A Liberal senator has raised allegations of bullying against her in response to a vocal stance against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), her comments drew parallels with the late Senator Kimberley Kitching, who died on March 10.
Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, from the centre-right Liberal Party, said she had faced her own “Liberal Party sisterhood.”
“Much has been written about the treatment Kimberley had received by what has been described as the mean girls,” the Liberal senator told the Senate during a condolence motion to commemorate Kitching. “I shared my own experiences with Kimberley, so I understood how Kimberley felt having been treated the way she was.”
Fierravanti-Wells said her outspokenness drew the ire of some senior members of the party.
“We both had factional enemies who desperately wanted to see us defeated and they worked very hard at it. We were both outspoken and not constrained by prevalent groupthink within our political parties,” she said.
“Like Kimberley, my comments on China drew the ire of coalition leaders and ministers. When I first raised my prescient warnings in 2016 during my time as a minister, they were ignored.”
The senator has been relegated to a less desirable spot on the Liberal Party’s Senate ticket in New South Wales, meaning the chances of her winning her seat back at the upcoming election—before end of May—are slim.
Fierravanti-Wells claimed some female colleagues would “privately whinge and complain” but did not stand up to the internal pressure.
“I expect they were concerned about being summoned for a fireside chat with the threat of demotion for breaching groupthink,” she said.
She also said not one female MP reached out to her following her calls for higher standards of conduct on the ABC Four Corners program.
“After I made those comments, not one coalition female supported me. Not one had the gumption to say, well done for speaking out,” she said. “Instead, the Coalition women’s Whatsapp group was more concerned with trivial, 10th order issues.”
Kitching was allegedly not only ousted from email lists containing the Labor Party’s daily media lines (which was later reversed), but she was also removed from the tactics committee and denied opportunities to ask questions during Senate hearings.
The isolation was argued to be due to her supposedly warning Liberal Party MP Linda Reynolds that the Labor Party would seek to weaponise allegations of rape in her office for political means. Another was Kitching’s fierce stance on Beijing.
Later allegations emerged that Kitching had pushed Wong, the foreign ministry spokesperson, to legislate Magnitsky Laws earlier, but found out—after her idea had been vetoed—that Wong had taken credit for her work and proposed the sanction laws herself.
“She was unafraid in all things, unafraid of all foes, and she had big plans,” he said.
“She exemplified the courage and creativity that we all say we want from candidates for public office. But on all sides, we too often shun both—favouring useful idiots, obedient nudniks, and bland time servants,” he added. “I am so proud that Kimberly was a shining beacon of what could and what should be in our public life.”
