The shadow minister for women, Tanya Plibersek, has urged women inside Labor to come forward with any complaints about sexual assault or harassment, and has flagged efforts to ensure any submissions to the Jenkins inquiry will remain confidential.
Plibersek told Guardian Australia on Tuesday people who had suffered inappropriate conduct in Labor offices needed to “come forward, disclose [and] we will support you”.
“We want this to be a safe workplace,” Plibersek said. “We want everybody who works here to be safe from sexual assault or harassment.
“If people are engaged in unacceptable behaviour, they need to be called to account.”
Guardian Australia understands that some political staffers are concerned that submissions they make to the inquiry being spearheaded by Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, into workplace culture at Parliament House could be made public.
Plibersek said moves were already under way to ensure submissions would remain confidential. She said she had asked Jenkins to clarify how she would assure staff of confidentiality “given her organisation is subject to freedom of information and the Archives Act”.
She said it was important for parliamentary staff to work with the Jenkins inquiry and ensure that any recommendations at the end of the process were “well informed” by the lived experiences of staff. “I urge our staff to get involved in this to make sure her inquiry is shaped by their experiences,” Plibersek said.
Plibersek said she was hopeful that the Jenkins inquiry would produce a concrete recommendation for an independent investigatory function for parliamentary staff.
“I would hope that one of the recommendations from that inquiry is to have a really independent, standalone function,” she said.
“We’ve got an independent remuneration tribunal, an independent travel and expenses organisation, it would make sense to me to have a truly independent standalone function for investigating allegations of sexual harassment, dealing with perpetrators of sexual harassment and supporting victims in the workplace.”
Plibersek said Labor would continue to work on its own complaints policy, including ensuring that “all members of parliament do training, regular training, about managing workplaces … training that would help us as employers to direct staff the right way to achieve justice should they be a victim of sexual assault”.
Plibersek’s call for women to come forward with complaints comes after former and current Labor staffers ventilated stories of sexual harassment and abuse while at work in a closed Facebook group over the weekend.
The decision by the former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins to come forward with a sexual assault complaint against a former colleague has catalysed discontent in staff ranks across the Australian parliament. That allegation is the subject of an ongoing police investigation and no charges have yet been laid.
Some Labor staffers remain concerned that the complaints policy signed off on by the party’s national executive in late February does not give women sufficient comfort to come forward.
As Plibersek sought to give female staff a public assurance that complaints would be dealt with seriously, Scott Morrison urged his party room to stick together after a torrid month where allegations of sexual assault have rocked the government.
Morrison – who has been under pressure over his handling of the allegations – likened the government’s current position to a walk along the Kokoda Trail. “We’ve been on narrow paths before, colleagues, and we’ve walked them together,” the prime minister said.
“Sometimes the path is wide and we can walk more gently but the path is now narrow and so we must watch out for each other and we must support each other.”
A number of Liberal women expressed views in the party room on Tuesday, including Nicolle Flint, who has recently announced she will not recontest the next election, Katie Allen, Claire Chandler, Angie Bell and Celia Hammond.
With Labor continuing to call for an independent inquiry into a rape allegation levelled against the attorney general, Christian Porter – an allegation Porter denies – in parliament, Morrison declared Labor was in no position to attack the government over its handling of sexual assault allegations.
“The Labor party knows that there are allegations and issues which have been raised about the conduct of staff and members on that side of the House – and that is a matter for them to deal with, to get their own house in order.
“But when they’re standing in glass houses, they should not be throwing these types of stones.”
The former finance minister and leader of the government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, said he had not been aware of the alleged rape of Higgins at the time of the 2019 incident.
But Cormann told the ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday that he had been informed by the Senate president, Scott Ryan, “of an incident” shortly before he left politics late last year – but he “wasn’t aware of the full detail”.
“I wasn’t aware back at the time in any shape at all, at the time of the alleged incident,” said Cormann, who is the incoming OECD secretary general.
“Shortly before I left, I was made aware of some DPS [Department of Parliamentary Services] footage having been maintained.”
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000. International helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.
