How staff bring in sex workers for lawmakers in Australian Parliament House
(FILES) This file photo taken on March 22, 2020 shows Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacting during a press conference at Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra. – A former Australian government staffer has said she was raped in a minister’s office in parliament and failed by her bosses after coming forward, prompting an apology from Morrison on February 16, 2021. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
Australia’s national parliament has been hit by another scandal, with reports that government staffers film sexual encounters in the building and bring in sex workers to see lawmakers in Parliament House, Yahoo news reported.
According to the report Channel Ten and The Australian newspaper obtained videos and images of sexual encounters filmed inside Parliament House, involving four Liberal-National staff members.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a statement on Monday confirmed one staffer who allegedly committed a lewd act on the desk of a female Liberal MP had been sacked.
“The reports aired tonight are disgusting and sickening… It’s not good enough and is totally unacceptable,” Morrison said.
Before now the Prime Minister and his government had already come under fire for their handling of the alleged rape of a ministerial staffer in a minister’s office, by a colleague, in 2019.
A number of women who have been political staffers in Canberra have come forward to speak out about the toxic, misogynistic culture in Parliament House.
One of the women who have been victims of the sexual harassments, Brittany Higgins went public recently about her experience.
Brittany said she broke her silence in the hope it would force a change to the treatment of women in politics.
On Monday, one of the Parliament security guards, Nikola Anderson, who was on duty the night Higgins was allegedly attacked and who found her afterwards, spoke out publicly for the first time on the issue.
Aderson has been a Parliament security guard for 12 years, said another guard told her the man who had arrived with Ms Higgins at Parliament at 1.50am early on a Saturday morning had acted strangely when he left.
“My colleague had tried to make conversation with him and he seemed to be in a hurry… That was when my colleague and I decided that we needed to push it up the chain and notify our night shift team leader that there might have been something a bit strange going on.”
She subsequently went to Minister Linda Reynold’s office, where she had previously allowed the two staffers access because the male claimed he needed something from the office that couldn’t wait until Monday, and found Ms Higgins naked on the couch.
Also on Monday, it was reported that a former housemate of the man accused of raping Higgins had told police he made unwanted sexual advances towards her.
Kriti Gupta gave statements to New South Wales police and to the Australian Federal Police, who are investigating the Higgins case.
She is the fifth woman to raise allegations against the man. A second woman alleges he raped her in 2020, a third that he assaulted her in 2016, and a fourth that he groped her under a table in 2017.
Aside Brittany’s allegations, in February, it was reportedly publicly for the first time that a woman who had committed suicide had told New South Wales police she was raped in 1988 by a Government Minister, later revealed to be Attorney-General Christian Porter.
Porter served as Attorney-General of Australia since 2017, and has served as Member of Parliament for Pearce since 2013. He was appointed Minister for Industrial Relations and Leader of the House in 2019.
The Attorney General has denied the allegations.
Although, the woman’s close friends, have continued to push for an independent inquiry into the alleged historic rape – which the Government has refused to allow.
