome to bring issues to the partyroom. She also pointed out in a statement that Monday’s meeting would not be a full partyroom meeting, because of Senate estimates hearings.

Party sources noted there could not be a spill motion moved at that meeting. There would need to be a meeting of all 21 MPs for that to happen.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Don Burke story reveals the pernicious culture of men protecting each other in the media

Gael Jennings, University of Melbourne

It was such a cliché. At the office Christmas party of the national TV show where I worked, I emerged from the loo out the back to find one of my bosses straddling the doorway, blocking my way and waiting to pounce.

I was shocked, not so much by his sexual harassment (that was de rigueur in the newsroom cultures of the day, the 1990s), as by the extent of his male entitlement and misogyny. At the time I was still breastfeeding my baby daughter, who was next door at the party with her dad and my colleagues.

This week’s revelations that TV’s darling of nearly 20 years, Don Burke of Burke’s Backyard fame, was allegedly a “psychotic bully”, a “misogynist” and a “sexual predator” who indecently assaulted, sexually harassed and bullied a string of female employees comes as no surprise to women in Australian media. According to last year’s Women in Media Report, nearly half of us have been abused, intimidated or harassed in our working lives.

Once sexual assault allegations against Hollywood boss Harvey Weinstein exploded in the media, the open secret of male abuse of power over women was out. Social media was awash with #Metoo; in France, #BalanceTonPorc (“expose your pig”) flooded Twitter with stories of sexual harassment and assault.

New allegations appeared almost every day against other powerful men in various industries, including head of Amazon Studios Roy Price, political journalist Mark Halperin, editor at NPR Michael Oreske, Hollywood screenwriter and director James Toback, actors Ben Affleck and Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis CK, reinforcing the seeming incongruity of a self-described grabber of pussies, Donald Trump, being elected US president.

Donald Trump’s ‘Grab her by the pussy’ comments caught in this leaked recording.

A rising swell

It feels like a rising swell, a great wave of truth-telling gathering force and breadth, the crest white and flickering, teetering at the top, ready to curl and roar down upon us all, washing away thousands of years of male power and privilege. But is it?

Or will it peak, then withdraw and ebb away, diluted back into the ocean of sexist norms dominating the world and responsible for the perpetuation of sexual violence against women?

Some journalists are hopeful, because at last, in the Burke case, even some blokes have broken ranks and ratted on him.

Journalist Juanita Phillips is optimistic that “two industry veterans – David Leckie and Sam Chisholm – went on the record to condemn Burke in no uncertain terms. He was a disgrace, they said. A horrible, horrible man”. She found it significant that industry executives – the very keepers of the gates of male privilege – spoke out against one of their own.

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It’s true the endemic abuse of women in media and entertainment has been enabled over all these years by the collusion of the men in charge. Until now, executive men have largely closed ranks and protected the perpetrators of abuse, harassment and assault against women colleagues.

This is not only because, like Burke, some harassers were cash cows for the companies and networks involved. It was also, and I believe mainly, because these perpetrators were part of the club; part of the same culture that saw the executives themselves rise to the top and stay there.

They not only had a vested interest in maintaining the cultural norm, it was their norm.

Peer-reviewed global literature clearly proves that men perpetrate violence against women when there is masculine dominance in society, when they identify with traditional masculinity and male privilege, believe in rigid gender roles, have weak support for gender equality, and hold negative attitudes towards women.

Our research at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne and that of Women in Media indicates these norms are rampant in the media industry. Men almost exclusively own, run, and give voice to the industry. Murdoch’s News Corp, Fairfax, and APN own 92% of print media in Australia, with women owners being only 15%.

Men run nearly all of it, with only 17% of executives female, and new research shows women to be similarly underrepresented as editors (30.8%), specialist reporters (9.6%-30.2%), as experts (24.6%) and as authoritative sources (26.0%). Only 27% of AM and FM radio breakfast and drive programming hosts are female.

The rate of sexual harassment of women in media (48%) is more than twice that of other workplaces (22%), and far exceeds that of the rightly criticised rates in the Australian Defence Force, at 25% (according to the Human Rights Commission), and Victoria Police at 40%, yet has not been reported widely.

Up until now, the male-centric culture of media made it a non-story.

Will we see long overdue change?

Are we seeing a change now “The Blokes” have broken ranks with Don Burke? Is public discourse about to change? Has social media enabled a coalescence of power from LGBT people and people of colour, to join with outpouring from women who’ve been bullied, excluded, harassed and assaulted, to reach a tipping point for the wave of change?

I think not yet.

I think The Blokes who sacked predatory men in the US did it because women, LGBT and people of colour now have economic power and will use it. I think The Blokes who turned on Burke did it to protect themselves.

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Read more: From Public Confessions to Public Trials: The Complexities of the ‘Weinstein Effect’

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They were there; they oversaw the reign of terror and did nothing; now that the women and their coworkers are testifying, the (Old) Blokes are running for their lives and distancing themselves from every aspect of this (now) “horrible, horrible man”. Their successors are perpetuating the same workplace cultural norms that we know lead to violence against women.

When a Trump becomes a Macron, we could be more confident. The French president this week swore “it is essential that shame changes camp”, and he is putting his money where his mouth is, with a 2018 draft law to criminalise street harassment, and a massive public education program about sexism and changes to police and courts to help victims.

In the meantime, as Lindy West of the New York Times writes:

… not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labour, the blame for our own victimisation, and all the subtler, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.

We women are angry. Our anger has led to finding ways, around the rule of men in the newsroom, through social media and each other, to document the scope of the crimes against us.

The question is whether our anger, and collaboration with powerful men, will be enough to turn that teetering crest into a massive, roaring wave of change.

Gael Jennings, Honorary Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

No Don Burke, there is no link between autism and harassing behaviour

Andrew Whitehouse, University of Western Australia

Allegations that Don Burke indecently assaulted and bullied staff during his time hosting Burke’s Backyard were heinous enough. But in an interview with A Current Affair last night, he created another victim: the autism community.

In the interview, Burke claimed that he has Asperger’s syndrome:

I haven’t been medically diagnosed but I’ve worked it out, what it is, and it’s a terrible failing.

I have difficulty looking anyone in the eye. I can look in the lense, but I have real difficulty looking anyone in the eye … it’s a typical thing. And I miss all their body language and often the subtle signs that people give to you like, ‘Back off, that’s enough’, I don’t see that.

I suffer from a terrible problem with that, of not seeing … and no-one can understand how you can’t see it. But you don’t.

In examining Burke’s comments, it’s helpful to separate “excuse” from “explanation”. It’s clear there is no excuse for humiliation, bullying and harassment. Nevertheless, reasonable explanations can still underlie inexcusable behaviour.

Burke sought to use Asperger’s syndrome as that explanation. Whether or not Burke would meet criteria for Asperger’s syndrome is not the issue. The problem is that the statements he made about Asperger’s syndrome are utterly false and have an impact far beyond his own circumstance.

Remind me, what is Asperger’s syndrome?

Asperger’s syndrome is part of the autism spectrum, and is characterised by difficulties with social interaction and communication.

Autism spectrum conditions are diagnosed by a team of clinical experts, often including a specially trained medical doctor, a psychologist and a speech pathologist. While autism is a heritable condition (it “runs” in families), we currently don’t know enough about the genetic factors underlying the condition and so we diagnose based on observable behaviours.

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Read more: The difficulties doctors face in diagnosing autism

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A defining characteristic of autism (and Asperger’s syndrome) is differences in social behaviours, such as difficulties initiating or maintaining social interaction with others. However, these social difficulties bear no relevance to a lack of empathy for others, which, of course, underlies bullying and harassing behaviour.

Empathy comes in two forms – cognitive empathy (ability to recognise others’ emotions), and emotional empathy (ability to feel others’ emotions once that emotion has been recognised). There is strong research evidence that some individuals with autism may have challenges with cognitive empathy, but no evidence for difficulties with emotional empathy.

In essence, once there is understanding of what a person is feeling, people on the autism spectrum are often intensely empathetic.

More likely to be bullied than a bully

While the behaviours that characterise autism can create challenges in day-to-day life, there is no link between autism and the perpetration of bullying and harassment. Indeed, dozens of scientific studies have investigated this, and all evidence indicates that people on the autism spectrum are far more likely to be the victims of these behaviours than the other way around.

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Read more: Why children with autism often fall victim to bullies

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Burke’s statements create real and lasting damage. There is considerable research evidence showing the stigma that still surrounds autism, and the detrimental effects that stigma can have on people with the condition and their families.

I think about the young man with Asperger’s syndrome, who has fostered enormous courage to attend and enjoy school, and now has another target placed on his back.

I think about parents of newly diagnosed children, who are met with yet another jarring myth to swirl around their tired and worried minds. I think about how this may affect their view of the years that lie ahead of them. These years will come with great challenges, but also the greatest of joys.

I think about employers, who are just starting to understand the vast talents and economic benefits people on the autism spectrum bring to their workplace, and how even the smallest seeds of doubt can be fertilised by the public airing of patently false statements.

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Read more: Why employing autistic people makes good business sense

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I think about all of these people – the wonderful autism community – and how they would feel in being used as a punching bag yet again. The autism community frequently takes punches from media and public figures in an attempt to excuse or explain human behaviour.

Australia would do very well to not simply ignore Don Burke’s comments, but instead use the anger they generate to continue the path of cherishing and valuing the diversity that the autism community provides our society.

Andrew Whitehouse, Winthrop Professor, Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Egypt – Sexual Harassment