An unwanted advance, ‘bully boys’ and backgrounding: former Liberal MP Julia Banks on her time in Parliament House

Former Liberal MP Julia Banks has alleged she was subjected to an unwanted sexual advance at work from a cabinet minister in the Turnbull government, and warned that similar inappropriate touching by other men is probably happening “every single day in Parliament House”.

Ms Banks has shed new light on her experiences of a “Mad Men”-esque culture at the heart of federal politics in an exclusive TV interview with 7.30’s Laura Tingle.

Ms Banks was the only Liberal MP to win a seat from Labor at the 2016 election, but ended up quitting the party after the Morrison leadership spill, sitting briefly as an independent until the subsequent election in 2019. 

Her startling portrait of the political culture comes just as the Parliament is undergoing a major workplace review, sparked by former staffer Brittany Higgins’s allegations that she was raped by a colleague on a couch in the ministerial wing.

Ms Banks describes an incident one evening at Parliament House when all the Coalition MPs were “corralled” into then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s wing.

The government had a one-seat majority at the time, and the House of Representatives was due to hold an important vote “late” that night. The MPs were being shepherded to avoid anyone missing the narrow vote. 

“I was sitting on a couch talking to another MP,” Ms Banks told 7.30.

“And then a cabinet minister sat on my right, and he sort of did that flippant ‘how are you’, and then he put his hand on my knee and ran it up my leg, on the upper part of my leg.” 

Ms Banks said she “momentarily froze” and then walked away. She then went and told another female MP that the man had “made a move on me”, and asked her to keep speaking with her. 

‘Gold class’ in plausible deniability 

The fact that the alleged incident occurred in a room full of people in the prime minister’s wing in some ways only aided its plausible deniability, Ms Banks said, because of the perception that “of course that wouldn’t happen”. 

“It absolutely has plausible deniability credentials … gold class,” she said. 

The incident was disturbing, she said, not because it was the worst thing that had happened to her in the workplace but because of how brazen it was, despite there being a “pretty minimal power disparity” between two members of Parliament.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: “The Prime Minister is not aware of any allegations of sexual harassment Ms Banks faced. Any such behaviour is completely inappropriate.

“Everyone has a right to feel safe in their workplace, and the work currently underway by Kate Jenkins will continue to improve Parliament’s workplace culture.”

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said he was not aware of the alleged incident involving the cabinet minister until after he had ceased to be PM.

‘I’m not fearless’ 

Ms Banks has not named the individual allegedly involved, either in her interview with 7.30 or in her new memoir Power Play: Breaking Through Bias, Barriers and Boys’ Clubs.

“I’m not fearless,” she said. “There are consequences.”

Ms Banks said the culture in Parliament remained years behind the culture in the corporate sector. She said entering politics had felt like “stepping back in time” to the 1980s, even though she had spent much of her corporate career in “blokey” male-dominated companies.

There have been a string of stories about the treatment of women in and around politics in recent years — from Brittany Higgins, to former Australia Post executive Christine Holgate, to the treatment of Julia Banks herself.

Ms Banks said she could see a commonality in all those cases, in the way Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sought to “control the narrative”. 

She raised the examples of Mr Morrison saying Ms Higgins may have been “confused” about the timeline of events, and Mr Morrison blasting Ms Holgate in Parliament.

In her own case, Ms Banks said Mr Morrison had tried to portray her as a “weak petal” that had not coped with the mental strain of the leadership spill. 

When the prime minister gave a press conference and took questions about Ms Banks’s decision not to recontest her seat at the 2019 election, he had responded by expressing concern for her welfare.

There’s someone banging on the door 

Ms Banks has shed new light on her experiences in the chaotic week of the leadership spill that ended Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership, and then a few months later when she decided to move to the crossbench as an independent. 

Before the story about her not recontesting the next election had emerged, Ms Banks said she spoke with the prime minister on the phone and agreed not to speak with the media for 24 hours. 

Ms Banks said that was her “first mistake”, because before the 24 hours were up, the story started to leak.

She said she was later told by others that the PM’s office had been “backgrounding” against her — a process where political operatives give off-the-record briefings about situations to journalists. 

The pressure on her intensified after she announced she would quit the ranks of the government and instead sit with the crossbench as an independent in November, 2018, Ms Banks said. 

Shortly after the announcement, Ms Banks said someone came and started “rapping” on the door of her office. 

“We realised it was [Treasurer] Josh Frydenberg, banging on the door,” she said. 

She said the Treasurer had come to make a deal to secure her guarantee of confidence and supply on the floor of the House of Representatives. 

She said she told Mr Frydenberg there would be no deals.

“I said, ‘This shouldn’t be a surprise to you, Josh … I’ve been talking to you and Scott Morrison the whole time.’

“And while I was saying this to Josh, I realised he was live-texting Sky News, because I could see everything I was saying coming up on the television screens. It was quite an extraordinary time.” 

She said she had at one stage called Mr Morrison and asked him to “get his bully boys to back off”.

She said she was offered a three-month position as a delegate in New York because the PM “wanted me silenced” and “out of the country”.

7.30 approached the Prime Minister’s office for comment but it did not respond to questions.

In an earlier statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for Mr Morrison said: “The Prime Minister was disappointed in Ms Banks’s decision to quit the parliamentary party and had several conversations with her to understand what she was going through to see what support could be offered before she made her decision.

“The Prime Minister absolutely rejects claims about the nature of those conversations,” the spokesperson said.

7.30 approached Josh Frydenberg for comment but his office has yet to respond.

Watch the full interview with Julia Banks tonight on 7.30 on ABC TV and iview.