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A former Labor MP has levelled a series of bombshell accusations against Labor, accusing the party of showing a continued “disdain” for women and employing a “cover up culture” towards abuse and slut-shaming.
Emma Husar, the former Member for Lindsay, made the accusations in a lengthy open letter to Labor leader Anthony Albanese, which was posted to Twitter on Wednesday.
In the statement, Ms Husar said she can no longer stay silent about issues within the Labor Party now the “toxic treatment” of women in parliament was dominating headlines once more.
“Following the false allegations about me, leaked by the Labor Party’s ‘confidential’ investigation, I have patiently waited for you to do the right thing,” she wrote.
“To call out the poor behaviour in the ALP, the ill process it subjected me to and to apologise, as you said you would in our meeting on September 25, 2019, at which you stated I deserved and was owed ‘nothing short of a public apology’.”
Ms Husar claimed she contacted Mr Albanese three times over text message to follow up about the apology but never received a response.
In July 2018, reports emerged that NSW Labor had commissioned a barrister to investigate complaints against Ms Husar regarding allegations of bullying, lewd conduct and sexual harassment.
She was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
The former MP launched defamation proceedings against BuzzFeed, who first published the claims, in December 2018, claiming the “slut shaming” article was a “shameless misrepresentation”, adding she was asked to resign after the story went viral.
The former MP went on to claim the article included multiple false and defamatory comments about her, portraying her as “a slut” and “sexually perverted”.
The case eventually settled out of court, with BuzzFeed issuing a formal apology to Ms Husar.
In her open letter to Mr Albanese, Ms Husar claims the Labor Party had “no authority to conduct the inquiry” and was even warned against doing so by the Party’s Ombudsmen.
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“The content of the inquiry, the deliberate and malice leaking of it to the media, the forcing my resignation proved that the Labor Party are no better at treating the sexual harassment of women as a ‘Political Problem’,” she wrote.
“This continued disdain for women, cover up culture, the abuse and slut-shaming is leading to worse outcomes, and none worse than Brittany’s.”
In exclusive claims to news.com.au last Monday, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins alleged she was raped by a colleague in a Minister’s Parliament House office in March 2019.
Since then, three other women – including another former Liberal Party staffer and a former Liberal Party volunteer – have come forward, claiming that they too either received unwelcome advances or were assaulted by the same man.
Ms Husar claims that many of her former colleagues who have spoken out in support for Ms Higgins, stayed silent years before when she was enduring “such horrendous treatment”.
“I have waited too long for the right thing to be done and I can no longer sit and watch woman after woman be treated poorly by the tactic approval given when our male leaders take the ‘political power, before women’s safety’ approach,” she wrote. “Your inaction and that of the powerful boys’ club that protects each other must be dismantled.
“You are now the leader responsible. The Labor Party cannot pretend that poor treatment of women exists only on one side of the political divide and I will no longer hold the secrets of and protect those who should have done better when they had the chance, yet still continue with their do-nothing approach.
“The stakes as we have seen are far too high for the young women who come after us.”
In an interview with Sky News on Wednesday morning, Ms Husar said she made the decision to speak out about her experience because she could no longer watch people within the Labor Party think this type of misconduct only happens on the other side of politics.
“I was slut shamed on the floor of parliament by a colleague on the other side and when I took it to my senior Labor shadow minister his response was, ‘Don’t talk about it, it will draw more attention to it and the boys on our side do worse, if not the same thing and it will cause a problem for us’,” Ms Husar claimed.
“So I was then told my experience was fine and then I was made to cover up the bad behaviour of what the men on my side of parliament were doing and not to stand up for myself.”
The former MP said it “doesn’t get any worse than what’s happened to Brittany Higgins” and while their experiences were different, they are still “inextricably tied together”.
She spoke of the “cover-up culture” in the Labor Party, claiming during her time she reported multiple instances of sexual harassment but nothing came of it.
“Every step along the way I reported those instances of sexual harassment to the General Secretary, to members of the Caucus who were quite senior at the time and at no point was any action taken,” she said.
Ms Husar added: “I was disposed of, moved on, buried under the carpet and away they went.”
Her claims come amid increased scrutiny into the workplace culture at Parliament House, sparked by Ms Higgins’ rape accusations.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced there would be a range of inquiries launched in response to her claims, including into how to improve parliament’s workplace culture.
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