Photographer: Brendon Thorne / Bloomberg
Photographer: Brendon Thorne / Bloomberg
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a staff member involved in “disgusting and disgusting” behavior in parliament has been fired, most recently in his Conservative government which has already been whipped up for allegations of rape.
The Ten Network Monday night he issued allegations that a group of male government officials had shared images and videos of obscure acts for two years, including photos of one of them masturbating on a legislator’s desk.
“The actions of these individuals show a surprising lack of respect for the people who work in Parliament and for the ideals that Parliament should represent,” Morrison said in a statement. “It’s not good enough and it’s totally unacceptable,” he said, adding that the staff member at the center of the complaints has been fired.
Read more: The protests indicate a calculation in the Australian fight against sexism
The last incident comes a week later thousands of women rallied across Australia to protest Morrison’s sexual violence and manipulation of decades-long rape allegations and alleged sexual assault in parliament in 2019. Support for Morrison’s government fell to a minimum of 13 months in the latest Newspoll newspaper published now follows the main Labor opposition, from 48% to 52%.
Demonstrators at the March 4 Justice rally in Melbourne on March 15.
Photographer: Carla Gottgens / Bloomberg
The government is under fire for refusing to conduct an investigation into allegations that Attorney General Christian Porter raped a member of a school debate team in 1988, allegations he denies.
There has also been growing criticism of Morrison’s allegations that former government media adviser Brittany Higgins was raped by a cabinet member in 2019.
In response, Morrison has ordered an independent investigation into the culture of the House of Parliament workplace by sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins.
Morrison said Tuesday that he was very anxious for many women to believe he had not heard their calls for change.
“These events have triggered, throughout this building and, in fact, across the country, women who have endured this rubbish and this cloud for a lifetime, just as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did,” said Morrison.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne, the oldest woman in Morrison’s 22-person cabinet, of which 16 are men, told a parliamentary committee Monday night that the latest allegations revealed by the Ten Network were “horrible. “.
“The degrading nature of these actions, which were shown to the media, is more than disappointing,” he said.
(Updates with Morrison’s comments on paragraphs 8, 9)