Two days after it returned to parliament having lost its majority in an embarrassing byelection defeat, Australia’s government has been dealt another blow with the defection of a Liberal MP.
Julia Banks, an MP from the state of Victoria, resigned from the Liberal party to become an independent, calling out the poor treatment of women in parliament and selfishness of colleagues as she did so.
Her resignation means the coalition government now holds just 74 of 150 seats in parliament.
Banks announced that she would become an independent MP at the same time as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, was holding a press conference, suggesting she told few of her colleagues about her plans.
Morrison – previously the socially conservative architect of Australia’s hardline anti-asylum seeker policies – became Australia’s fifth prime minister in just over five years in August after Malcolm Turnbull was ousted in a struggle for power in the Liberal party. In his valedictory speech, Turnbull sounded a warning against the rising tide of populist anti-immigration political rhetoric, promoted from within his own party.
Banks said her “sensible centrist” values remained the same but were no longer matched by the Liberal party, which governs in a coalition with the National party.
“The Liberal party has changed, largely due to the actions of the reactionary and regressive right wing who talk about and to themselves rather than listening to the people,” she told parliament.
She said she would decide in the new year about her “future career path”.
In September Banks raised allegations of bullying against women in Australian politics and called for gender quotas in parliament. She also said she would be quitting parliament after the next election.
But on Tuesday she said she had been contacted by supporters begging her to stay on as an independent.
Banks is one of five Liberal party women in parliament to have raised bullying allegations. Four of those five have since become independent MPs or left the cabinet.
Banks was vocally dissatisfied with her party when it ousted Turnbull in August. On Tuesday she accused fellow party members of acting for their own power and personal ambition.
In her speech to parliament she said the move against Turnbull had been “led by members of the reactionary right wing … aided by many MPs trading their vote for a leadership change in exchange for their individual promotion, preselection endorsement or silence.”
The removal of Turnbull as leader – which many coalition government members have since sought to distance themselves from – was followed by a disastrous run of events for the government.
Turnbull resigned from parliament and a byelection in his historically safe seat was won by an independent candidate, resulting in the government losing its majority. When Julia Gillard led a minority government before the Labor party lost at the polls in 2013 election, many Liberal MPs said her leadership had been delegitimised.
In another blow, the incumbent Labor government won a crushing victory in the Victorian state election over the weekend.
In his first official week at the head of a minority government, Morrison sought to get back on track with a press conference announcing an early budget and a predicted surplus, but was quickly overshadowed by Banks’ concurrent speech.
