Questions have been raised about Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter's attitude towards women, after a Four Corners investigation revealed a history of sexism and inappropriate behaviour.
Key points:
- A Four Corners investigation reveals concerns about Christian Porter's attitude towards women, dating back decades.
- His alleged behaviour includes making unwanted advances to women while in federal office
- Mr Porter released a statement denying the claims made against him
Following revelations Mr Porter was warned by then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull about public behaviour with a young female staffer, contributing to Mr Turnbull's infamous "bonk ban", the investigation has also discovered that concerns about the Attorney-General's behaviour go back decades.
The alleged behaviour includes public drunkenness and making unwanted advances to women during his time in federal politics. Other allegations go back to when he was a champion debater in his university days, and later while a Crown prosecutor in WA.
Four Corners has spoken to dozens of former and currently serving political staffers, members of Parliament and members of the legal profession.
Many have worked within, been members of, or voted for the Liberal Party, and many have volunteered examples of what they believe is inappropriate conduct by Mr Porter, which has continued since his elevation to federal political office.
Barrister Kathleen Foley was coached by Mr Porter in debating from when she was 16 years old and was at the University of Western Australia with him. She later worked as a WA state solicitor when Mr Porter was a WA Crown prosecutor.
"For all of that time I've known him to be someone who was, in my opinion, based on what I saw, deeply sexist and actually misogynist in his treatment of women, in the way he spoke about women," Ms Foley said.
Mr Porter studied at the University of Western Australia for the better part of a decade, and his drinking and off-colour comments frequently featured in the law students' magazine, Briefs. Many of the articles and comments were written by Mr Porter himself when he was in his mid-twenties.
"Christian's persona, particularly at UWA ...was the sidelining of women in any kind of forum in which they wanted to be involved," Ms Foley said.
"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."
Writing, aged 24, about a debate on the subject "Lawyers are just well-dressed prostitutes", Mr Porter said: "Our opposition's case had more holes than Snow White's hymen" and joked that his opponents had been "starved of oxygen at birth".
"These guys were awful! Helen Keller could have made a better fist of it," he said, referring to the famous blind and deaf writer.
He joked about his drinking and his "rowdy" behaviour and said he was going to "smut my way through law school".
The Briefs reported Mr Porter attended the so-called 'R U Barking?' pub crawl competition six times. R U Barking involved students racing to different Perth pubs with plastic bags tied to their wrists which they would fill with vomit.
Mr Porter wrote of women participants — who he called the R U Barking "chick teams" — that they were "about as gratuitous and off-putting [a] display of female sensuality that has ever occurred on R U Barking".
"If anything, all these teams achieved was merely a revelation of the fact that they all have wildly exaggerated positive body images," he wrote.
Describing a football match, Mr Porter said a highlight was "the water girls, although they should probably shower more often".
A graduation profile of Mr Porter, when he was 26, said he'd be remembered for: "Vomiting all over himself at the Continental - on the dance floor!"
It predicted that in 10 years' time, Mr 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".
After graduating from university, 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.
Mr Porter selected Another One Bites the Dust by Queen.
His self-portrait was a stick figure, which had to be censored because he'd drawn it with large genitals. At that stage, Christian Porter was 28.
Ms Foley said Mr Porter "didn't change" in his thirties when he had left university. She recalled some comments she says he made at that time, that forever stuck in her mind.
"I remember him commenting that he would never date a woman who weighed over 50 kilograms," she said.
"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."
Mr Porter went on to practise as a Crown prosecutor at the WA DPP, and 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.
Concerns about behaviour continued in Canberra
The concerns about his behaviour continued in Canberra.
Mr Porter was formally reprimanded in 2017 by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull for his drunken behaviour in public with young women.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told Four Corners that a young Liberal staffer tearfully asked her for advice about what to do about a consensual relationship she had found herself in with Mr Porter.
"One particular conversation I remember went from being a general chat to a pretty distressed young woman who was very upset about what had been going on in the office she worked in," said Senator Hanson-Young.
"She had found herself in a position that, at some point, she didn't want to be there.
"And I think that's a terrible position for any young woman to find themselves in."
Senator Hanson-Young said she got the impression the young staffer was feeling "pretty isolated".
"She started crying. And it was quite clear to me that there was a lot more going on than she felt she could say," the senator said.
"From what I saw, and I can only speak from 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."
Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller, who revealed to Four Corners she had an affair with minister Alan Tudge, said there was a "significant power imbalance" in relationships between ministers and staffers.
"I think that absolutely there needs to be an acknowledgement that that sort of behaviour is not OK," Ms Miller said.
"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."
Mr Porter and Mr Tudge did not provide on-the-record responses to Four Corners' multiple requests for interviews, and did not answer detailed questions.
"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," Mr Porter's statement said.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said ministerial spouses made great sacrifices and ministers should respect them.
"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," Mr Turnbull said.
"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."
Ms Foley said the role of Commonwealth Attorney-General was profoundly important.
"The Attorney-General is at the pinnacle of the legal profession," Ms Foley said.
"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."
After the Four Corners story was broadcast, Christian Porter issued a statement stating:
"At the outset I apologise for material I wrote in a law school magazine 24 years ago. I obviously wouldn’t write that now and it is something I regret.
"As a university lecturer I taught criminal law and evidence. By its very nature this involves dealing with confronting subject matter and images. To suggest I gratuitously focused on this required area of teaching is unfair.
"I have not spoken in any substantial way to... Ms Foley... for decades so I am surprised to hear them reflecting on my character so long after I knew them.
"But 4 Corners depiction of interactions in the bar are categorically rejected.
"The claims made by Sarah Hanson Young...They are rejected as totally false."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTExLTEwL2ZvdXItY29ybmVycy1pbnZlc3RpZ2F0aW9uLWNocmlzdGlhbi1wb3J0ZXItc2V4aXNtLWluYXBwcm9wcmlhdGUvMTI4NjI5MTDSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTI4NjI5MTA?oc=5
2020-11-09 13:27:00Z
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