Minister for women, Katy Gallagher, says she will kickstart implementation of the Jenkins review in the opening fortnight of the new parliament, declaring the mission to eradicate toxic parliamentary staffing culture is not going to “die a little slow death”.
In her first interview as the new federal minister for women, Katy Gallaghersaid the Jenkins reboot had begun this week. She said Kerri Hartland, the independent chair of the Jenkins review implementation taskforce, had contacted MPs across the parliament to revive the process that went into hiatus because of the May election.
The Jenkins review found one in three parliamentary staffers interviewed had been sexually harassed. It found gender inequality in the political ecosystem was a key driver of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault within commonwealth parliamentary workplaces. Power imbalances and the misuse of power were “one of the primary drivers of misconduct”.
Gallagher – who is also the finance minister and the minister responsible for the public service – has responsibility for Labor’s national plan for gender equality, the women’s economic security taskforce and pulling together a whole-of-government response to other election commitments.
After meeting Hartland and Kate Jenkins, Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner and the official who conducted last year’s landmark review of parliamentary workplace culture, Gallagher will also oversee the reform of parliamentary culture, although responsibility for implementing the Jenkins review is split between the government and the parliament.
Gallagher signalled the new cross-party implementation group led by Hartland could include a second crossbencher as well as the independent Zali Steggall, who was on the taskforce before the May election.
“We are hoping that can meet in the first week of the parliament once those nominations come though,” Gallagher said. “Kerri will provide an update at that meeting on what has been done and what needs to be done and some of the key decision points.”
In addition to rebooting the taskforce, Gallagher said a joint select committee would be re-established to consider a new code of conduct. The Jenkins review called for a new code of conduct for parliamentarians and their staff as part of normalising employment conventions.
Earlier this week the Labor MP Kate Thwaites told Guardian Australia MPs should be able to be sacked for serious breaches of the proposed new parliamentary code of conduct, saying consequences are “vital” to ending the “political culture of impunity” in Canberra.
Gallagher acknowledged Thwaites’s comments about the importance of punishment and sanctions. The minister said: “How that works will be where some of the rubber hits the road for some people.”
Gallagher said she wanted to make sure new administrative and support services worked optimally for parliamentary staff.
As part of structural reforms, Jenkins recommended the establishment of a new office of parliamentarian staffing and culture to provide centralised human resources support, including policy development, training, advice, support and education.
The review also recommended the creation of an independent parliamentary standards commission “to ensure that there are independent and consistent responses to reports and complaints of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault” in parliamentary workplaces.
Gallagher said it would be important to “do a round of staff consultations before the next phase of reform “because I don’t know whether they were particularly involved because of the speed and haste in how the Jenkins review was responded to”.
But she said reform was urgent. “This is not going to die a little slow death.”
Gallagher said while some of the reforms may take a period of time to roll out, and would require discussion between the presiding officers and politicians, “how we make it right for staff is top of my list, and I don’t want complications or delays”.
“Staff will watch the speed and the level of interest in the decision making,” she said.
Gallagher said parliament was a difficult environment to build culture in because it was an unusual workplace. “It’s no surprise negative culture has come to the forefront because it is easier to allow negative culture than it is to build positive culture.”
As well as rebooting the Jenkins review, Gallagher said the government’s first budget in October would include first steps in gender responsive budgeting and a women’s budget statement. The new government is also going to produce a wellbeing budget, which is a process followed in New Zealand.
Gallagher said she had no interest in ticking a box or producing a glossy pamphlet. Her objective for October was to produce “some reasonable analysis of the impact on women on a couple of measures, signalling clearly this is the way we will be doing budget documents”.
“What I think we’ll do in October is focus on election commitments like childcare, jobs and skills, aged care, potentially, where we will be able to demonstrate we’ve done a gender assessment on those measures, but it won’t be everything,” she said.
She said she would shortly appoint 10 people to the women’s economic security taskforce “and that will be a key advisory group”. Gallagher said it would be similar to a taskforce established by the Liberal treasurer in New South Wales, Matt Kean.
“I would like to use that taskforce to help drive the national strategy for gender equality,” she said. “We will also meet with fellow women’s ministers in July, before the opening of the 47th parliament.”
Gallagher said the prime minister had provided “some good levers to drive change and I don’t intend to waste the opportunity”.
“Our performance has been terrible,” the minister said. “In the last 10 years our international ranking on the gender pay gap has gone from 18th to 70th, and on overall gender equality our ranking has gone from 23rd to 50th.”
