Australia’s previous home affairs minister conveyed on Tuesday that a male colleague used to breathe down her neck as she talked in Parliament. She is the last woman to lay a question mark on the country’s political system. Ms Karen Andrews, who is currently a senior conservative politician, said that when she unveiled about the unnamed man’s disposition with others, she was asked: “Can’t you take a joke?” The macho nature of Australian politics was talked a lot about in late in 2021 when a withering remark discovered that the nation’s halls of power were rife with heavy drinking, bullying and sexual harassment.
Same kind of criticism triggered again earlier in 2023 when two politicians from different sides of the aisle threw allegations on the same conservative senator of sexual assault. Ms Andrews, who will retire at the next election, also conversed about her thoughts to the chorus of condemnation in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “I did have one of my male colleagues who used to breathe on the back of my neck in question time,” Ms Andrews said, when questioned if she had been through sexual abuse in Parliament. “I’d just be sitting there not reacting and doing my own thing and I would have the back of my neck breathed on.
“And if I asked a question , it would be: ‘That was a wonderful question to ask, thrusting and probing’… that sort of stuff,” she added. A broad review published in November 2021 discovered that one in three people working inside Australia’s Parliament House had been through some or the other kind of sexual abuse. The similar remark by the Australian Human Rights Commission also discovered that a awful system happening in the the building, triggered by frequent bouts of insane drinking. Although Australia has given a raise to the number of women being a part of the Parliament, it has implemented this so much slower if compared to rest of the nations.