'How about he rings?': PM's woman problem hits peak farce
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“Don’t you worry about that darling,” said the local official. “We’ll give you the raffle.”
The party gave Banks scant support for her campaign, but the seat was a long shot. She shouldn’t have expected too much. Tony Abbott, then prime minister, did offer to campaign for her. Banks declined. Abbott wasn’t a crowd pleaser, she decided. After that, the party actively discouraged other top Liberals like Julie Bishop and Marise Payne from campaigning for Banks. That seemed to be less about gender than faction, however. Banks was not in the dominant conservative faction, nor any faction for that matter. Sexism and faction are not separate matters in the Liberal Party, however, Banks says. “There is a real culture of backwardness on women and it’s definitely entrenched in the conservative faction” of the Liberals, she tells me.
During the leadership strike on Malcolm Turnbull in August, Banks found herself being confronted by another MP. On the Thursday night before the decisive vote that installed Morrison, Banks was hosting quite a few of her colleagues in her Parliament House office. Late in the evening, in a doorway connecting the two halves of her office, she found herself face to face with Steve Irons, a West Australian MP. Not a conservative but a Morrison supporter. Banks was loyal to Turnbull.
Banks later recounted to colleagues that Irons forcefully argued: ‘‘You have to vote for Scott. Don’t be an idiot. Turnbull’s gone. We’ll have Scott as PM. We can’t let Dutton win.’’
Irons has a different memory. He says while he was in her office and asked her to vote for Morrison, he was not confrontational and did not raise his voice: ‘‘It’s not in my nature.’’
After Turnbull had been removed, Banks announced that she would not be contesting her seat at the next election. There’d been a lot of intimidation. At one point she’d even called the Federal Police to complain of harassment by some Victorian members of the conservative faction. But the political assassination of another prime minister was “the last straw”, as she put it.
The new Prime Minister tried to mollify Banks. “Julia, we can get you away from all this, we’re going to send you to New York” on a three-month, all-expenses paid parliamentary fellowship at the UN, said Morrison. She declined, sensing an effort to buy her silence. Morrison then offered to organise a parliamentary “pair” so she could take leave. “I’m not sick,” was her blunt rejoinder. But at no point, after her August public outburst at bullying and intimidation, did anyone in the party or the government ask her about her experience.
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