Ex-Australia MP Julia Banks details alleged sexual harassment by the cabinet minister
Ms Banks, who made the allegation in a memoir, said the male MP moved his hand up her leg during a parliamentary vote session before moving away. Prime Minister Scott Morrison's office said in a statement they weren't previously aware of the allegation. The behaviour of such kind was "completely inappropriate," they said.
In an excerpt from her memoir, Ms Banks did not identify the man, she said was still in the cabinet. She said she and other government MPs had been waiting around for a night-time parliament vote when the minister came and sat next to her and put his hand "just above my knee and edged slowly and deliberately to my inner thigh and then further up my leg".
"For a minister to do this in the prime minister's wing, which was full of Coalition [government] MPs, he had to be astoundingly brazen. I found it unbelievable."Ms Banks' allegations have again highlighted the treatment of women in Mr Morrison's conservative government and wider Australian politics. Separate allegations of rape in Parliament House and against a senior government minister prompted a wave of #MeToo protests and women's marches across the country earlier this year.
Ms Banks has previously spoken out about sexism and misogyny in Australian politics. The former MP sensationally quit the Liberal party in 2018 after former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was deposed in a leadership coup that installed Scott Morrison. In her exit speech at the time, Ms Banks, a former corporate lawyer, condemned the instances of "bullying and intimidation" she had experienced in parliament, which she said was decades behind the corporate world in its attitudes towards women.
She has expanded on this "anti-women" culture in her book, Power Play: Breaking Through Bias, Barriers and Boys' Clubs. In it, she also alleges that Mr Morrison tried to "bully" her after she announced her departure and tried to silence her. He was like "constant, menacing, background wallpaper", she said. A spokesperson for the prime minister acknowledged Mr Morrison held several conversations with Ms Banks.
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