By Charlotte Webster
The Australian Parliament appear to be opposing an idea for a vote to ban sexual relationships between parliament members and their staff.
Independent MP Cathy McGowan plans to ask the Australian parliament to vote on a bill banning sexual relationships between members of parliament and their staff.
The idea comes in the wake of recent revelations that Australia’s deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, impregnated his former adviser despite being married with four children. the public increasingly thought the parliament’s attitude was out of step with “community expectations and corporate practice”.
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“There are examples set by the process undertaken by the United States Congress and in the Australian corporate sector, including the action of the AFL in July last year regarding relationships in the workplace,” she said on Thursday.
The Greens have indicated a willingness to support the idea, which is modelled off a recent ban in the United States’ House of Representatives.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale said new laws were “worth considering” given the potential for major “power imbalance” between politicians and their advisers. However, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not appear very supportive of the idea when he said politicians had to be accountable for their actions but had a right to conduct “consensual, respectful” relationships.
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“It’s not something that normally you would be justified in … seeking to regulate,” Mr Turnbull told reporters as he arrived for meetings with state premiers in Canberra on Friday. The proposal in itself is healthy but has the natural problem of preventing free will. However, politicians are supposed to set a healthy standard for its citizens to emulate, and the deputy prime minister betrayed those standards
Foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop was also uninspiring in her comments when she said the government had no business dictating what “consenting adults” were allowed to do.
“We wouldn’t want to cross the line so that the moral police are able to dictate what happens between consenting adults,” Ms Bishop said.
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“Government has no business interfering in people’s personal lives.”