VIDEO: Inside the Canberra Bubble

Four Corners  

9 November 2020 

Inside the Canberra Bubble 

JO DYER, NATIONAL SCHOOLS CHAMPION DEBATING TEAM, 1987: All political parties need to think about the type of people that they have in positions of power and authority. And Australians need to think about the type of people that they want representing them.  

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: Whether you’re the first law officer, or you’re the prime minister or you’re the premier, that expectation is that one conducts oneself with the highest degree of integrity.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: Ministers, Cabinet Ministers in particular, have got to really be very conscious of the fact that when you’re out in public you have to make sure that you’re not doing anything that that you know, could expose you to compromise. 

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: This isn’t about party politics. This is about the nation’s parliament.   I think a big part of the problem is that women have been forced to stay silent on these things. And silence doesn’t help anyone.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: The behaviour wasn’t OK, and the culture is not OK. And there should be something done about it.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: There’s a strong but unofficial tradition in federal politics of what happens in Canberra, stays in Canberra. Politicians, political staff and media operate in what’s known as ‘The Canberra Bubble’. Along with the political gamesmanship, there’s a heady, permissive culture and that culture can be toxic for women. Tonight on Four Corners, we go inside the Canberra Bubble, with an investigation that questions the conduct of some of the most senior politicians in the nation.  

KRISTINA KENEALLY, LABOR SENATOR: I’ve been in politics a long time and sexism, unfortunately has been a feature of it for all that period.  I just think it’s quite regrettable that younger women and people who are in a more vulnerable position are still experiencing sexist overtures or sexual harassment, quite frankly.  

 
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: Whether it’s the sexist slurs and the bullying and intimidation that I’ve stood up against, or a young staffer feeling intimidated or put upon in, in an office, it’s part of the same problem.  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: For the women who work inside the Canberra bubble, it can be a dispiriting place.  

 
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: It is a… It’s a man’s world that we still haven’t cracked open.  

 
MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: One of the problems with the culture in Canberra is a that you’ve got all of these people, you know, politicians, staffers, away from home, a stressful environment, late hours, too much alcohol. It’s not a healthy working environment, and it’s a very isolated one.   If you think Canberra is a bubble, Parliament House is a bubble inside a bubble and so it’s not a great working environment and I think people often lose sight of the fact that there are, you know, standards of behaviour and conduct which have to be maintained.   The attitudes to women and the lack of respect to women, of women in many quarters in Canberra reminds me of the corporate scene, you know, 40 years ago. It is, it’s just not modern Australia – it really isn’t.  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Do you think there’s a view by some of the blokes in Canberra that what happens on tour stays on tour? 

 
CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: Well that’s Louise a question that I would direct to the blokes. But certainly,  if one conducts oneself with an appropriate standard of conduct and integrity, then whatever may have happened on tour ought to be a matter for public disclosure. 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: In Australia, the private lives of politicians have traditionally been considered off-limits. But many women working in Canberra believe this culture of silence allows sexist behaviour to thrive. 

 
RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I think a lot of MPs and senators get into the kind of trap of thinking that Canberra’s a place where they can come and kind of do whatever they like, because there'll be no scrutiny, they're out of their electorate, they’re away from their family.  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Rachelle Miller worked at Parliament House as an adviser to Liberal Party MPs and Ministers for nine years. She believes it’s time to blow the whistle. 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Why are you here? 

 
RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: Look, I think for two reasons. One of the reasons is that I really strongly believe that the standard that you walk past is the standard you accept, and I saw a lot of really poor behaviour in my time in parliament and I feel I let down a lot of women. As a senior staffer, I could have done a lot more to stand up for people. Instead, there was a culture of kind of just putting your head down and not getting involved. And I think that it’s really important now for me to be able to speak out and say that this behaviour wasn’t okay, and that if you are experiencing this behaviour and still working in parliament, it’s not okay. And, you should know that.  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: The Liberal Party has been grappling with what’s been described as a “women problem” for several years, with accusations of endemic sexism. 

 
LINDA REYNOLDS, LIBERAL SENATOR, 23 AUGUST 2018: “I do not recognise my party at the moment. I do not recognise the values. I do not recognise the bullying and intimidation that has gone on.” 

JULIE BISHOP, DEPUTY LIBERAL LEADER, 2007-2018, 5 SEPTEMBER 2018: "It's evident that there is an acceptance of a level of behaviour in Canberra that would not be tolerated in any other workplace." 

JULIA BANKS, LIBERAL MP, 27 NOVEMBER 2018: “Often, when good women call out or are subjected to bad behaviour, the reprisals, backlash and commentary portrays them as the bad ones – the liar, the troublemaker, the emotionally unstable or weak, or someone who should be silenced.” 

 
NEWSREADER, 2 JANUARY 2019: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has begun trying to win back female voters, and he's using some of the same female MPs who recently accused blokes in the Liberal Party of being bullies. 

 
SCOTT MORRISON, PRIME MINISTER: There are seven women now in cabinet. That is the highest number of women ever in a federal cabinet.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Do you think that the Liberal Party has a woman problem? 

 
MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: Well I think women have got a problem with the Liberal Party. It’s probably a better way of putting it. I think the party, ah, does not have enough women MPs and Senators. I think it is seen as being very blokey. That’s a real that is a, that look, that is wrong. That is, that is wrong, full stop. Politically, it’s also very mistaken.  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Women remain underrepresented on the government benches. 

 
KELLY O'DWYER, MINISTER FOR WOMEN, JOBS & INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, 3 SEPTEMBER 2018: Well, look, there's no question that the Liberal Party can and should do better when it comes to getting more women into parliament and we need to do a lot better at keeping them there. 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Seven of the 30 current government ministers are women. There are fewer Liberal women sitting in the Lower House than there were 20 years ago, while the number of Opposition women has doubled.  

 
SCOTT MORRISON, PRIME MINISTER, 8 MARCH 2019: “We want to see women rise. But we don’t want to see women rise, only on the basis of others doing worse.” 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: A Gender and Politics report released just last month by Liberal think-tank, The Menzies Research Centre, found the party has a long way to go. 

 
NICK CATER, MENZIES RESEARCH CENTRE, 28 OCTOBER 2020:  If we believe that everybody should have an equal opportunity in life, and as Liberals we believe that passionately, then there’s no reason why women should not be better represented in parliament.  

 
NICOLLE FLINT, LIBERAL MP, 28 OCTOBER 2020: We know that there are there are barriers to women putting their hand up for preselection and being elected, and then staying elected is the other part of it as well which is why we still need to see far more women in safe seats.  

 
RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I don’t feel like there’s equality in the Liberal Party at the moment and it’s really concerning for me. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve thought recently seriously about giving up my membership of the Liberal Party. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been quite discouraged in pursuing a career with the Liberal Party. There’s plenty of women working in staffing roles in parliament at the moment, but the experience is, you need to be like a male to cope, to survive. 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Senior Liberal women including current Cabinet ministers, have despaired at the sexism of some of their male colleagues in a private WhatsApp message group obtained by Four Corners.  

 
WHATSAPP MESSAGE: “It is passed [sic] time for us to get organised and collectively stand up. After listening in party room ... to bikini judging commentary enough is enough. [angry emoji}” 

WHATSAPP MESSAGE: “We, each of us inspire young women to aim for leadership, how do we continue to do this in the face of puerile back-stabbing from male party members whose sole aim is to count numbers and take our place? This leads to huge party discontent and loss of loyal liberals who feel terribly betrayed…”  

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: It's not just sexism that women face in this highly-charged atmosphere. There is also a pattern of inappropriate sexual behaviour which is tolerated and condoned.  

 
RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I don’t for a moment kind of say that all the men were predators and all the women were victims, but it was a highly sexualised environment at times and I think that’s a consequence of the stress.   It’s kind of that ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality that I’ve seen before early in my career in industries like advertising. And there is a kind of, an almost gung-ho kind of mentality by a lot of the senior males that they’re kind of almost beyond reproach, like they can just get away with things. And…I… and they can, because nobody calls that behaviour out. 

 
LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: The annual mid-winter ball at Parliament House is one occasion where politicians, staffers and journalists like to let their hair down.  

KRISTINA KENEALLY, LABOR SENATOR: I attended the 2017 midwinter ball in my capacity as a Sky News presenter. I was a host of one of the Sky News tables. It was a work event for me, but you know, I was looking forward to a fun evening.  I can only describe what I witnessed and experienced and quite frankly, that was some men who were clearly on the make at that event. And I know people are going to think this might sound partisan, but let’s remember I was a Sky News presenter in 2017, I wasn’t a member of parliament. And you know, what I experienced was some Coalition men trying to have a crack. And it, it was clumsy, it was easily fobbed off. No harm was done to me, but it did make me feel uncomfortable. I hadn’t particularly experienced that at a function like that before and it made me wonder what kind of environment is this, where men think they can just have a crack at it? You know? I’m a public figure and I’m pretty publicly well-known to be married. And I was really surprised and taken aback by that. In fact, I went back and told one of my colleagues at Sky: “I’m not going to that event again without my husband. Not because I need him to protect me, but I just felt that a woman there alone had a kind of a sign on her neck that said she was available.  This was an event with hundreds of people. If this is what is happening in the federal parliament in a relatively open way, what’s going on behind closed doors? Particularly, if you’ve got men who’ve got a sense of power and entitlement. I just have to wonder what’s going on for many of the young women in this building? 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Media advisor Rachelle Miller was also there for her first Midwinter Ball that night in 2017. She attended with her boss, then-Human Services Minister Alan Tudge.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I had a really lovely dress that I’d found, which was like a floor length red dress and the girls did a really good job with my hair and makeup. So it was nice to dress up and feel feel nice and feel that you looked, you know, you look nicer than the usual suit that you wore every day. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Both married with children, Rachelle Miller now admits she and Minister Tudge were having an affair. She was terrified they would be found out.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I was walking with Alan and I was chatting to him and I intentionally dropped back because I didn’t want to walk in with him. I mean I wasn’t his guest. I wasn’t his partner. And I didn’t want to be on camera. And he stopped and he turned around, he said, ‘no, I want you walking with me’ and I’m…I was really surprised by that. I have a feeling that my appearance had a bearing on why, Alan would want to walk in with me on his arm. And I felt at that time a lot like an ornament, and that I was being used as an ornament. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: That feeling continued later, at the after-party, when Rachelle Miller remembers bumping into Mr Tudge’s friend, now-Attorney-General Christian Porter, who was with another MP. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: Yeah so Minister Porter was obviously quite drunk at Public Bar after the ball. And they came up to me, and they said ‘Oh, you know, you look really great, you look really hot. And of course, Alan being the media tart that he is, would want to have you on his arm when he walked into the ball, with all the cameras there, you know. And he’s a total media genius, you know, thinking that, you know, to have you walk in with him.’ And it really felt quite demeaning. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Alan Tudge has publicly represented himself as a social conservative and an advocate of traditional marriage. 

ALAN TUDGE, MINISTER FOR HUMAN SERVICES, 6 DECEMBER 2017:  “My reservations about changing the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples was my view that marriage as an institution traditionally has been primarily about creating a bond for the creation, love and care of children. And I was concerned that if the definition is changed to be purely one about recognising love, rather than a foundation for the raising of children, then the institution itself would potentially be weakened. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: That was his his public image absolutely. Look I think it's hypocrisy and I've told him that. I, you know, I'm probably I'm a moderate Liberal and it really upset me to hear him particularly during the same sex marriage debate actively speak in parliament, and you know have and express a view that for children to have the right upbringing they need they need to have a mother and father and a traditional kind of family environment. And I just thought ‘wow!’. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: There’s no question that some of the most trenchant opponents of same-sex marriage, all in the name of traditional marriage, were at the same time enthusiastic practitioners of traditional adultery. As I said many times, this issue of the controversy over same-sex marriage was dripping with hypocrisy and the pools were deepest at the feet of the sanctimonious.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Conservative Liberal senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, believes Ministers should live the values they espouse to the public. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER:  I understand that you can’t make specific comments about any specific ministers  but generally, how do you feel about ministers who publicly to their electorates portray themselves as conservative family men, married men, and then when they are in Canberra, lead a different life? You know, carousing with staffers and so on? 

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: Well, values and beliefs are very important in politics. When we stand for office, when we stand for preselection and when we stand before the electorate, we stand on a set of values and beliefs. And there is an expectation, that whether it is to our preselectors, whether it is to our electors that we abide by those values and beliefs because ultimately we will be judged by them. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Is it appropriate for a Minister to have a relationship with a staffer?  

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: It’s not appropriate. And we’ve seen instances of that happened, happen and different leaders of both political persuasion have taken the, have taken appropriate action. As I said, it’s notwithstanding the different pressures that do exist in this place, we have to maintain a high level of conduct. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Rachelle Miller says her affair with Alan Tudge, now Acting Immigration Minister, was completely consensual… but she has lived to bitterly regret it. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I lost a lot of self-confidence because I didn’t feel I had any power at all to be able to stand up for myself. I was just exhausted, you know, really exhausted. So what I’m trying to do by speaking to you is stand up for myself and say ‘This isn’t okay. The behaviour wasn’t okay. And the culture is not okay. And there should be something done about it’. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: She constantly had to manage the rumours about the affair that circulated in the press gallery.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: Alan put a lot of pressure on me and quote-unquote, asked me to ‘war-game’ the lines that I was going to give the journalists to try and kill the story. And so when I’d call it’d be all like, ‘Make sure you don’t talk, make sure you get your lines straight, make sure you don’t answer your phone, actually it would just be better if you don’t answer your phone at all.’  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: After the affair ended, Rachelle Miller left Alan Tudge’s office and went to work for another minister. She says she was later demoted in a restructure. She felt she had no choice but to leave politics. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: I knew I was leaving a job that I really loved, but I didn’t see that there was any other way out. And look, the culture is very much like that. It’s very much, ‘You sacrifice yourself for the good of the party’. You know, I actually at that time viewed myself as damaged goods and I was really worried about this coming out and impacting our chances at the election.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: It’s really important to emphasise that this sort of relationship has not been acceptable in the big banks or the big corporations for years, decades. And then you move into parliament and ministers’ offices – who are absolutely public property – who are living in a fishbowl, ah who have enormous responsibility. There is always a power imbalance between the boss and somebody who works for them, the younger and more junior they are, the more extreme that power imbalance is. And of course, ministers essentially have the power to hire and fire their staff, so they’ve got enormous power. This is again one of the reasons why these types of relations in those offices are just not acceptable. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Alan Tudge did not respond on the record to Four Corners’ request for an interview or provide answers to our detailed questions. 

NEWSREADER, 14 FEBRUARY 2018: Good evening, Juanita Phillips with ABC News. We begin tonight with dramatic developments in the Barnaby Joyce affair. For full coverage we go to parliament house.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: In February 2018, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made an extraordinary announcement, in response to news that his deputy, Barnaby Joyce, was having an affair with a staffer.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: ‘Barnaby made a shocking error of judgement. He has set off a world of woe for those women and appalled all of us.’ 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Under his infamous ‘Bonk Ban’, Mr Turnbull declared that Ministers could no longer sleep with their staff.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: ‘Ministers must behave accordingly. They must not, I don't care whether they are married or single, I don't care, they must not have sexual relations with their staff. That's it.’  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: What the public didn’t know was that as well as his deputy, the PM also had other ministers including Alan Tudge in his sights.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Was the Bonk Ban then just about Barnaby Joyce? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: No. No. Well I mean, Barnaby’s case triggered it and look it may, it may not have happened at that time had it not been for the Barnaby issue, but it went much further than that.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Did some of the ministers think that it was acceptable to sleep with staff? 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: Oh I think there was, I think there was a quite a widespread view in parliament that this sort of thing was entirely a private matter. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Another cabinet minister whose conduct had come to the attention of the-then Prime Minister, and helped inspire the bonk ban, was the man who now holds the office of Commonwealth Attorney-General, Christian Porter.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: There had been some reports about Christian. Ah, I think he recognised that his conduct had not been up to the right standard. Ministers, Cabinet ministers in particular, have got to really be very conscious of the fact that when you’re out in public, you have to make sure that you’re not doing anything that that, you know, could expose you to compromise or that could be represented in a way that could expose you to compromise. 

NEWSREADER: The Attorney-General Christian Porter has ordered his department to look into sexual harassment allegations made in the media by an unnamed woman who worked as an assistant on the Royal Commission. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: The Attorney-General’s role, as the nation’s chief law officer, includes implementing rules to protect women. 

CHRISTIAN PORTER, ATTORNEY-GENERAL, 24 JUNE 2020: “No-one should have to suffer sexual harassment at work, or in any other part of their lives, for that matter. It’s very, very serious, the Commonwealth Government takes it very seriously.” 

CHRISTIAN PORTER, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: “I think being in a good suburban Australian family is a real leveller.” 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Like many of his Cabinet colleagues, the Attorney-General promotes himself as a family man.  

CHRISTIAN PORTER, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: “I’ve got a daughter, I’m married to a lovely person who is a lawyer and has been involved in male-dominated professions for a long time. So, it’s something that’s constantly on your mind, and it’s something that I talk to my staff about and from time to time, of course, is a subject matter of conversation with your colleagues. But this is about every individual, I think holding themselves to high standards…”  

JOSH BORNSTEIN, EMPLOYMENT LAWYER: Look the reason the Attorney-General occupies a pretty unique role in our political system is because the Attorney-General’s role is as the first law officer of the country. And as a Attorney-General you are meant to be above reproach, you are meant to be able to articulate the proper role of the courts, the proper role of the legal system, while also occupying a position as a politician. In other words to be impeccable in terms of personal and political behaviour. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Serious questions are now being raised about the Attorney-General’s conduct… And they go back over decades. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Why are you here? 

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: I’m here because, for a long time, Christian has benefited from the silence around his conduct and his behaviour, and the silence has meant that his behaviour has been tolerated and after a certain amount of time, the silence means that it’s condoned and that it’s considered acceptable. And I’m here because I don’t think that his behaviour should be tolerated, and it is not acceptable. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER:  Christian Porter was always destined for political leadership. A private school boy from Perth, he had a proud Liberal pedigree. His father was an Olympian who had become a king-maker in Western Australian politics. Young Porter was a champion debater who was selected for Australia’s national schools team.  

JO DYER, NATIONAL SCHOOLS CHAMPION DEBATING TEAM, 1987: We met CP in 1986, um, for the first time. He was very charming. He was very confident. Um, we were all quite confident back then. He had that assuredness that’s perhaps born of privilege. But he was, you know, brash, blond and breezy.   Christian was quite slick, in some ways. And he had an air of entitlement around him that I think was born of the privilege from which he came.    

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Christian Porter studied Arts/Economics and then Law at the University of Western Australia. He was at UWA for the better part of a decade. 

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: I’ve known Christian since I was sixteen years old. I was a member of the WA state debating team and he was brought in to assist coaching, as a lot of university students were at the time. And I knew him later when I was at the State Solicitors’ Office in Western Australia and he was at the DPP. So I’ve known him for a long time. For all of that time, I’ve known him to be someone who was in my opinion, and based on what I saw, deeply sexist and actually misogynist in his treatment of women, in the way that he spoke about women. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Kathleen Foley is a barrister who also sits on the Victorian Bar Council. She did Arts and then Law at UWA in the nineties, where she collected prizes for her academic achievements. She spent a lot of time with Christian Porter as she too was a champion debater. 

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: He was a really powerful figure. He was a dominant personality and many people at the law school looked up to him because they felt that he was going to really be a powerful person one day. He spoke about the fact that he wanted to be Prime Minister. People knew that his father was a Liberal Party powerbroker. So he carried a lot of weight and he threw that weight around.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Christian Porter’s nickname on campus was ‘Chilla’, after his Olympian dad. He gained a reputation as a hard-drinking party boy and womaniser. 

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: Christian’s persona, particularly at UWA, was the sidelining of women in any kind of forum in which they wanted to be involved. They were treated as a joke, they were objects of ridicule. The only point to women, as far as I could tell from Christian’s way of treating women, was for him to hit on them, or for women to be made fun of, particularly for the way that they looked.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Chilla was a frequent contributor to the Law students’  magazine, Briefs, where he’s quoted as saying: “I’m going to smut my way through law school”. He joked about his drinking and his “rowdy” behaviour… particularly at the so-called ‘R U Barking?’ pub crawl competition, which he attended six times.  

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: They would have plastic bags tied to their wrists and as they did the pub crawl, you would vomit into these plastic bags that were tied to your wrist. So you would be going through the streets of Perth, vomiting into bags and carrying the vomit around. It was really extreme. I never did it, because it wasn’t the kind of thing that I was into, but the commentary around that, the way that the men spoke about that, and the way that the women who participated in that were talked about and treated, was really off-putting.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Porter wrote of what he called the “chick teams”, that they were “about as gratuitous and off-putting display of female sensuality that has ever occurred on R U Barking.” 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Writing about a debate on whether “Lawyers are just well-dressed prostitutes”, Porter said: “Our opposition’s case had more holes than Snow White’s hymen”. A graduation profile of Porter when he was 26 said he’d be remembered for:  “Vomiting all over himself – on the dance floor!” It predicted that in 10 years time, Porter would be: “Running for PM. Being kicked out of the Liberal Party for being a fat, unattractive, sexist, political power-broker who tried to stick his tongue in a secretary’s ear.” 

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: The fact that they’re talking about him being sacked for putting his tongue in a secretary’s ear. Everyone knew what kind of guy he was. Everyone knew how he felt about women and how he treated women.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: After he graduated, Christian Porter was nominated for Cleo magazine’s Bachelor of the Year in 1999. In the article, he was asked what song he’d choose to serenade a woman. He selected “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. His self-portrait for the magazine was a stick figure, which had to be censored because he’d drawn it with large genitals.  

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: I would see Christian around the traps, at functions and we moved in some of the same social circles at the time. He didn’t change at all. Christian remained exactly who he had always been. I remember distinctly a couple of things that he said the time. I remember him commenting that he would never date a woman who weighed over 50 kilograms. That stood out to me. I also remember a relationship of his that ended and he commented that the woman involved was thin enough, but she didn’t have big enough tits and the next woman that he was going to date needed to be as thin, but have bigger tits. 

CHRISTIAN PORTER, 8 JUNE 2005: ‘Well look many cases of theft of people in positions of trust relate to solicitors and accountants, but our submissions have always been …’ 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: In his thirties, Christian Porter became a Crown Prosecutor… He married his first wife, but left her for a junior colleague. While Christian Porter was a prosecutor, he worked part-time at the University of Western Australia as a lecturer in the law of Evidence. Four Corners has spoken to some of his former UWA students who described incidents of inappropriate behaviour. They included sexualised comments about female students and a gratuitous focus on violent and sexually graphic material in the legal cases he taught.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Christian Porter’s political ambitions were realised first in WA state politics, then with a move to federal politics in 2013.  

CHRISTIAN PORTER, 9 DECEMBER 2013:  I would also like to thank all of my new Coalition colleagues. Genuinely, the welcome here has been collegiate and very warm. I am intent to bask in this warmth before people get to know me and it grinds to an inevitable halt. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Christian Porter was quickly promoted to the front bench as Social Services Minister. His language on women changed, as he spoke up strongly on domestic violence policy.  

CHRISTIAN PORTER, 25 NOVEMBER 2015: If we can change the attitudes and make sure that young boys understand what a respectful relationship is, understand what are the proper boundaries, understand what is acceptable and not acceptable, they will go on to be good fathers and good husbands and good partners and we won’t have to have as many men’s programs as we presently need.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: He was long touted to one day become prime minister. 

REPORTER: His reputation is one of a rising star, very competent.  A man who has a great capacity, and a man who as a child was referred to by his own father as a future prime minister. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: But in the corridors of Canberra, Christian Porter was developing a reputation. In late 2017 his behaviour came to the attention of then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: On 6th December 2017, I had a meeting with Porter in my office and I told him that I had had reports of him being out in public, having had too much to drink, and in the company with young women. And he, he acknowledged that, he didn’t argue with that. And I just said, ‘Look, this is unacceptable conduct for a Cabinet minister, and it exposes you to the risk of compromise’. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: The incident that prompted the Prime Minister’s concern occurred at Canberra’s Public Bar in Manuka. It was a Wednesday night – when politicians, staffers and journalists head to Public Bar for drinks and gossip. One of the people there was Liberal media advisor, Rachelle Miller who was out for a drink with her boss, Minister Alan Tudge.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: So we often on a Wednesday night would go out to some of the bars that were just around Parliament House.  During a sitting week, there would be always at Public Bar lots of journos, lots of staffers, lots of Ministers, MPs.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Rachelle Miller spotted Christian Porter with a young woman. At the time, Mr Porter was tipped to soon become the next Attorney-General. He had a wife and toddler at home in Perth. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: When we were at the Bar I noticed that Minister Porter was with someone in the corner, and they were clearly very intimate, they were cuddling, they were kissing. It was quite confronting given that we were in such a public place. And we’re in a place where we had multiple press gallery journalists, multiple MPs and senators. And I was quite surprised by the behaviour and while, you know, we all like to go out and have a drink and sometimes people drink too much, I thought that this was probably a step, well it was definitely a step too far.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER:  Mr Porter’s companion was a young female staffer who was working for another Cabinet minister.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: They were kissing and cuddling, and I remember turning around Alan and just going ‘oh my god, like, cannot believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing, what are we going to do?’ And we you know, I sort of switched right into media advisor mode and kind of scanned the room to see, well who else is seeing what I’m seeing? And who is in the room? 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Four Corners has spoken to five other people, including Coalition staffers, who were at Public Bar that night and who saw Minister Porter’s behaviour with the young woman, and they were shocked by it. One man who witnessed it was a public servant. He thought Minister Porter was opening himself up to compromise. He picked up the phone of a journalist and he took a photograph. 

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: We spotted a group of journalists and I said I said to Alan, ‘Look, you know there’s a group of journos over there, looks like someone’s taken a picture’. I saw somebody with their iPhone out. I was concerned from a work perspective. I suppose it sounds quite unfeeling, but I was really worried about it ending up in the papers. It would do a lot of damage to the government. It would be a scandal that we didn't need.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: We were completely really stressed out by it and we sorta hatched a plan to you know, head over there and actually confront them and say, ‘Look, you know, you’re taking photographs’. So Alan did head over and he asked the person taking photographs to stop taking photographs.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER:  Alan Tudge angrily demanded that the journalist delete the photo of his friend Christian Porter.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: He was certainly quite firm and kind of demanded that ‘Hey, this is not what we do on Wednesday nights, this is an off the record environment, we don’t take photos of each other’, and he was quite angry about it. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Mr Tudge later contacted the journalist, again insisting that the photo be deleted to erase the evidence. The news travelled back to the Prime Minister’s office. Malcolm Turnbull delivered Christian Porter a stern ultimatum. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: I noted that I had heard reports of him being out in public having had too much to drink in the company of young women. I reminded him that Canberra was full of spies, ah not all of them worked for us. And of course in the age of the smartphone, you know, pictures can be taken by anybody. So it is just not acceptable. And he knew that I was considering appointing him Attorney-General, which of course is the first law officer of the Crown, and has a seat on the National Security Committee, so the risk of compromise is very very real. You know, it’s not just the stuff of spy novels. People who put themselves into positions where they can be compromised or blackmailed are really taking risks, and unacceptable risks.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: What was his reaction?  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: He clearly didn’t enjoy it. Nobody enjoys a discussion like that, but he took it on board and noted it. And I you know. The message was very clear that if there was, ah, you know, reports like that emerged in the future, that would have a very, very severe consequences for his role in the ministry under my leadership.  

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: At a time when there is a strong debate about foreign influence and foreign interference, most especially in a place like Canberra, the risk I think of compromise, is far greater. And that’s why it’s incumbent on all politicians, irrespective of whatever position they hold, to ensure that their conduct is one of the highest standard.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young volunteered this story to Four Corners about a young Liberal staffer who confided in her one Wednesday night at Public Bar about a secret relationship with Christian Porter. Sarah Hanson-Young did not name the young woman she spoke to. Four Corners believes it was the same woman seen with Christian Porter at Public Bar. 

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: One particular conversation I remember went from being a general chat to a pretty, um, distressed young woman who was very upset about what had been going on in the office she worked in. And how she was being treated as a result of people finding out.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: So this young woman was talking about Christian Porter? 

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: Yes.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: What did she say happened?  

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: She told me that she’d found herself in somewhat of a relationship. And that clearly, had found herself in a position that, at some point, she didn’t want to be there. I’m not going to speculate why or how. But when she was talking to me about it, she was clearly very distressed, and she was in a situation she didn’t want to be in. And I think, you know, that’s a terrible, that’s a terrible position for any young woman to find themselves in. To feel, um, to feel like you have to question your job, your abilities, your skills – who you can talk to, who you can trust in your workplace. The sense that I had from her was that she felt pretty isolated.  She was very guarded about what she’d said. But she started crying. And it was quite clear to me that there was a lot more going on, than she felt she could say.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: There will be people who say, this was a consensual relationship between two adults, shouldn’t it just remain private?  

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: Well, that’s not really, that’s not my business, of course. If people are in consensual relationships, that’s fine.  What I saw, and I can only speak from what the experience I had, was that this young woman was really, was not happy about the situation she was in, was distressed about it, and she spoke about, she spoke about feeling caught, that she was caught in this situation.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: Where there's significant power imbalances with senior ministers and perhaps junior staff, I think that absolutely there needs to be an acknowledgement that that sort of behaviour is not okay. And in fact I would say that given I’ve spent two years since coming out of parliament in the private sector, that sort of behaviour is not tolerated on any level.   

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Ten days after Malcolm Turnbull delivered his warning to Christian Porter, Mr Porter posted this video with his family on his website. 

CHRISTIAN PORTER: Our local community is such a great place to raise a family and I’m really looking forward to working with all of the members of my local community to put some big projects and plans together for 2018.  

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: Ministers should be very conscious that their spouses and children sacrifice a great deal to support their political career, and their families deserve honour and respect. Ministers should recognise they must lead by example. Values must be lived. Politicians are entitled to private lives, of course they are. But in the workplace they should, and in public, they should hold themselves to a really high standard. You know, you can’t get away from the fact that people look up to their leaders, they look up to politicians, and if they see politicians doing the wrong thing in any regard, that undermines faith in the system. It undermines, it just sets a bad example. I mean, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: The Public Bar incident remained inside the Canberra bubble – it never leaked.  Christian Porter did not respond to Four Corners’ multiple requests for an interview or answer our detailed questions. He provided a brief statement about his meeting with Mr Turnbull in December 2017. Mr Porter said that in the meeting Malcolm Turnbull “queried whether there was any accuracy” to the story Mr Turnbull had heard.   According to Mr Porter, “the answer was no”. Mr Porter’s statement continues: “Malcolm then promoted me to Attorney-General about two weeks after. In my time as AG I never had any complaint or any suggestion of any problem from Malcolm regarding the conduct of my duties as AG until the last week of his Prime Ministership when we had a significant disagreement over the Peter Dutton citizenship issue.” 
 

SPEAKER: The Leader of the House.  

CHRISTIAN PORTER: Mr Speaker, I present...  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Last year, Scott Morrison promoted Minister Porter to become Leader of the House of Representatives.  

CHRISTIAN PORTER, 21 OCTOBER 2020: Thankyou. And the next stage for an Integrity Commission will be a consultation phase and that will be detailed and it will be extensive..  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Minister Porter has maintained his party boy reputation. This footage was taken at a Lawyers Weekly function in Sydney last year. In January, Minister Porter released a statement announcing his separation from his second wife.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: In the course of this investigation, Four Corners has spoken to dozens of former and currently serving staffers, politicians, and members of the legal profession. Many have worked within, or voted for, the Liberal Party. And many have volunteered examples of what they believe is inappropriate conduct by Christian Porter – including being drunk in public and making unwanted advances to women.  

KATHLEEN FOLEY, BARRISTER: The Attorney-General is the first law officer of the Crown. The Attorney-General is at the pinnacle of the legal profession, to put it in those terms. It would undermine the entire legal system if the Attorney-General is someone that doesn’t share the values that the legal system shares. Equality before the law and non-discrimination is an essential part of our legal system. So to have an Attorney-General who treats women and thinks about women in the way that Christian does is, to me, profoundly problematic.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: You’re someone who has had a long career in the law. Tell about what it is, what is it that’s so special about the role of Attorney-General? And why, perhaps, that role has to be held to, you know, a higher standard than even some of the other ministerial colleagues? 

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTE-WELLS, LIBERAL SENATOR: The Attorney General is the first law officer of this country. And it is incumbent on all of us, whatever the ministerial role was, the highest level of integrity and the highest level of appropriate conduct. And, whether you’re the first law officer, or you’re the prime minister or you’re the premier, that expectation is that one conducts oneself with the highest degree of integrity. The higher the office, the higher the responsibility. When we sign up to this job, we sign up for public service, we sign up as service to the Australian public. And so therefore, there is an expectation that in service of the Australian public, we abide by the highest possible conduct and integrity.  

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Four Corners does not suggest only Liberal politicians cross this line. But the Liberal Party is in government. And the Liberal politicians in question are Ministers of the Crown. All ministers must now abide by Ministerial Standards set down by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2018. They say: “Serving the Australian people as Ministers … is an honour and comes with expectations to act at all times to the highest possible standards of probity.” They also prohibit Ministers from having sexual relations with staff.  

SARAH HANSON-YOUNG, GREENS SENATOR: You know, this isn’t just about whether a um, this is a good look, for a Minister to be doing this, or MPs to be behaving badly, it ends up on the front page of the newspaper, whether that’s a, that’s a bad look for the government. This goes right to the heart of how we, what type of environment our staff work in, we work in as a group of politicians, the culture that we are promoting, and, ultimately, how we treat women. And how that place treats women. 

LOUISE MILLIGAN, REPORTER: Politicians make ethical and legal judgements that govern how the rest of society should operate, including the treatment of women. For the members of the Liberal Party we spoke to, that means the least the mostly-male Ministers of the Crown can do… is to act with propriety and with respect for the women they work with… And live the lives they say they do.  

RACHELLE MILLER, LIBERAL STAFFER, 2010-2018: Australians elect these people to represent them in parliament. They pay for their salaries and there's a certain expectation of a level of integrity that Australians expect from their leaders. And while you could argue that ‘well that's his personal life it's got nothing to do with work’, I think that that attitude is quite outdated. 

MALCOLM TURNBULL, PRIME MINISTER 2015-2018: No-one is conscripted to be a politician or a minister. If you choose to take a position like that you have to recognise that your life, your private life, is going to have to be perhaps more circumspect than it would have been or might have been if you were in a different line of work. It’s as simple as that.  

CONCETTA FIERRAVANTI-WELLS, Liberal Senator: It comes down to that basic concept of trust, and ensuring that the people that put you here, or the people that elect you, continue to have trust in you and your conduct and the things that you say. Mean what you say and say what you mean, is so important.