“The story of my journey is that I am an ordinary person and not someone who hails from the political rich or privileged elite,” said Julia Banks in her first speech to federal parliament in September 2016.
“I am someone who has never worked within the iron fist of the trade union movement and who is not a career politician. I am a daughter of parents who were denied an education but who worked hard with optimism and faith in this country at two, and sometimes three, jobs so they could hope to provide their children with schools of their choice.”
Banks is a rational and accomplished woman, who came to politics from life outside, after a 25-year business career, with a clear set of values and objectives, motivated to make a contribution to public service.
To cut a long story short, the recruitment of people like Julia Banks is exactly what Australian politics needs, particularly the Liberal and National parties – modern political movements hampered by a reflexive stone-age sensibility when it comes to respecting the talents of women.
But what she’s discovered during her tour of duty is Australian politics is difficult for women, and as I’ve noted before, increasingly hostile territory for human beings.
Given Banks is not yet institutionalised, and is choosing to depart before being subsumed, her lived experience of political life aligns with perceptions of voters, who look at the goings-on with increasing levels of incomprehension.
Banks has discovered, at the coalface, that politics is irrational and perverse, because it has become captured by false feedback loops where the voices of a shrill few determine outcomes for the many, and where brutal power dynamics possess more gravitational force than reason, collaboration and synthesis.
Politics is fast becoming the art of people shouting in small rooms.
While Banks’ refreshingly frank account of toxic internal machinations will doubtless grab the headlines, the Victorian Liberal MP’s parting statement on Wednesday contains within it a damning indictment of the current state of play that stretches beyond the unseemly vignette of a bunch of adrenaline-soaked bully boys wedging their feet in closing doors and stealing one another’s play lunches.
Stepping through her reasoning, she’s evidently reached a conclusion that she can’t reconcile the pursuit of national interest with the grim reality of how politics is practised in…
