This article was written by a former political staffer who worked for her local MP for 18 months. She joined the team as a way of serving her community but ended up shocked and disappointed by the experience.
This is the third part in a series. Read other insiders’ views on ministerial mismanagement and abuse here and here.
As a survivor of sexual assault I am regularly “triggered” by stories like those of brave Brittany Higgins, but this past week I have found myself yelling at the television whenever the “rape in Parliament House” story is mentioned for a very different reason.
Rape is a heinous crime that cannot be understated, but Brittany’s courage and determination have inspired me to speak up, not about sexual assault, but about what I now call “Staffer Syndrome”.
I am a mature professional woman with a wonderful career behind me. I decided to give up my job as a successful journalist, editor and managing editor of over 30 years to work for my local MP. I did so in the belief that our community and the party she represents could benefit from my skills, my professional experience, and my life experience.
It only took a couple of weeks working in the electoral office to realise it was a toxic and dysfunctional environment lacking leadership, cohesion and support. Within weeks the MP stood over me in front of my co-workers and chastised me for listening to the local ABC news that morning instead of Radio National. I was minutes away from getting the RN transcript she was so anxious about but was told it was “too late” — she was no longer interested.
I can still feel the emotion welling up in my chest as I write this. That was the first of many instances of the MP bullying, gaslighting and then ghosting me over the 18 months I worked for her.
Around 15 people had left the office for similar reasons between 2016 and 2019 but I didn’t know that when I took the job. The public persona I had known before taking the position was completely different to the person in the office or on the end of a text or email at all hours of the day and night. My professional judgement and confidence were eroded daily.
One of the incentives for taking the job was the potential to work in Parliament House. I went once. I was verbally abused in front of another parliamentary staffer by the MP and spent 30 minutes in her parliamentary bathroom crying — something I hadn’t done at work since I was in my early 20s.
When COVID hit, many MPs closed their electoral offices — but not this one. I have a pre-existing medical condition so my doctor urged me to work from home. The bullying stopped but the exclusion started.
Ten to 20 calls a day plus texts and emails reduced to nil as soon as I started working from home. I was suddenly left out of key decisions and projects that I would have been in the middle of. I was “ghosted” for accepting medical advice over loyalty to the MP.
The isolation was overwhelming. I’d worked from home successfully in the past as a freelancer and contributor and always felt like a valued part of a team and had good relationships with my managers.
The last straw came when my elderly neighbour passed away. She had been my daughters’ nanny and a dear friend for 20 years. Her husband asked if I would write something to read at her funeral. I got clearance from my doctor to attend. I asked my MP for permission which was given but with an implication that if I was well enough to go to a funeral (even a COVID-safe one) I should be fit to work in the EO.
I called my union who told me to document what I’d been through to determine whether I had grounds for an official complaint. I called the Department of Finance help desk who told me they discouraged official complaints. I should “work through the issues and rebuild my relationship with my member” as my job, although covered by the MOP(S) Act, was a matter for my MP. They did provide workplace counselling.
I was relieved when my union validated that I’d been bullied and should go ahead with a formal complaint. I then made the mistake of agreeing, in good faith, to mediation without a support person. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.
I entered mediation to come to an agreement so I could keep my job. The MP came prepared to destroy my professional confidence and she succeeded. Days later I realised the MP had exercised a similar level of power and control over me as the perpetrator of my sexual assault many years earlier. I was not surprised by the Four Corners “Inside the Canberra Bubble” story last year or Brittany’s latest disclosures.
By the time of mediation I’d used up my quota of workplace counselling and was seeing another counsellor at my own expense. I was diagnosed with extreme anxiety and told to take time off. I’d never been anxious before.
My experience is not isolated. I have spoken with other current and former staffers who’ve endured similar treatment. There are dysfunctional electoral offices all over the country where people young and old are at the mercy of very powerful elected representatives. This is the case across the political spectrum and women can be as lethal to their staff as men.
Many MPs and senators, federal and state, have no managerial experience and yet they are given total control over electoral staff — staff paid for by the public purse.
This system enables widespread bullying and harassment without redress. It enables rape. Major and minor parties and independents hide behind the federal MOP(S) Act or the state equivalent. It needs to be reformed.
A partisan enquiry by the PM’s department is not going to cut it; nor will the politicisation of the issue by the opposition.
Damaged staffers need to keep speaking out until the system is reformed. Good and intelligent people are attracted to these positions out of a desire to serve the public.
They are usually the ones chewed up and spat out while the party hacks learn how to play the game and end up with safe seats, cabinet positions, and their own staff to bully.
An important story, thank you for it. Staffer jobs are notoriously demanding, very much seen as young person’s gig because even without toxicity they are very demanding of time and energy. The point about zero managerial training really resonates. Not only do pollies get no training in management but far too many have just gone straight into politics through the student politics path, so they have little or no experience in working to a manager in a professional environment. Their prime experience is more likely as staffers being treated the same way they end up treating their own staff. So their model for behaviour is what they have experienced plus some “norms” drawn from dramatic representations of tough guy political actors. Gordon Gekko rather than President Bartlett.
I think the misogyny and ethical void at the centre of the alleged sexual mistreatment and crimes against women is something else again but what you describe is an enabling environment for it.
These pieces go to the heart of what creates the culture and values in Parliament House, where all of these dysfunctional humans gather.
What human being of any age thinks this is reasonable, acceptable or even justifiable behaviour? We are led by self-important school children. Many of these drones should not have progressed beyond the most unskilled jobs in the workforce.
Having said that, I’m sure there are plenty of MPs who are great to work for. As it stands, who would know who the good ones were.
Looking at performances on TV of ministers and some of the louder backbenchers, I wonder how people with so many advisers and helpers are so obtuse.
Any chance of a “name and shame”?
I must say it is soooo rewarding to see who actually cares and shares and how. As to your hopes for naming and shaming, Woopwoop, you really are charmingly old-fashioned, aren’t you? Yet you do give me some hopes.
{Without Prejudice.}I’m not expecting to win anything, -only rotten tomatoes. (It’s ok. I’m a vegetarian.) This is a wonderful, even exemplary, moral story of a woman that worked for a woman politician, in the A.C.T., for idealistic motives. Even as a mere male, this idea makes me shudder. It wonders me not that Aussies are born innocents as regards political-power. When does any one learn that the term “community,” in this country, was re-branded in Whitlam’s time to mean the same as on the Hatchery motto in A. Huxley’s (1931) book, “Brave new World”? She took her union’s advice and was screwed over even more! I suggest some re-phrasing is required, e.g. “Stuffer Syndrome.” As for that industrial monstrosity on that little hill, let’s call it “Bonker’s Castle.” And why not rename the city Clamberra?
The city of Canberra/district are not the same as the strange building under the hill. I, for one, would like to see the Parliamentary fortress dug up and moved to the farthest reaches of the Defence Prohibited Area in SA, along with its inhabitants…
Cantberra and the ACT only exist to service the Federal Government so does that mean you all move to SA? If not, the ACT should be dissolved and reabsorbed back into NSW.
As a long time Canberra resident I find your comment both offensive and confused. The ACT and Canberra should never be conflated with the MPs and senators elected throughout the country and sent to meet in a really quite lovely building in the nation’s capital.
This 3rd wodge of verbiage provides further evidence that it is written to order, by the numbers, no box unticked, no wokeizm unworshipped.
It does for interpersonal/workplace relations what a Schwab piece does epidemiology.
“No wokeizm unworshipped?”
What a strange comment, both wrong and irrelevant. Hard to fathom a mind that responds to this piece with that comment.